Course Notes: Adoption and Appropriation

Interaction Design Foundation

Section 1: An Introduction

• 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?
• Completion goals – what do users expect to happen at the end of using your product? What can you measure when this takes place?
• 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? (E.g. it mimics their mental models).

The 5 Characteristics of Usable Products

In 2001, Whitney Quesenbery, the UX and Usability Expert and former President of the Usability Professionals’ Association (UXPA), offered five criteria that a product must meet to be usable:

• Effectiveness
• Efficiency
• Engagingness
• Error Tolerance
• Ease of Learning

Marketers should be working with the design team to release news of the development of the product to interested parties within the user base. They should also be preparing their efforts for the launch of the product. The objective for the marketing team during this phase is not to create insatiable demand or unrealistic expectations but rather a sense of interest and to drive anticipation for release.

Key activities include:

• Making sure any web presence or social media for the product is kept up to date
• Make sure that they have a list of journalists/media resources that might be persuaded to deliver launch announcements or reviews of the product
• Building a database of influencers (those with large impact on your user community) and reaching out to them to share advance news and insight into the product
• Building a list of industry analysts who might be interested in the product
• Developing clear marketing messages that express the benefits to users of the product
• Developing any materials that may be needed (such as brochures, flyers, adverts, etc.) for launch
• Booking any media space for advertising for launch (banner adverts, print, radio, etc.)
• Running a pre-launch “teaser” campaign when a launch date is confirmed (and only when it is confirmed)

7 components of a user experience

• Useful
• Usable
• Findable
• Credible
• Desirable
• Accessible
• Valuable

Designing for Value

People use something

*Only if

It has perceived value

*And

Value exceeds costs.

– Note exceptions such as habits.

What are values?

• Helps me get my work done
• Fun
• Good for others

What are costs?

• Download time
• Money
• Learning effort

Value depends on time. In life, people heavily discount both future value and future cost (hence resistance to learning). Low Barries and high perceived PRESENT value are critical. 

Section 2: Designing for Adoption

“…pay attention to what users do, not what they say.”

User research will reveal:

• What users want
• How to deliver what they want
• Whether or not that expectation has been met through design

Market research will reveal:

• Which communities of users should be involved in user research – in particular innovators and early adopters can be identified early and brought into user research
• How to communicate effectively with innovators and early adopters
• How best to educate users that the product exists and what benefits it will bring
• How to achieve rapid adoption of successful designs

5 Types of Adopters

1. Innovators
2. Early Adopters
3. Early Majority
4. Late Majority
5. Laggards

Perception of Value

1. Functional Value – what does the product do? What problem does it solve for the user or customer?
2. Financial Value – is the product provided at a reasonable price point? It is worth noting that “reasonable” is very difficult to define as it involves the user or customer making multiple trade-offs between the costs of other things they want or need, the value of competing items and their ability to pay.
3. Social Value – how does the product enable the user to connect with others? How does it improve the status of the user in other people’s eyes?
4. Psychological Value – how does the product enable the user to feel about themselves? Does it bring them pride, pleasure, happiness, etc.?

Products must fit the user’s budget and exceed the perceived value in all competing goods. It’s not enough to simply provide a value>cost incentive.

Prospect Theory

Loss Aversion Theory

• people are more likely to avoid losses rather than seek gains when the stakes are similar.
• We are more likely to take a risk when something is phrased as a gain rather than when it is phrased as a loss.

Endowment Effect

• suggests that once the person owns the product they would pay twice as much to keep it than they would have paid for it originally.

Value Networks

• External value networks: outside of the business in question; these can include customers, users, business intermediaries, business partners, stakeholders, suppliers
• Internal Value Networks: aren’t limited to business – they exist wherever two or more people work together to create anything
• Described as: The relationships are seen in terms of either tangible or intangible benefits between the nodes.
• There are 4 common types of value network: Clayton Christensen’s networks, Fjeldstad and Stabells networks, Normann and Ramirex’ constellations and Verna Allee’s networks.

Clayton Christensen’s Networks

• a network consists of everything outside a business that supports that business and it’s hard to break into such networks and make big changes because of the expectation that you will conform to that network model.

Fjeldstad and Stabell’s Networks

Their value networks are based on the concept that value networks include certain components:

• Customers
• Services – which are used by all the customers and which allow for interaction (though not always direct interaction) between those customers
• A service provider
• Contracts or agreements which allow access to services

Examples being:

• Facebook
• Insurance Companies

Normann and Ramirez Value Constellations

See value models as dynamic, fluid systems. In which the objective is to continuously improve relationships and roles within the model to create as much value as possible.

Verna Allee’s Networks

a value network is simply a web of relationships that will generate either or both of tangible and intangible value.

when all problems are expressed in value creation terms, you can more easily change how you consider problems.

UX designers ask; “where can I create value for my users?” Verna Allee’s approach extends that to ask; “where can value be created for anyone within the network?”

Book: “The Future of Knowledge”

Social Systems

• Thought leadership
• Monomorphic
• Polymorphic
• Personal Values
• Expression of values
• Professional competence
• The attributes of their social network
• If we can influence thought leaders in a positive way, they will influence their followers in a positive way. Work with them early in the process.
• Digital social networks
• Organizations

Digital social networks

• “likes don’t equal purchases” and it’s important to remember this when designing metrics for digital social networks.
• develop your own “rules of thumb” for these interactions

Organizations

• Organizations adopt products differently from individuals
• ie. Company
• Internal stakeholders
• Employees
• Manager
• Owners
• External stakeholders 
• Suppliers
• Society
• Government
• Creditors
• Shareholders
• Customers
• Collective decisions requires consensus 
• Authority decisions
• Product Champions, when an adoption decision has been made, will be empowered to drive that innovation within their business and break through any barriers to adoption. ***

The Diffusion of Innovation – Strategies for Adoption of Products