Product Prioritisation: How to improve it using the Fogg model
As a product manager, you are constantly faced with product prioritisation—the challenge of deciding what to build next. How do you prioritise the features and improvements that will deliver the most value to your users and your business? How do you balance the needs and expectations of different stakeholders and customers? How do you ensure that your product roadmap aligns with your vision and strategy? One framework that can help you answer these questions is the Fogg Behavioural Model (FBM). Developed by Dr. BJ Fogg, a behavioural scientist and director of the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, the FBM is a simple yet powerful model that explains how human behaviour is influenced by three factors: 1. Motivation 2. Ability 3. Triggers. How those FBM help Product Prioritisation? According to the FBM, for a behaviour to occur, a person must have sufficient motivation to perform it, sufficient ability to perform it, and a trigger to prompt them to perform it. If any of these factors are missing or insufficient, the behaviour will not happen. Motivation refers to the degree of desire or willingness to perform a behaviour. It can be influenced by various factors, such as pleasure or pain, hope or fear, social acceptance or rejection, etc. Motivation can vary depending on the context and the individual. Ability refers to the degree of ease or difficulty to perform a behaviour. It can be influenced by various factors, such as time, money, physical effort, mental effort, social deviance, non-routine, etc. Ability can also vary depending on the context and the individual. ALSO READ: Generating Better Ideas for Your Products — Lessons from Teresa Torres Triggers refer to the cues or signals that prompt a person to perform a behaviour. They can be external or internal. External triggers are stimuli that come from outside the person, such as notifications, buttons, reminders, etc. Internal triggers are stimuli that come from within the person, such as emotions, thoughts, memories, etc. The FBM can be represented by a formula: B = MAT. Behaviour = Motivation x Ability x Trigger. The formula implies that for a behaviour to occur, all three factors must be present and above a certain threshold. The higher the motivation and ability, the more likely the behaviour will happen when triggered. Conversely, the lower the motivation and ability, the less likely the behaviour will happen when triggered. How does this relate to product prioritisation? As a product manager, you want to design products that enable and encourage your users to perform certain behaviours that create value for them and for your business. For example, you may want your users to sign up for your service, use your features regularly, invite their friends to join your platform, provide feedback on your product, etc. To achieve these outcomes, you need to understand what motivates your users to perform these behaviours, what makes it easy or hard for them to perform these behaviours, and what triggers them to perform these behaviours. By applying the FBM to your product decisions, you can prioritise the features and improvements that will increase your users’ motivation and ability to perform the desired behaviours and provide them with effective triggers to prompt them to do so. For instance, at Insight7, we are constantly reaching out to users to understand what influences their behaviours and how they utilise our app. This helps us to understand how we can tweak our product to improve the ease of use, and eventually, the speed with which users accomplish their tasks using Insight7. Here are some use cases you can consider: – If you want your users to sign up for your service (behaviour), you need to motivate them by highlighting the benefits and value proposition of your service (motivation), make it easy for them to sign up by reducing friction and complexity in the registration process (ability), and provide them with clear and compelling calls-to-action on your landing page or in your marketing campaigns (trigger). – To get users utilising your features regularly (behaviour), you need to motivate them by showing them how your features help them achieve their goals and solve their problems (motivation), make it easy for them to use your features by providing intuitive and user-friendly interfaces (ability), and provide them with timely and relevant reminders or notifications that nudge them to use your features when they need them (trigger). – If you want your users to invite their friends to join your platform (behaviour), you need to motivate them by rewarding them with incentives or social recognition for inviting their friends (motivation), make it easy for them to invite their friends by integrating with their contacts or social networks (ability), and provide them with prompts or suggestions that encourage them to invite their friends at appropriate moments (trigger). – To get users to provide feedback on your product (behaviour), you need to motivate them by showing them how their feedback matters and how it will improve your product (motivation), make it easy for them to provide feedback by offering simple and convenient ways for them to share their opinions (ability), and provide them with requests or invitations that ask them for their feedback at optimal times (trigger). In summary, product prioritisation is not an easy task. Developing, testing and marketing new features is a gruelling, expensive series of tasks. However, using the right frameworks can improve the speed of decision making and ultimately help product teams make better decisions on what actions to prioritise.
