Usability and Ergonomics in Service-to-Product Transformation: Insights from "Productize"

 

In today's business environment, adaptation and innovation are key. Eisha Tierney Armstrong's "Productize: The Ultimate Guide to Turning Professional Services Into Scalable Products" offers a roadmap for businesses shifting from a service-based model to a product-based one, enhancing revenue stability and overall experience for employees and customers.

The Ergonomics of Stability

Productizing services enhances business stability by providing consistent revenue through scalable solutions, reducing financial risks and allowing for better planning. Armstrong's book outlines strategies to streamline operations, making the transition smoother.

Improving Employee Experience

Employees are crucial to business success. Service-based models can be stressful due to varying client demands. Productizing services standardizes processes, reducing task variability, and improving workflows. Armstrong emphasizes ergonomic design to make products user-friendly for both employees and customers, enhancing overall experience and adoption rates.

Enhancing Customer Focus

A productized approach ensures consistent customer experiences, meeting specific needs uniformly. Armstrong highlights the importance of customer feedback in refining products, leading to higher satisfaction and loyalty. Productizing also leverages data analytics to understand customer behavior, informing marketing and development strategies.

Conclusion

"Productize: The Ultimate Guide to Turning Professional Services Into Scalable Products" by Eisha Tierney Armstrong is a must-read for businesses aiming to stay competitive. The book offers a framework for transforming services into scalable products, stabilizing revenue, improving employee experience, and enhancing customer focus.

Explore these strategies in detail by grabbing your copy of "Productize" on Amazon.

Unlock the Secrets to Successful Product Management with Transformed: Moving to the Product Operating Model by Marty Cagan

Revolutionize Your Product Development Strategy

In the fast-paced world of tech and product development, staying ahead of the curve is crucial. Transformed: Moving to the Product Operating Model by Marty Cagan offers invaluable insights and practical advice on how to successfully transition to a product-centric operating model. As a renowned expert in product management and a partner at Silicon Valley Product Group, Cagan draws from decades of experience to guide you through this transformative journey.

Why This Book is Essential for Product Leaders

1. Adopt a Product-Centric Approach: Marty Cagan emphasizes the importance of shifting from a project-based mindset to a product-centric operating model. This approach not only enhances agility and innovation but also ensures that your team is focused on delivering true customer value.

2. Learn from Industry Leaders: Through detailed case studies and real-world examples, Cagan showcases how top companies have successfully made this transition. These stories provide practical insights and actionable strategies that you can apply to your own organization.

3. Master the Key Principles of Product Management: Cagan breaks down the core principles of effective product management, including cross-functional collaboration, customer-centricity, and continuous improvement. This book serves as a comprehensive guide for product leaders aiming to build high-performing teams and create products that truly resonate with users.

What Readers Are Saying

"This book is a game-changer for anyone involved in product development. Marty Cagan's insights are both profound and practical, making it a must-read for product leaders." - Amazon Reviewer

"Transformed has fundamentally changed the way we approach product management. The transition to a product-centric model has been challenging, but this book provided the roadmap we needed." - Amazon Reviewer

Take Your Product Management Skills to the Next Level

Don't miss the opportunity to revolutionize your approach to product management. Transformed: Moving to the Product Operating Model is your ultimate guide to adopting a product-centric mindset and achieving unparalleled success in the tech industry. Whether you're a seasoned product leader or just starting out, this book will equip you with the knowledge and tools needed to drive meaningful change within your organization.

Get Your Copy Now on Amazon

The Crucial Role of Marketing, Branding, and Customer Experience in Value Creation

In a world increasingly characterized by choice and abundance, distinguishing your product from the crowd has never been more challenging or more important. At the heart of this issue lies the trinity of marketing, branding, and customer experience. When leveraged correctly, these three elements can dramatically elevate your product's perceived value and, consequently, its marketplace success.

Marketing: Driving Awareness and Attraction

The journey of value creation begins with marketing. An impactful marketing campaign raises awareness of a product or service, familiarizes potential customers with its unique selling propositions, and piques their interest. In essence, marketing creates perceived value. It showcases the benefits, features, and potential solutions that a product or service can provide, thus making it attractive to the target audience.

Without effective marketing, even the best products may remain unnoticed, like undiscovered gems. Therefore, marketing is a catalyst that propels a product from obscurity into the limelight. It's a key contributor to the value creation process, transforming latent potential into tangible demand.

Building that marketing concept starts way before the product is even being developed. Actually, it is an essential part of developing the product on the first place.

