At Apple, everything is “revolutionary”

Apple launched its App Store for the Mac today. The press release announcing that the store was open for business includes this bit of puffery: “The Mac App Store brings the revolutionary App Store experience to the Mac…”

Revolutionary. Hmmm, where have I heard that word before? Oh yeah, in just about every Apple press release since 1999. – Ed Bott, ZDNet

When I first read this article I thought, “Ha ha yeah, puffery indeed.”

But soon after, I realized that this isn’t mere puffery.  When Apple uses “revolutionary” it’s not just PR, but a key Apple secret hiding in plain sight.

When Apple creates products, they are asking themselves every time “Is what we are doing revolutionary? What would be revolutionary? Okay, let’s do that.”

• A revolutionary music player would let you have 1000 songs in your pocket.
• A revolutionary battery would tell you how much charge it has
• A revolutionary adapter cord could be yanked out intentionally or accidentally without throwing your laptop on the floor
• A revolutionary laptop would hold enough of a charge that you wouldn’t need to replace the battery and could make it lighter than ever
• A revolutionary movie editing program would…
• A revolutionary phone would…
• A revolutionary tablet computer would…
• A revolutionary retail store experience would…
• A revolutionary product package would…

This is important.  Apple is one of the very few companies that hits it out of the ballpark again and again and again.  For the largest and smallest things, Apple is asking, “What would be ‘revolutionary’?”  They are starting by thinking through the radical innovation and working backwards to figure out what it will take to get there.

Anyone else who doesn’t think this way — and that is almost everyone except the Google, Amazon and few others — is anchored firmly to terra firma by the incremental requests of current customers who can only possibly know to ask for what they know they need today.  They cannot envision the revolutionary solution.

Being revolutionary is easier said than done. It’s higher risk: higher cost with the expectation of radically higher return. You have to accept expensive failures (Apple has had plenty).  You have to mold your organization around the product you need to create, rather than creating what you are already good at creating.  You have to fend off the pragmatists and naysayers who don’t think achieving a revolution is possible or worthwhile.  You have to know your customers and their deep needs far better than they do.  And you have to have the organizational competence to do it from top to bottom.  That includes the vision to generate and curate revolutionary possibilities, which is somewhat rare but can be nurtured with practice.

A good place to start, today, is by getting your best and brightest away from their regular environment and asking, “What would be ‘revolutionary’?”

Now what next… is it REALLY just about creating iAds?  What are the broader direction and implications of this tool?  What’s the business case?

Is it the HTML5 substitute for Flash, the exit for people going, “okay, flash bad, now what?”

Why would they?  To sell tools?  That would be something.

Tools which only run on Macs and therefore which sell Macs?    Sure, that’s nice too.

What about the influence such tools would have on the creation of great experiences…. great experiences that require modern browsers… like, say Webkit browsers… like, say Safari… which is a revenue generator for Apple?  Yeah maybe, but an indirect benefit for Apple.

Or, what about the presence of awesome, effective dynamic ads on the iPad?  Why just on the iPad? What if it connects to Apple’s ad infrastructure on, I don’t know, any browser on Macs and Windows?  Which get Apple more seriously in the ad provision business?

Apple, the ad agency for the web?

Optimization only goes so far. UX Designers need to make bold leaps to find the next mountain

Getting to that higher peak is where product vision comes in.  Optimization methods (including metrics-driven design and usability testing) don’t take you there — you need product vision methods.

Legendary.

your top priority is to ensure that the team is building something worth building, and that the development team is a very big investment for the company and should not be wasted, either by having people waiting around or by rushing to build something that will just have to be done over again later.

Enter, product vision.

In contrast is Ford Motor Company, which, while suffering, is managing to get by without government bailout money.

What’s so different about their culture?  A group of prominent shareholders who passionately care about the company, the descendents of Henry Ford:

The Ford family members own a special class of stock that gives them 40 percent voting control.

“I feel this is one of Ford’s greatest assets, and one that G.M. has never had,” said David L. Lewis, a business historian at the University of Michigan. “The family has been an oasis of stability through the years.”

