When you’re building a new product, you’re often thinking about all the new things people are going to be able to do with it. Now they can do this, now they can do that. Exciting!
But there’s a better question to ask: What are people going to stop doing once they start using your product?
What does your product replace? What are they switching from? How did they do the job before your product came along?
Habit, momentum, familiarity, anxiety of the unknown – these are incredibly hard bonds to break. When you try to sell someone something, you have to overcome those bonds. You have to break the grip of that gravity.
So, when you’re thinking about your product, think about what it replaces, not just what it offers. What are you asking people to leave behind when they move forward with you? How hard will that be for them? How can you help them overcome everything that’s tugging them in the opposite direction?
Greg Harris
on 06 Feb 13(No disrespect to 37signals. I’m an avid reader of this blog and have tried Basecamp numerous times … but for me, my simple email system “just works”.)
Markus Wild
on 06 Feb 13Hi Jason, I like your thoughts or should I say your thinking method? As a product designer I definitely should ask this question more often and being aware that people head over to my solution while running away from their former one. Isn’t this even more like a new love? At the minute, a customer really falls in love with a new “product”, he will leave his old love behind, no sadness, no sorrow. But sometimes, even an excited customer returns back to his old love. Why? Because he realized he got dazzled and made a serious mistake. Should we transfer this to our product development checklists too? @markuswild
Greg Harris
on 06 Feb 13“What is someone going to stop doing when they start using your product?”
So the more I think about this blog post, the less this blog post makes sense to me.
For example, what did users of Facebook “give up” prior to using Facebook.
What about Pinterest?
What about ethernet cabling if you a cabling manufacturer? ...
Jamis
on 06 Feb 13@Greg, here’s my take on it. Before Facebook, I used Twitter. Before Twitter, I used email. Before email, I used a telephone and the good ol’ US Postal Service.
It is certainly true that a new product can add plenty that you didn’t have before, but I have a hard time thinking of anything I use today that has added something fundamentally new to my workflow. Ultimately, so much of this all comes down to communication and organization. Pretty much everyone already has methods and tools for accomplishing these things (to varying degrees of success), so the question is, what will your tool replace? And it doesn’t have to be all or nothing—I still use email, but I use Facebook a lot more for sharing with friends and family.
Josh WC
on 06 Feb 13Anyone thought that in some cases, most users don’t even think about what features that software can offer over the competitors?
For example, do you agree that many users chose affiliating to facebook because most of their friends are already there, instead of the features of that site could offer?
Steve
on 06 Feb 13@Greg – another way to think about it would be to figure out what they used to do with the time they are now spending on Facebook, Pinterest, etc.
Ahmad
on 06 Feb 13Can your elaborate with what your customers gave up in exchange for Basecamp?
Andreas
on 07 Feb 13Although I find Jason’s thoughts groundbreaking most of the time; I must point my disagreement this time. Competition is one aspect of product development. But If Jobs was thinking this way, iPhone would never come up to the market since Nokia was dominating at that point and iPhone didn’t offer something in exchange except insurmountable design and ease of use. Moreover, I would never turned from MS Project to Basecamp since I was getting the job done even before Basecamp.
Anonymous Coward
on 07 Feb 13Andreas, this is exactly why Apple had to make their phone (and ecosystem) so damn good… They had to get people to switch from their old phone/carrier to something entirely new. It was all about the switch.
Hisham Abboud
on 07 Feb 13In my experience, a product sometimes replaces another, but often it just supplements it. I use Word and Pages (depending on platform), but I also still use Notepad and SimpleText occasionally.
David Andersen
on 07 Feb 13When I got an iPhone I stopped being irritated at the way mobile phones worked. I stopped hating using a mobile.
When I started using Facebook I stopped being disconnected from a couple of hundred people.
There’s always something if it’s a good product.
Alexandre
on 07 Feb 13That thinking also works very well for new features inside a product.
barbwired10
on 07 Feb 13That is a good question to ask. It’s great to be reminded of other techniques in ideation by seeing different sides to a product story, imagined or real. Thank you my brain is starting to work again. Cheers!
Carl
on 07 Feb 13Great article this.
I think if more people who are trying to create products/services/businesses etc actually took their eyes off the money and concentrated on the actual end-user experience such as why will they want what your offering, what makes your …..... better than the comprition, does your …...... add new value or increase value,usefulness etc, then more people will start putting their energy in the right palces.
I oftent look to the likes of Apple, Nike, Sony, Virgin etc as these are the pioneers in their fields, they only look at what they can improve currently or can create to improve further.
I know slightly off topic but just my 5 minutes worth!
Cheers
Carl
Customer Experience Manager
Ambition Window Blinds
Hutch Carpenter
on 07 Feb 13This perspective is so important. You state it well Jason, particularly with: “Habit, momentum, familiarity, anxiety of the unknown – these are incredibly hard bonds to break.”
A Harvard professor, John Gourville, studied this issue of resistance to making the switch. He postulates that a new product must be 9 times better for people to make a switch. 9x is mathematically derived from this observation:
- People tend to underweight the prospective benefits of a technology by a factor of 3 - People tend to overweight the value of whatever it is they are being asked to give up by a factor of 3
A nice, deeper description of this can be found here: http://www.preoccupations.org/2008/06/3-x-3-9x.html
An important corollary to this is understanding how customers define “improvement” on a job-to-be-done. Sure, 9 times is important. But 9 times what?
That requires understanding what defines success for a job-to-be-done. This will be both tangible (access to latest project updates in less than 10 seconds) and intangible (I’m always aware of what’s happening with my project).
It can be a bit more involved to understand why people make the switch. But the benefits of seeing an increase in market share, or launching a new product, make it worth it.
Clay Hebert
on 08 Feb 13Great post, Jason. I’ve been thinking a lot about what people will stop doing once they start using Spindows. 1) They’ll stop wondering who else in their company has certain skills or interests. 2) They’ll stop flying all the partners to some city for expensive, inefficient boondoggles in the name of “networking”. 3) They’ll stop locking away the company’s most valuable asset (the knowledge of their employees) in Powerpoint -> Sharepoint. For most companies, “Knowledge Management” is an oxymoron. It would be more accessible rolled up in a bottle and thrown out to sea.
Rajiv
on 10 Feb 13This makes a lot of sense to me. We are about to develop a product for one of our clients. Pretty much a rewrite, but with a lot of new features. I am curious now to find out what their customers will stop using or doing. Thanks.
Martin H. Normark
on 12 Feb 13Just reminded me of the awesome video you shared recently, with Clayton Christensen talking about a Milkshake: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9nbTB33hbg
“What job did you hire the Milkshake to do”—leading to what do you not hire, when you hire a Milkshake…
This discussion is closed.