Branding: Cultivating Trust and Loyalty

Branding goes hand in hand with marketing. While marketing brings a product or service to the customer's attention, branding establishes a product's identity, ethos, and long-term relationship with the consumer. Brands communicate the intrinsic values and personality of a product, making it relatable and trustworthy.

A well-constructed brand fosters loyalty, encourages repeat purchases, and can even justify a higher price point due to its perceived quality and value. Moreover, it enhances the product's resistance to competitive pressures by establishing a strong emotional connection with consumers. In this way, branding is not just about immediate transactions, but it plays a crucial role in long-term value creation and business sustainability.

Customer Experience: Sealing the Value Proposition

Even with top-notch marketing and a strong brand, the value creation process is incomplete without a compelling customer experience. This includes every interaction a customer has with the product or the company, from pre-purchase information searching to post-purchase services.

The customer experience should be engaging, consistent, and personalized, as this creates a deeper emotional connection between the customer and the product. Positive experiences not only make the customer feel valued and satisfied, but also increase the likelihood of word-of-mouth recommendations, thus indirectly amplifying marketing efforts.

Furthermore, an exceptional customer experience helps to substantiate the claims made through marketing and branding. It ensures that the product delivers on its promises, therefore solidifying its value proposition and building a trustworthy reputation.

The Harmonious Blend of Marketing, Branding, and Customer Experience

In conclusion, the triumvirate of marketing, branding, and customer experience drives significant value creation in the product realm. Individually, each plays a unique role, but together they form a harmonious blend that elevates a product's perceived value and market potential.

While marketing introduces and attracts, branding deepens the connection, and customer experience validates and strengthens that bond. By prioritizing all three, companies can not only enhance the perceived value of their products but also cultivate a loyal customer base that continues to drive sustainable business growth.

Product Management: "Inspired" and "Empowered" - Are you?

"Inspired" and "Empowered" - Two excellent reads for all product people and executives of products businesses: 

• the importance of customer-centric product development
• the value of empowering cross-functional teams 
• the need for clear product vision and strategy
• and the role of experimentation in product innovation

Marty Cagan is a well-known author, speaker, and product management expert. He is the founder of the Silicon Valley Product Group, a consulting firm that helps technology companies create and deliver successful products. Cagan has more than 20 years of experience in the technology industry, and has worked with companies such as AOL, HP, Netscape, and eBay. Cagan is a frequent speaker at industry events and is considered a thought leader in the field of product management.

"Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love" is a book written by Marty Cagan. The book is considered a go-to guide for product management, and is based on Cagan's extensive experience in the technology industry. It covers the entire product development process, from idea generation to product launch. Cagan explains how to develop a deep understanding of your customers, how to identify and solve their problems, how to create and implement a product vision, and how to measure and improve the performance of your products. He also provides real-world examples and case studies to illustrate his points. The book has been widely praised for its practical and actionable advice on product management.

"Empowered: How to Create a Culture of Product Ownership" is a book written by Marty Cagan. The book is focused on the role of product ownership in the technology industry and how it is becoming a critical factor for success. It covers the importance of product ownership, how to build a culture of product ownership, how to empower product owners, how to develop and manage product teams, how to measure and improve product performance, and how to deal with common challenges. The book provides real-world examples and case studies to illustrate the concepts and ideas presented. Cagan's goal is to help organizations create a culture of product ownership that allows them to create products that customers love.

These two books are considered foundational to product lifecycle management and on how to create and capture value with products.

"Inspired" and "Empowered" - are you?

The Soap Dispenser on Public Toilets

Every time I wash my hands in a public toilet I notice how badly positioned the soap dispenser and sink usually are. 

Yes, you should wash your hands with soap ... And, to do so, making use of the dispenser usually creates a big mess.

Soap dispensers regularly are placed to the left of the sink. If there are several sinks next to each other depending on where you are standing it might be to the right ;-)

The dispenser is mounted in a way that if some droplet of soap - given principles of gravity - drops, it drops on down to the floor.

Watch out for it! - You will rarely find a public toilet where underneath the soap dispenser there is not a big mess. Even the regular cleaning by cleaning staff over time can not cope with permanent stains.

The worst is with automatic dispensers. Dispensers having a sensor and dispensing only after the hand has been moved underneath. - Given the issue of latency time ... these designs are just too slow ... (see also my articles on general issues with latency in the automatized and digital world: Latency no. 1 and Latency no. 2) ... to securely drop the pre-specified amount of soap into the users hand. Usually one has already pulled back the hand before the soap dropping, resulting in systematic mess with soap on the floor.

