Topic 10 - Setting Product Strategy

Desired traits of a design thinker

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over gain and expecting different results

Traditional empathy maps are split into 4 quadrants

(Says, Thinks, Does, and Feels), with the user or persona in the middle. Empathy maps provide a glance into who a user is as a whole and are not chronological or sequential.

Empathy Map

An empathy map is a collaborative visualization used to articulate what we know about a particular type of user. It externalizes knowledge about users in order to: Create a shared understanding of user needs, and Aid in decision making

Benefits of Design Thinking

Complements other problem-solving techniques Helps organizations to become more innovative To solve human problems To increase customer satisfaction To gain competitive advantage

How to build an Empathy maps

Define scope and goals Gather materials Collect research Individually generate sticky notes for each quadrant Converge to cluster and synthesize Polish and plan

What is Design Thinking?

Design thinking takes a human-centered approach to problem solving Helps us to get a deep understanding of customers' unmet needs and wants It encourages creative consideration of a wide array of innovative solutions It is as much a mindset as a process

Ideation Methods

Divergent methods (create choices) Converge methods (make choices)

Product classifications

Durability Tangibility Use

Environmental Issues

Environmental issues are also playing an increasingly important role in product design and manufacturing

product differentiation

Form Features Performance quality Conformance quality. Expect a high conformance quality, the degree to which all produced units are identical and meet promised specifications Durability Reliability Reliability is a measure of the probability that a product will not malfunction or fail within a specified time period. Repairability Style Customization

Warranties

Formal statements of expected product performance by the manufacturer

3. Collect research

Gather the research you will be using to fuel your empathy map.

Labeling

Identifies, grades, describes, and promotes the product

Packaging objectives

Identify the brand Convey descriptive and persuasive information Facilitate product transportation and protection Assist at-home storage Aid product consumption

6. Polish and plan

If you feel that you need more detail or you have unique needs, adapt the map by including additional quadrants or by increasing specificity to existing quadrants.

5. Converge to cluster and synthesize

In this step, the team moves through the stickies on the board collaboratively and clusters similar notes that belong to the same quadrant

Design Thinking

Is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success

Product Line Length

Line stretching. A company lengthens its product line beyond its current range Down-market stretch. A company positioned in the middle market may want to introduce a lower-priced line. Up-market stretch. Companies may wish to enter the high end of the market to achieve more growth, realize higher margins, or simply position themselves as full-line manufacturers. Two-way stretch. Companies serving the middle market might stretch their line in both directions. Line filling. A firm can also lengthen its product line by adding more items within the present range. Line modernization Line featuring Line pruning

Reverse Thinking

List the WORST possible ways that you ensure heading integrity Examine how you could reverse these bad ideas to create the best possible solutions

Products based on durability and tangibility

Nondurable goods Durable goods Services

4. Individually generate sticky notes for each quadrant

Once you have research inputs, you can proceed to mapping as a team.

Level of Application

One particular user Aggregation of multiple users

Empathy maps can capture one particular user or can reflect an aggregation of multiple users:

One-user (individual) empathy maps are usually based on a user interview or a user's log from a diary study. Aggregated empathy maps represent a user segment, rather than one particular user.

What Design Thinking is NOT?

Only for the "creative" people or product designers A narrow equation to aesthetics and craft Just a brainstorming session A "one-day" process where problems can be solved in 24 hours A process to replace analytical problem-solving A silver bullet for all types of problems

Service Differentiation

Ordering ease. Ordering ease describes how easy it is for the customer to place an order with the company. Delivery. Delivery refers to how well the product or service is brought to the customer, including speed, accuracy, and care throughout the process. Installation. Installation refers to the work done to make a product operational in its planned location. Customer training. Customer training helps the customer's employees use the vendor's equipment properly and efficiently Customer consulting. Customer consulting includes data, information systems, and advice services the seller offers to buyers Maintenance and repair: Maintenance and repair programs help customers keep purchased products in good working order. These services are critical in business-to-business settings. Returns. A nuisance to customers, manufacturers, retailers, and distributors alike, product returns are also an unavoidable reality of doing business, especially in online purchases.

What are Personas?

Personas are hypothetical archetypes, or "stand-ins" for actual users that drive the decision making for interface design projects.

How Might We

Produce 'How Might We..." statements to address the pain points and areas of opportunity that you've identified. Cluster the HMWs into themes

Product Policy Decisions

Product mix breadth refers to the variety and number of product lines offered. Product line depth is the number of items in a given product line. Product item design refers to the product's design specifications.