[Hat tip: Roland Alden, on the GO Alumni mailing list]

Often, this is just fine.  You probably had little trouble making sense of the needs analysis of vehicles. You can get quite far without having to spell everything out, relying on the generic definition of each need level:

• 0 – The product does not attempt to address the need.
• 1 – The product addresses the need at a basic level.
• 2 – The product does a decent job of addressing the need, but there is still room for improvement.
• 3 – The product fully satisfies the customer need, or the product is significantly ahead of the competition in doing so.

However when it’s time to get serious about needs analysis, and when you are working with more people, it’s worth getting rigorous and spelling out what everything means. This is where the needs dictionary comes in.

The needs dictionary defines each dimension of need, and gives guidelines as to what makes the cut for each level.

Needs dictionary for vehicles

Here is a stab at the needs dictionary for the vehicle needs analysis. I’ve populated only those cells that say something of non-obvious, rather than pedantically filling in every cell.  I find this makes the table more meaningful.

The needs dictionary, like the needs analysis table, is not a static document.  It will evolve as you glean greater insight and clarity into the domain.  The needs dimensions will be expanded out or consolidated down as you consider other comparison points  You will recalibrate the values among a set of products when you look at the set as a whole and talk it through with others.  And you’ll find better and better ways to define and express the needs.  These cause changes to the needs table and the needs dictionary.  Eventually the changes will stabilize — a sign that you are mastering the domain and the competitive space.

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Philip Haine is principal of Product Vision Associates, a product innovation consultancy that helps product leaders and their teams envision new, breakthrough products and reboot older ones.  To follow him on Twitter click here.

This requires that we re-balance the needs space, to emphasize the stories we want the table to tell.  Compared to the earlier needs analysis analysis, I:

• added the needs to “minimize travel time,” to “protect from weather,” and the need for “exercise.”
• consolidated the need for “low fuel cost” and “low maintenance cost” into simply, “low operating cost”
• broadened refueling convenience to just overall “convenience”
• generalized the need for “distinctive styling” to the need to “convey prestige”

Here’s the updated needs table for sixteen diverse modes of personal conveyance:

Needs satisfied by various means of conveyance

Take some time to study this chart and compare pairs of products.

A student taking the bus to campus every day might weigh the advantages of getting a bike, electric bike, motorcycle, or small car.  The table concisely shows the tradeoffs of each option.

For a city apartment dweller with only an occasional need for transportation, you can compare car share service with taking a taxi.

The Segway was one of the most over-hyped products in recent technology history.  This table puts it in perspective with alternatives like walking, cycling, or taking public transit.  The Segway people, and the press, could have performed this analysis to get perspective on.

One thing you can see at a glance is that there is no such thing as a perfect product.  Each class of product balances some needs off others.  Products with solid 3′s in one area have 1′s and 2′s in another area.  A key lesson of product vision is that the vision of a product is the set of problems that we choose to solve, not how we solve them.  When we formulate product visions, the dimensions of needs are the dials we will turn.  They establish the problems we are choosing to address, from which the designs and technologies we implement will follow.

You might not think of a scooter, a taxi and walking as being competitors, but people do make choices among diverse alternatives.  This is a strength of needs analysis: it allows for logical comparisons between apples and oranges.

And besides, aren’t apples and oranges worthy of comparison?  (Try doing a needs table comparing various fruit, plus other snack foods!)

Needs tables get even more interesting when we add a set of related products.  We get a very nice summary of the intrinsic differentiation among them, which allows for instant comparisons.

So let’s add some comparison points to the Prius needs table.  These are other vehicles customer might consider if they are thinking about getting Prius:

• a typical sedan – a good all-around car for a reasonable price that would be an alternative to the Prius
  
• an econobox – a small, less expensive car with good gas mileage
  
• the Chevy Volt – a plug-in electric vehicle scheduled for 2011.  It is said to drive 40 miles by battery, after which a gas generator kicks in.  It’s intended to be plugged in overnight to charge its batteries.  Its advanced batteries are expected to make the car expensive, about $40,000.