Experimental Testing: A Short Guide to The Right Approach
It is well established that the Product Discovery process is a crucial stage in developing any product worth using. In our last blog post, we discussed hypothesis testing. Today, we are moving forward to the next phase: experimental testing. Experimental testing is validating assumptions and testing new ideas or product features through experiments with real users or customers. This can be done through various methods such as usability testing, A/B testing, surveys, interviews, and prototyping. The goal of experimental testing is to gather data and insights that can inform product development decisions and improve the user experience. Experimentation plays a vital role in improving the product discovery process. Before we continue, let us discuss some examples of products that have failed or succeeded due to proper (or improper) experimental testing. Success and Failure Stories Google Glass One product that failed due to poor experimental testing was Google Glass. Remember the concept? Long before Facebook rebranded to Meta and AR and VR became buzzwords, Google was already cornering the Extended Reality market. And things looked good for them. The Google Glass was a sturdy product and was light-years ahead of its time. However, as you will often find with great but unsuccessful products, that is not necessarily a compliment. While the concept of a wearable heads-up display was intriguing, the product ultimately failed to capture the interest of consumers. The high price point, awkward design, and privacy concerns caused the product to be pulled from the market. This failure could have been prevented if Google had done more thorough experimental testing with potential users to identify these issues before launching the product. Unfortunately, the bigwigs at the tech giant were convinced that rolling it out earlier would help them get feedback directly from consumers. Hence, according to their assumptions, they would be able to improve on the next release of the product. But this experimental testing should have been done before the product was released, not after. Amazon Echo On the other hand, a product that succeeded due to good experimental testing is the Amazon Echo. The Echo was not the first voice-activated smart speaker on the market, but it quickly became the most popular due to Amazon’s focus on experimentation. Amazon continuously tested and iterated on the product, adding new features and improving the user experience. By listening to their customers and making changes based on their feedback, Amazon created a product that people love and use every day. The Echo has since gone on to revolutionize the smart speaker market. And would you belive it? One of the most cited reasons for this dominance is the superior end-user experience. Overall, good experimental testing is essential for product success. It helps identify potential issues early on, saves time and resources, and allows continuous improvement. What is the right framework for Experimental Testing? Marty Cagan, a well-known Silicon Valley veteran who has worked with companies like eBay, Netscape, and HP, is one of the loudest voices emphasising the importance of experimentation in product development. In his book “Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love,” he proposes a framework for product discovery that includes a cycle of experimentation. The cycle includes ideation, prototyping, testing, and learning. Ideation – This is the initial stage where the team generates ideas. It’s important to come up with as many ideas as possible and to be open to all possibilities. The ideation stage should involve customers, stakeholders, and team members. The goal is to gather as much input as possible to generate a wide range of ideas. Prototyping – Once you have a list of ideas, it’s time to create prototypes. Prototyping is the process of creating a basic version of the product to test the idea’s feasibility. Prototyping can take many forms, from sketches to wireframes to functional prototypes. Testing – Testing is the process of evaluating the prototype with actual customers. Testing should be conducted in several stages to ensure that the product is meeting the user’s needs. Marty Cagan emphasizes that testing should be done as early as possible in the product development process. This helps to identify any issues early on and to make any necessary changes. Learning – Based on the results of the testing, the team should evaluate what works and what doesn’t work. To be unbiased at this stage is very mission-critical. It is essential to understand the reason behind the success or failure of the product. This knowledge will help the team to iterate and improve the product. So do not be precious with your product and be ready to kill off any ‘darling’ features customers don’t want/need. Wrapping up… Experimental testing helps the product team to validate the ideas and to identify potential flaws at an early stage. This saves time and resources in the long run. Experimentation should always be a continuous process integrated into every stage of product development, and yes, it can be time-intensive. We know that. That’s the reason why here at Insight7, our philosophy is all about making it easier to draw insights, fast-tracking the product discovery process and helping stakeholders make decisions faster. That’s why we developed our software, which uses AI to help you draw insights from thousands of surveys and research data in seconds. You can try the product here. Experimentation will supercharge your product team’s ideation process because the real world is a whole different ball game compared to the drawing board. Getting feedback on the real-world usage of your product will probably be the most important insight you gather in the course of Product Discovery. By embracing experimentation, product teams can create innovative and successful products that meet the needs of their customers in more realistic—and eventually more profitable—ways.