Guarantees

Promise of general or complete satisfaction

Luxury Brands

Quality Uniqueness Craftsmanship Heritage Authenticity History

The color wheel of packaging

Red symbolizes excitement, energy, passion, courage, and being bold. Orange connotes friendliness and fun. It combines the energy of red and the warmth of yellow. Yellow, as the color of the sun, is equated with warmth, joy, and happiness. Green, as the color of nature, connotes health, growth, freshness, and renewal. Blue, as the color of the sky and sea, is associated with dependability, trust, competence, and integrity. Purple has symbolized nobility, wealth, and wisdom. It combines the stability of blue and the energy of red. Pink is considered to have soft, peaceful, comforting qualities. Brown, as the color of the earth, connotes honesty and dependability. Black is seen as classic, strong, and balanced. White connotes purity, innocence, and cleanliness.

Product Line Analysis

Sales and profit - Product-Item Contributions to a Product Line's Total Sales and Profits Market profile and image - Product Map for a Paper-Product Line

Product mix pricing

The firm searches for a set of prices that maximizes profits on the total mix Product line pricing Optional-feature pricing Product-bundling pricing Captive-product pricing By-product pricing. The production of certain goods—meats, petroleum products, and other chemicals—often yields by-products that should be priced on their value. Two-part pricingconsisting of a fixed fee plus a variable usage fee

In planning its market offering, the marketer needs to address five product levels. Each level adds more customer value, and together the five constitute a customer-value hierarchy

The fundamental level is the core benefit: the service or benefit the customer is really buying. A hotel guest is buying rest and sleep. At the second level, the marketer must turn the core benefit into a basic product. Thus, a hotel room includes a bed, bathroom, towels, desk, dresser, and closet. At the third level, the marketer prepares an expected product, a set of attributes and conditions buyers normally expect when they purchase this product. Hotel guests minimally expect a clean bed, fresh towels, working lamps, and a relative degree of quiet. At the fourth level, the marketer prepares an augmented product that exceeds customer expectations. In developed countries, brand positioning and competition take place at this level. At the fifth level stands the potential product, which encompasses all the possible augmentations and transformations the product or offering might undergo in the future. Here companies search for new ways to satisfy customers and distinguish their offering.

Why use empathy maps

To establish common ground among team members and to understand and prioritize user needs Capture who a user or persona is Communicate a user or persona to others Remove bias from our designs and align the team on a single, shared understanding of the user Discover weaknesses in our research Uncover user needs that the user themselves may not even be aware of Understand what drives users' behaviors Guide us towards meaningful innovation

Co-branding

Two or more well-known brands are combined into a joint product or marketed together in some fashion Same-company Joint-venture Multiple-sponsor Retail two retail establishments use the same location to optimize space and profits

Packaging

Used as a marketing tool Self-service Consumer affluence Company and brand image Innovation opportunity

The Product Hierarchy (product mix/assortment)

Width. how many different product lines the company carries Length. the total number of items in the mix. Depth. how many variants are offered of each product in the line Consistency. How closely related the various product lines are in end use, production requirements, distribution channels, or some other way.

2. Gather materials

Your purpose should dictate the medium you use to create an empathy map.

Define scope and goals

a. What user or persona will you map? Will you map a persona or an individual user? Always start with a 1:1 mapping (1 user/persona per empathy map). This means that, if you have multiple personas, there should be an empathy map for each. b. Define your primary purpose for empathy mapping. Is it to align the team on your user?

Product

anything that can be offered to a market to satisfy a want or need, including physical goods, services, experiences, events, persons, places, properties, organizations, information, and ideas

empathy maps

are not a replacement for personas.

An item can further be disaggregated into stock-keeping units (SKUs)

as it is offered, for example, in a variety of package sizes

The Thinks quadrant

captures what the user is thinking throughout the experience. It is possible to have the same content in both Says and Thinks. "This is really annoying." "Am I dumb for not understanding this?"

Ingredient branding

co-branding that creates brand equity for parts that are necessarily contained within other branded products

Consumer-Goods Classification

convenience. The consumer usually purchases convenience goods frequently, immediately, and with minimal effort. shopping. Shopping goods are those the consumer characteristically compares on such bases as suitability, quality, price, and style. specialty, unsought. Unsought goods are those the consumer does not know about or normally think of buying, such as smoke detectors. Other classic examples are life insurance, cemetery plots, and gravestones.

The Does quadrant

encloses the actions the user takes. "Refreshes page several times". "Shops around to compare prices".

Some of these quadrants may seem ambiguous or overlapping

for example, it may be difficult to distinguish between Thinks and Feels.

In user-centered design, empathy maps are best used

from the very beginning of the design process.