As a result it then requires at least two attempts by the end user in order to get his soap into the hand which heavily impacts soap consumption.

A little bit better are dispensers which deliver soap as foam. The improvement here is just that the foam either sticks to the dispensers nozzle, or that the portion of foam does not drop that fast, so that a fast reacting user can still catch it before it is hitting the drop zone on the floor.

Now, the big question: why is this almost everywhere - exceptions apply - the case?

• Is there a norm or standard that requires such design?
• Is it just because nobody cares?
• Is it because consumers and users just accept it and do not complain?
• Is it because the cleaning staff just accepts it?
• Why?

I doubt that I am the only one to notice. And I doubt that I am the only one who sees this a problem.

And given the enormous number of public toilets around the globe I doubt that there is no opportunity for a decent solution to that problem!

A gardeners struggle - the soil bag

During spring and early summer, in the time of the year when plants start growing, everything is sprouting, nature in bloom, people start working in their gardens. According to statistics a habit two thirds of people in Switzerland share (reference).
The current COVID measures seem to drive this statistics even more in favor of sales of gardening supplies (reference).

Everybody is buying soil in various quantities. Many different flavors of soil. And, all packaged in laminated plastic bags. Bags, usually 80 - 100cm long, 40cm wide, and 8cm thick. Filled with premium soil at volumes of few liters for plants on terraces, up to 50 liters of garden soil for big projects. In any case, the package has a certain weight.

I never understood this packaging format! Why would you choose such packaging?
Obviously the responsible designers for these products have never been working in the garden. Or, they are extremely resilient to handling inconvenient products.

Every time I have to carry such a package I get upset.
If I grab the package with two hands on one of the short ends, it is difficult to carry the package and it risks constantly to slip out of my fingers.

If I grab the package with my hands along the longer dimension, then the package - given its weight - is bending through, slips out of my hands, and falls down on the ground.

If I grab it in the middle along the shorter dimension, it is bending through equally and it becomes difficult to carry.

When then loading the packages into the car, the next struggle starts. The dimensions of soil packages are not really fit for purpose. Obviously I need to pile the packages into the trunk of my car. And this is not an easy job. Virtually impossible if you are not Olympic weight lifter. Unloading is the same struggle in reverse order.

And then when ripping them open and trying to dose the amount of soil to be scattered into the plant bed. As soon as a certain amount of soil is missing in the package, the laminated bag becomes unstable. If not emptying the entire bag at once it becomes difficult to handle the package in controlled manner.

  

My practical experience with such packages is repeatably negative leading to higher levels of frustration.

How could one decide for this packaging format? What have been the requirements to come up with such package design?

One reason might be the possibility to pile many packages on a standard palette for transport and storage. 

Obviously an important argument and requirement. Efficient transport and storage is essential for a economically viable product. But, does it need to come at the price of modest customer experience and usability.

What I wonder is, if this packaging format has ever been put at a test with real day to day users.

Apart from the described scenarios above, many users can barely carry such packages given its dimensions and weight. I don’t want to know to how many serious back problems of people struggling to handle such packages the lack of customer centricity can lead.

Another interesting observation is the fact, that all manufacturers of packaged soil products use the exactly same packaging design. Why is that?

I can imagine several hypothetical reasons.

1. Nobody cares about the user, given the fact that there is no alternative and people still are buying.
2. Every producer is copy pasting from his competitor. Nobody is searching for differentiation. Nobody believes in consumers paying a premium for improved usability.
3. Even tough there are many different vendors and brands there might be only very few producers of soil.
4. There is only one serious manufacturer of respective packaging and filling systems. This would explain why there is almost no alternatively packaged products available.
5. The packaging design experts are only doing me-too. With complete lack of usability exercises or user research.
6. The cost requirements for packaging of garden and plant soil are so incredibly low that no other packaging is affordable.

There might be many more reasons ... And, are we as consumers willing to accept these?

What price would we be willing to pay for a better packaging design allowing acceptable handling of soil bags in the shopping, the transport, and use process?

How would a better package look like? What would be the features of a more ideal soil bag? Is there a format that could meet most of above requirements?

Some internet research gives already some hints. There might still be some products which are packaged in other format. Formats which might be more convenient to handle.

The package here to the right for sure has several advantages over the standard laminated bags. 

The handle on the top - foldable for being able to staple them on a palette (transport and storage requirements) - seems key to me. Only with a handle one can carry packages in a serious way. And depending on other dimensions and weight of the package it would even allow me to carry two packages at once, one with each hand. A much more balanced and more efficient way of carrying them.