Here is my take on the needs profiles of these products.  Remember, bigger, darker numbers are always better.  I’ve boldfaced some numbers to emphasize each product’s distinguishing characteristics:

Try using this table to answer a few questions:

• What do a Prius and a typical sedan have in common?  Why might someone choose a Prius over the typical sedan?  Why might they choose the opposite?
• What trade-offs would an ecologically-minded customer face if they went with an econobox (the third row of the table) instead of a Prius?
• The Chevy Volt sounds like an exciting alternative to the Prius.  It’s touted as over 100 MPG!  What’s the catch?
• Which products have the best and worst initial cost?  Fuel cost?
• Which needs are undifferentiated, in other words, about the same among all our comparison points?
• Based on your knowledge of these products, what might you have rated differently than I did, and why?

The needs table puts what we know in a form that makes these important comparisons straightforward.  You can look at the table horizontally to see the core story of a given product. And you can look at it vertically to see, for any need column, which competitors do the best and worst job of addressing a given need.

Customer needs as the basis for differentiation

There are many possible ways to compare a set of products.  Why should we focus on needs?  There are many benefits; here are a few.

Products tend to differ in hundreds, if not thousands, of little ways.  It’s too much detail and too much information to understand the gestalt of what is happening, like thinking of a grapefruit in terms of its molecules.  Needs reduce overwhelming set of details to a small set of dimensions (a handful to about thirty for the most complex products).

Needs cut through the hype.  A new car may have a Hybrid Cataloozer 3000 engine with dual Ener-G flux capacitors.  But what that really means to customers comparing products is that the product does a great job solving the need for fuel economy (and possibly time travel).  Focusing on needs clears out the hype and exposes what is meaningful about a product: the problems it solves and the needs it fulfills.

Comparing needs highlights the meaningful differentiation.  If there is meaningful differentiation between any pair of products, it shows in the needs table.  The greater the differentiation between any pair of products, the greater the difference in the table.  If two products have about the same needs profiles, you know that they will be close alternatives and, other things being equal, fierce competitors.

This is the beginning of Needs Theory, something I’ll expand on in the near future.

Needs tables simplify the problem of understanding competitors in a complex market, but without oversimplifying it.  If you have ever felt annoyed at seeing a bunch of competitors plotted out in a pat 2×2 matrix, you know where I’m coming from. Characterizing a field of competitors on two dimensions is too coarse and simplistic.  Characterizing them based on the feature charts or list of technologies is way too much detail.  Needs represent an intermediate level of magnification that is just right for understanding the essence of products and (as we’ll see) formulating product visions.

A mental journey

So far I’ve just handed over the results of the needs analysis I did, and had you study my findings a bit.  But there are important benefits to be gleaned by going through the process yourself.  It actually takes a lot of consideration and iteration to tune the needs space (the set of dimensions to use) and to think through each product.  You get a lot by going through the mental journey of doing so.

It forces you to see through what is plainly visible, to the essence of each product.  And it forces you to look at the products from the customer’s standpoint, since the needs you are rating are customer needs.  You have to constantly ask yourself questions like, “What need does that flux capacitor serve?  What are the SSNiFs behind it?  How well is the needs addressed relative to the degree of need that customers have?”

Filling out the table tends to uncover critical reality check questions.  It helps us separate marketing hype (the competition’s, or even ours) from the intrinsic benefit to the customer.  (e.g. For the Chevy Volt, how will the batteries, with limited charge/discharge cycles, affect maintenance costs?  And, above all, who will find the additional needs satisfied by the Volt worth the $40,000 price?)  This helps us tell whether a seductive-sounding new product is really the Next Big Thing or whether it is part of a reality distortion field.

One of the tenets of visionary philosophy is that marketing hype, which may indeed convince many people to buy our product, is only a sweetener.  Visionary products have at their heart a profile of needs that is truly ahead of the competition.  It’s not just talk.

