Get Your Product Used: Adoption and Appropriation

Oftentimes, usability is mistaken with user experience, but in reality, it is just a part of it. 

Usability, on its own, is also not only ease of use, but rather a sum of multiple aspects: 

• effectiveness - the ability to complete a task
• efficiency - effectiveness + speed
• engagement - looking right (typography, navigation)
• error tolerance - preventing users to do errors
• ease of learning - appropriate onboarding on a product or learning about new releases

Imagine a product has 7 different buttons, that whenever pressed with low or high intensity, they produce different results for users: 

• Useful - has a purpose in the user's life
• Usable - enables the purpose of a product to be brought to reality
• Findable - the product and its content are easy to find
• Credible - has built trust that it can accomplish the promised purpose
• Desirable - good brand, image, identity, aesthetics and emotional design
• Accessible -  a product's ability to be used by as many people as possible (e.g. impaired people)
• Valuable (its production costs don't outweigh its usefulness)

• Top Management Support: Getting resources from top management to test innovative ideas
• Market Orientation: Ability to conduct user and market research to bring them closer to the need of users
• Technology: Suitable for the market selected
• Knowledge management: Information sharing between teams helps bring down the knowledge silos
• Development Strategies: Teams can negotiate and bring input to the roadmap
• Development Speed: Being fast enough to provide value ahead of competitors
• Development Process: Clear processes for design and development
• Product Teams: Bringing different input for the product

Adoption is the ultimate goal of a product. For it to happen, the Product works with the marketing teams:

• Pre-Design Phase: Market research determines if the user base is large enough to make a product profitable; user research looks into its value & usability. 
• Design Phase: Designers ensure the product is desirable & usable, and marketers work to release news and build anticipation for the release.
• Launch Phase & Beyond: Involve channel partners, distributors, influencers to spread the word; press releases, social media, free trials where possible. Get meaningful metrics to measure adoption.

Appropriation can have two meanings:

• the usage of existing objects to create different contexts than originally thought (e.g. dressing in clothes from another culture)
• the usage of a product in an unintended way  (e.g. using a block of cement instead of a hammer with a nail).

It is desired that companies look to integrate their products in other contexts to attract more users, but should pay attention to copyrights issues.

There are different stages of a product and different strategies apply to each of them: 

1. Market Introduction: High costs, low sales, little competition, customer education, marketing investment, low profitability
2. Growth: Declining costs, higher sales volumes, profitability appears, brand awareness, competitors appear
3. Maturity: Declining costs, sales at peak, more competitors, brand differentiation needed, profitability declines
4. Decline: costs not optimal, sales decline, prices fall, profitability depends on efficiency of production and distribution

There are different types of adopters at each product stage:

1. innovators: like taking high risks and have a good discretionary income. Naturally knowledgeable in the product space. Marketing and UX teams should identify them before launch to design for mass scale
2. early adopters: influential, thought leaders in the product space, educated in social media, with high level of education and reasonable income
3. early majority: risk averse, like to compare products before buying, lower income than the first 2 
4. late majority: skeptical, like to use trial and tested products
5. laggards: don't like change