If the package is less of a slim long bag, but more of a cuboid shape the usability of carrying them by the handle on the top becomes even better. A cuboid shape also fulfills the requirements for stapling the packages on a palette. They could be better organized into the trunk of a car, and could be better stored around the garden.

Also when using them in the garden; cutting the cuboid package open at one corner would allow to much more keep the shape of the package and dosing soil for use.

So, pretty simple and obvious to come up with a packaging format that might lead to much better customer acceptance. 

I am not a packaging expert. And I can well imagine that a packaging system for a cuboid product with a handle requires to manage some more degrees of freedom. But, given the quantities of soil being produced and sold in that business, and given the fact that such packaging and filling can be highly automated I would assume there is a case for such scenario. I could well imagine that going for such packaging could be a differentiating factor.

If you had the choice? Which package would you buy? And, would you pay a price for more convenience?

The right conclusions

To design ergonomic products, or to provide a best in class user experience, the designers and researchers have to draw the right conclusions.

Conclusions based on evidence, based on data, based on analytics.

How to come up with the data and evidence leading towards respective conclusions and design decisions.

It is important to design some good experiments and take control over how and from what sample the data and evidence is acquired.

Otherwise, data could infer some conclusions as described on the right. - The perfect explanation for the extinction of dinosaurs. - Same might apply with babies and storks...

Latency - No. 2

As discussed in my earlier post - Latency - No. 1 - latency times in today‘s computerized products are a true pain to user experience.

There are different ways of handling it, if it can not be shortened down enough by design.

The most common one is the spinning icon.

However, there is also the traditional solution through good documentation and user guidance.

The good old SOP - standard operating procedure.
Do‘s and dont‘s ...

See to the right - recently found at the breakfast buffet in a tourist hotel in Ticino, Switzerland.
If it truly solves the problem - I doubt it!

At least for me it didn‘t work out. It took me longer to find my language to read - I can read and understand them all - and act on it, than to make everything wrong already in parallel while not waiting for the slow machine to take its time.

Yes, it‘s well documented. And yes, I was the one, impatiently not following the SOP. And, yes, if you would follow it - just slow down - the user experience would be pretty seamless and clear.

As user experience, UX experts usually generate evidence by observing and testing a statistically relevant sample of users. Here, the job obviously has been done. Otherwise nobody would have solved the problem with such a nice SOP in four languages and four colors.
And, from a user end it is always hard to get product design changed in a true user centric way. Once a product is launched, in most cases, there is no room for user centricity and agility to adapt to it any longer. Quality in UX is then only measured in terms of units sold or generated revenue.

In the example given above, a very nice SOP, written by a very pragmatic and customer focusing person, will prevent the manufacturer of the coffee machine from going out of business due to poor UX. What a success!

My new iPad Pro

I recently got an Apple iPad Pro. - Yes, the one with the fancy pencil, and the fancy keyboard.

Once again I was impressed by the overall user experience. Starting with the evaluation phase in the internet. Reading through the specifications and reviews. The lean product photography is already appealing and raises the desire to hold respective product in my hands.

Why do I want to buy an iPad Pro? - My old iPad Version 4 is seven or eight years old. Performance is getting limited, and that bulky pen with the balloon rubber bubble tip was a great user experience increasing usability especially when reviewing articles back then but not necessary today any more.

Why am I reaching limits in performance of that old iPad 4? - Probably mainly because my user behavior changed somehow. I am more often switching between apps, I am having several apps simultaneously open, and pushing the resources of that device. Everything else is working fine. It has been one of my best devices bought ever.

And then that fancy Apple Pencil on the new devices. - A gadget designed to the maximum of usability. But to experience this I need to go to the shop. No e-commerce will make me feel that experience over the internet. Haptic feeling and my biggest fear - will it work for left handed people - drives me to the next Apple shop.

But it‘s not only the hardware of this device which sounds appealing. It is also the imagination of what new possibilities such a setup could open up to me.
All my private and professional office in a small pocket, the possibility to do work wherever I am, bringing creative ideas - yes, the fancy pencil functionality again - to my digital devices as soon as possible...

I am walking into the shop. I tell the seller that I am interested in buying an iPad Pro. He asks me if I would be using it mainly for private or rather for business. My answer is - both!
Yes, private and business is blending more and more.

I am deciding quickly and walking out the shop with three well designed clean white packages. Spent some money on a new device which should bring some more joy to my life.

Am I a victim? - A victim of consumption? - Or, a victim of excellent usability and user experience design? - How did this all influence my buying decision?