Contextualising product adoption
This edition dives into leveraging a service framework to boost product adoption and user understanding.
Service Framework : Pick any 2
Few months back I stumbled into this tweet by Visankan. He tweeted on the classic trade-off between good, cheap and fast being applicable to many contexts.
Here is the lede :
"good, cheap, reliable: pick 2" is really so goddamn true over and over again in so many contexts
And, here is the chaser:
it's usually phrased like this: https://t.co/0fjzVqWsrW pic.twitter.com/FtNcrDn7zW
— Visakan Veerasamy (@visakanv) May 7, 2024
It flipped a switch in my mind instantaneously. So, I blasted off a tweet:
I am having tons of ideas riffing on this for product building.
User input for AI could be defined using this framework.
If you want the GenAI agent to perform something for you. Let it know how you want to be served among the 3 options.
This off-hand tweet led to a huge uplift at my work on my day job.
Let me repurpose the service framework illustration and adopt it to a complex system in legacy domains.
Between adoption and building of product, much of the heavy lifting happens with adoption. Product adoption is an intermix of change management and better delivery of service.
In the service framework when we slot the product value offering, the user is more inclined to understand what we have built.
This is precisely how we went about it at my day job.
Our product is an AI tool working in the space of logistics. We contextualised the problem we are solving by pitting it against the service we will improve. We used the framework to increase the awareness of the customer on how the product will provide the service.
We had over 80% conversion rate. Customers were willing to test out the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) whenever we launch. It has further helped us in building it out as well.
We took the positioning of value to the customer as the outside view and worked backwards into a PR-FAQ(my version of spec document).
It really boils down to user maturity in the domain you operate. The service framework helped us understand the maturity of our customers and realise the challenges we will face in adoption if we build the MVP. It reflects really well with this statement that I came across in an old Ribbonfarm post.
I call it the Milo Criterion: products must mature no faster than the rate at which users can adapt. Call that ideal maximum rate the Milo rate.
Maturity is an axis that gives us more granular information on user adaptability.
With the onslaught of GenAI and different strands of user(varying maturity levels) trying to adopt it to their own workflows. The above mentioned service framework help with product adoption.
Next time you are tasked with increase adoption of a product, check for maturity of the targeted user.Try to reframe the workflow change that a user has to make with this service framework. The trade-offs illustrated will help you also gauge their inclination towards making the change.
This simple framework like Visakan said at the start, works for product adoption as well.
Round up
Surely you can explain better, Vivek
I completed a year at work and got promoted (not public yet).
Wrote an internal piece close to 5K words on my experience and a public one which I published to my blog.
The concepts of “management” and “knowledge” from Edward Demming when introduced via Cedric Cin’s posts passed the believability rubric for me.
Management is a form of prediction backed by knowledge.
Management without knowledge is just superstition.
Translate the above two statements to product management. My realisation of seeking knowledge and explaining it to fellow builders becomes the highest order work.
Its been a year of high skill development personally. It provided a platform to practice leveraging my influence without formal authority. Interesting and enriching overall.
Links that resonated
Weekly Business Review
This is the ultimate guide to implementing the weekly business review as an operator. I have shared it with everyone who is interested in running an effective organisation.
You might need a cup of beverage, preferably hot to get to the meat of the post.
Sign off
I am at the stage of product building career where I have few tools in the form of frameworks, domain knowledge and experiential learning which can be applied much quicker to tackle the task at hand. This has led to an exponential increase in case library of lessons learnt.
I look forward to penning them down in the following issues.
My long absence from this newsletter can be attributed to busy life due to changing events, increased work and lack of motivation to make sense of what I am learning.
I abandoned all “on the side” pursuits. Followed it up by going off the grid and enjoyed some much needed rest.
I am not sure when the next issue will drop but I have come to believe that a regular cadence is essential if I want more people to read what I write.
Signing off till the next time,
Vivek, brushing off cobwebs as I get back to writing.