There are different types of adopters at each product stage:<ol><li>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</li><li>early adopters: influential, thought leaders in the product space, educated in social media, with high level of education and reasonable income</li><li>early majority: risk averse, like to compare products before buying, lower income than the first 2 </li><li>late majority: skeptical, like to use trial and tested products</li><li>laggards: don't like change</li></ol>

Types of product adopters

Some questions to guide<ul><li>Life goals – what does the user aspire to in their life? How might your product get them to that goal? What would motivate a user to choose your product over a competing product that achieves this objective?</li><li>Completion goals – what do users expect to happen at the end of using your product? What can you measure when this takes place?</li><li>Behavioral goals – when users undertake achieving the goal without using your product, how do they do it? How can your product mimic that process so that the product is familiar to them? </li></ul>

Ease of Use

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

Usability

Imagine a product has 7 different buttons, that whenever pressed with low or high intensity, they produce different results for users: <ul><li>Useful - has a purpose in the user's life</li><li>Usable - enables the purpose of a product to be brought to reality</li><li>Findable - the product and its content are easy to find</li><li>Credible - has built trust that it can accomplish the promised purpose</li><li>Desirable - good brand, image, identity, aesthetics and emotional design</li><li>Accessible -  a product's ability to be used by as many people as possible (e.g. impaired people)</li><li>Valuable (its production costs don't outweigh its usefulness)</li></ul>

The 7 Factors of User Experience

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

Factors of success for new product development

Adoption is the ultimate goal of a product. For it to happen, the Product works with the marketing teams:<ul><li>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. </li><li>Design Phase: Designers ensure the product is desirable & usable, and marketers work to release news and build anticipation for the release.</li><li>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.</li></ul>

Turning prospects into users

Appropriation can have two meanings: <ul><li>the usage of existing objects to create different contexts than originally thought (e.g. dressing in clothes from another culture)</li><li>the usage of a product in an unintended way  (e.g. using a block of cement instead of a hammer with a nail). </li></ul>It is desired that companies look to integrate their products in other contexts to attract more users, but should pay attention to copyrights issues.

Appropriation

There are different stages of a product and different strategies apply to each of them: <ol><li>Market Introduction: High costs, low sales, little competition, customer education, marketing investment, low profitability</li><li>Growth: Declining costs, higher sales volumes, profitability appears, brand awareness, competitors appear</li><li>Maturity: Declining costs, sales at peak, more competitors, brand differentiation needed, profitability declines</li><li>Decline: costs not optimal, sales decline, prices fall, profitability depends on efficiency of production and distribution</li></ol>

Using the Product Lifecycle

Useful = allows a user to accomplish an objective in a certain contextUsable = useful + enablement of the user to perform an actionUsed = useful + enablement + adoption. The ultimate goal of a product.

Useful,  Usable and Used have different meanings

Having a used product is more important than product market fit and usability

What You’ll Learn: Why adoption and appropriation matter to a product’s success. How to place adoption and appropriation in context with UX and usability work.....

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