The Feels quadrant

is the user's emotional state, often represented as an adjective plus a short sentence for context. Impatient: pages load too slowly Confused: too many contradictory prices Worried: they are doing something wrong

As a style of thinking, design thinking is generally considered

the ability to combine empathy for the context of a problem, creativity in the generation of insights and solutions, and rationality to analyze and fit solutions to the context

Design

the totality of features that affect the way a product looks, feels, and functions to a consumer Is emotionally powerful Transmits brand meaning/positioning Is important with durable goods Makes brand experiences rewarding Can transform an entire enterprise Facilitates manufacturing/distribution Can take on various approaches

Design thinking process, UX (user experience) professionals... should advocate on behalf of the user. However, in order to do it, not only must they deeply

understand their users, but they must also help their colleagues understand them and prioritize their needs.

The Says quadrant contains

what the user says out loud in an interview or some other usability study. "I am allegiant to Delta because I never have a bad experience." "I want something reliable." "I don't understand what to do from here."

Both the process of making an empathy map and the finished artifact have important benefits for the organization:

- Capture who a user or persona is. The empathy-mapping process helps distill and categorize your knowledge of the user into one place. - Communicate a user or persona to others: An empathy map is a quick, digestible way to illustrate user attitudes and behaviors.

Three lenses of human-centered design

- Desirability --> What do people desire? - Feasibility --> What is technically and organizationally feasible? - Viability --> what can be financially viable?

Framework of design thinking

- Empathize. Learn about the audience for whom you are designing, by observation and interview. - Define. Create a point of view that is based on user needs and insights - Ideate. Brainstorm and come up with as many creative solutions as possible - Prototype. Build a representation of one or more of your ideas to show to others - Test. Share your prototyped idea with your original user for feedback

What is Unique About Design Thinking?

- Human-centered - Highly creative - Hands-on - Iterative

Industrial-Goods Classification

- Material and Parts --> are goods that enter the manufacturer's product completely. Two classes: raw materials and manufactured materials and parts. - farm products and natural products - Capital Items. long-lasting goods that facilitate developing or managing the finished product. They fall into two groups: installations and equipment. - Supplies and business services. Supplies and business services are short-term goods and services that facilitate developing or managing the finished product. Supplies are of two kinds: maintenance and repair items

Industrial Applications of Design Thinking

- Starbucks: launched the mobile payments app (alternative to the SB card). Store lines move 10 - 20% faster - Apple: retail stores designed around activities, not products. Most profitable retail store per square foot - P&G: Launched Tide PODS so customers don't have to measure. Estimated earning of $131 million in 2012 - Adobe: changed product-based model to a cloud-based subscription model. Creative cloud software revenue increased by 44% since 2013

Attractiveness of the market offering

- Value-based prices - Product features and quality - Services-mix and quality

Guidelines for Marketing Luxury Brands

1 Maintaining a premium image for luxury brands is crucial; controlling that image is thus a priority 2 Luxury branding typically includes the creation of many intangible brand associations and an aspirational image 3 All aspects of the marketing program for luxury brands must be aligned to ensure high-quality products and services and pleasurable purchase and consumption experiences. 4 Besides brand names, other brand elements—logos, symbols, packaging, signage—can be important drivers of brand equity for luxury products 5 Secondary associations from linked personalities, events, countries, and other entities can boost luxury-brand equity as well. 6 Luxury brands must carefully control distribution via a selective channel strategy 7 Luxury brands must employ a premium pricing strategy, with strong quality cues and few discounts and markdowns 8 Brand architecture for luxury brands must be managed carefully. 9 Competition for luxury brands must be defined broadly because it often comes from other categories 10 Luxury brands must legally protect all trademarks and aggressively combat counterfeits.

The Product Hierarchy (product system)

1. Need family. The core need that underlies the existence of a product family 2. Product family. All the product classes that can satisfy a core need with reasonable effectiveness. 3. Product class. A group of products within the product family recognized as having a certain functional coherence, also known as a product category 4. Product line. A group of products within a product class that are closely related because they perform a similar function, are sold to the same customer groups, are marketed through the same outlets or channels, or fall within given price ranges. 5. Product type. A group of items within a product line that share one of several possible forms of the product. 6. Item. A distinct unit within a brand or product line distinguishable by size, price, appearance, or some other attribute.

Summary of 5 Thinking Mindsets

1. Think users first 2. Ask the right questions 3. Believe you can draw 4. Commit to ideate 5. Prototype to test

Understanding the Framework of DT

A design action plan is a series of action phases that execute the design thinking process A mindset is a set of thinking traits or behaviors that runs the design thinking process consistently and effectively The Action Plan and Mindsets are required to run together!

Desired Traits of a Design Thinker

Able to step into the shoes of your customers Have empathy on users and stakeholders Like to challenge the status quo rebelliously Able to ask the right questions - even to your boss Draw and sketch instead of typing an email Like to collaborate in multidisciplinary meetings instead of working in silo Able to look at the big picture and think holistically Generate many new ideas and not afraid to share Find and reiterate alternatives to approach your desired goals Willing to fail early and often