Getting Started With Product Design as a Startup
Getting Started With Product Design as a Startup As a startup, product design is something you’ll likely need to consider from the get-go. This is because a well-designed product can lead to increased customer satisfaction and even growth. On the other hand, poorly designed products can lead to customer dissatisfaction and costly returns. So what is product design exactly? Product design is the process of creating and developing a product from start to finish. It involves identifying problems and then creating solutions to solve them. Design thinking is the process used to develop ideas into products that are both functional and attractive. There are a number of different design techniques that can be used to create effective products. These include personas, customer journey maps, user journeys, journey maps, and more. If you want to summarize your research data and store it in central repository to make it accessible to the team then you must use Insight7 But how do you get started as a startup? Well, you could hire a full-time designer or use a freelance designer. However, hiring a full-time designer can be very expensive and time consuming. And hiring a design agency can be expensive too. Another option is to use design tools that automate the design process and allow startups to create attractive and functional products without requiring the services of a designer. Some of the most popular design tools include Sketch, Adobe XD, Figma, InVision, Balsamiq Mockups, and Illustrator. These tools allow you to easily create mockups, workflows, and other designs without needing to hire a designer or spending countless hours coding up the UI. Overall, the benefits of using design tools are that they save a lot of time and money by automating the design process and helping you to quickly and easily develop products for your startup. Sketch Sketch is a design tool developed by Bohemian Coding that makes it easy to design and prototype digital products. This powerful yet easy-to-use app has everything you need to design, code, and build high-fidelity prototypes without any coding knowledge required. With features like symbols and layers, you can organize and maintain your projects with ease as well as share them with other designers in real-time. You can also use built-in templates to speed up the design process and ensure a consistent look and feel across all your digital products. Adobe Adobe XD is another popular design tool that allows you to create beautiful and interactive wireframes, rapid prototypes, and engaging UI/UX designs for web, mobile, and desktop apps. It offers everything you need to visually communicate product concepts to your users and team in a simple and intuitive way. With its easy drag & drop interface and powerful collaboration features, you can easily share your work and get feedback from others in real time. It also comes with built-in templates that you can customize to suit your needs and create stunning wireframes and prototypes in record time. If you want to summarize your research data and store it in central repository to make it accessible to the team then you must use Insight7 Figma Figma is another great design tool that you can use to create compelling user interfaces for websites, mobile apps, and desktop software. It works on both Mac and Windows and supports a variety of OS platforms like Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and more. It comes with an intuitive drag and drop interface that makes it simple to use for beginners and professionals alike. You can also draw freehand with vector tools like rectangles, rounded rectangles, text boxes, circles, and lines. And thanks to its real-time collaborative editing feature, you can get instant feedback from your team and improve your product’s UI and UX in real time. These tools can help you quickly turn your ideas into beautiful digital products and bring them to life so that you can start making a real impact right away. Want to learn more about product management for startups? Check out our comprehensive guide here Product design is the process of creating products that will help users achieve their goals or needs more efficiently. The design process can be broken down into four stages – research, brainstorming, prototyping, and testing – each of which help in the development of a great product or service. Understanding the fundamentals of product design and development will help keep your mind focused on building a successful product or service. Research is the foundation of the product development process. It helps you understand the problems you’re trying to solve and develop ideas for potential solutions. It also helps you identify your target customers and gather information about their requirements and preferences. A good research report should include a detailed analysis of your customer’s needs, pain points, and motivations. This is essential to help your team create a great user experience that meets your customers’ expectations. You can use market research tools like SurveyMonkey to conduct surveys and collect feedback from your target audience. It’s a great way to gain insights into the needs and behaviors of your customers and gather insights about your competitors. Once you’ve collected all your data and insights, you can start planning your strategy and create a list of features to include in your product. Your team will need to determine which features are most important and focus on those first. You’ll also need to decide whether you’re going to develop a mobile or web app and whether you’ll use a third-party platform like WordPress or Shopify for your ecommerce website. At this stage, it’s also a good idea to get input from your key stakeholders to ensure that the product you create will meet their needs. You should also review all your ideas to make sure they’re feasible. Keep in mind that most startups have limited budgets and can’t afford to develop complex and expensive products. That’s why it’s important to keep your development costs low by focusing on features that are easy to use