Using needs as the basis for comparision establishes a high bar for differentiation, that matches the harsh nature of commercial competition.  It can take a lot to move the needle from the customer’s perspective, and so it can takes a lot of effort to move a need value from an average, middling “2″ to a market leading “3″.  Toyota spent years of R&D into alternate engines to increase the “need for low fuel cost” rating from a 2 to a 3.  The coarseness of the scale helps us remain realistic about what it will take to achieve meaningful differentiation in the customer’s eyes.  It’s harder to fool ourselves into thinking that incremental improvements will make a big difference.

Needs tables give us an absolute reality check on what we are doing (especially when we start comparing needs addressed by products to needs felt by customers, which I will get into later).  We may be proud of ourselves for creating the industry-leading doo-dad, but if there is still a big gap between what we are delivering and what people intrinsically need, we are leaving a hole for competitors.  A careful needs analysis can give us this reality check and clarify what gaps remain.

Filling out the table gives us mastery over the competitive field.  This is part of the Understanding level at the base of the Design Pyramid.  You cannot go through the needs exercise without gaining clarity on your personal or your organization’s vast knowledge of the market.  This clarity makes it easier to understand the market and its trajectory, makes it easier to make strategic product decision and it makes it easier to communicate them.

Try this at home

Thinking in terms of needs develops our x-ray vision into the essence of the products.

If you want to try this out, try adding these comparison points to the needs table:  the Honda Insight, the General Motors EV1, a Ford Escape hybrid SUV and the first generation Prius sold in North America, and the Smart Fortwo.

If you want to jump ahead and start formulating your own needs spaces, try this:  pick up some simple product close by, like a mechanical pencil or a coffee cup and ask yourself: what features make this distinct from its alternatives and competitors?  What needs do those features fulfill?  On a scale of 0 to 3, how would you rate each comparison point on each level of need?  Trying this on simple products will help you get used to thinking about products at their essence.

See also:

• Needs Analysis Part 1: Rating Products by Needs
• Other examples of needs analysis: Reusable shopping bags | Moviegoing

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Philip Haine is principal of Product Vision Associates, a product innovation consultancy that helps product leaders and their teams envision new, breakthrough products and reboot older ones.  To follow him on Twitter click here.

Now I’d like to take it a step forward and show how to rate and visualize those needs.  This will help to formalize our needs analysis, laying down another stepping stone in our quest for a systematic way to approach product vision.

Grading how well each need is addressed

Whether a need is addressed is not a black and white thing.  A product might do well on some needs, poorly on others, and in-between on others.  We can grade each need numerically.  I prefer to use a limited scale of 0 to 3, which makes assigning a value easy and avoids splitting hairs:

• 0 – The product does not attempt to address the need.
• 1 – The product addresses the need at a basic level.
• 2 – The product does a decent job of addressing the need, but there is still room for improvement.
• 3 – The product fully satisfies the customer need, or the product is significantly ahead of the competition in doing so.

Needs Profile of the Prius

When discussing the Prius I spoke loosely of several customer needs: the needs for comfort, safety, fuel economy, and so on.  Let’s now enumerate and rate each one relative to other mid-size sedans and efficient vehicles that would serve as comparison points for a customer considering a Prius.

• Need for comfort – The Prius is surprisingly comfortable, but it’s not a luxury car.  So let’s give it a 2 for comfort and reserve the 3 for the more cushy rides.
• Need for performance – The Prius has plenty of power to climb hills and pass, but it’s not a performance automobile.  We’ll give it a 2 out of 3.
• Need for safety – It’s got a full compliment of safety features so we’ll give a 3.
• Need for long range – The Prius’s range is excellent for a sedan, so it gets a 3.
• Need for low fuel cost – Compared with regular sedans, the Prius has excellent fuel economy, so we’ll give it a 3.
• Need for eco-friendliness – It’s rated as a Super Ultra Low Emissions Vehicle (SULEV), so it gets 3 on need for eco-friendliness.
• Need for distinctive styling -The Prius stands out among sedans, but it’s not showy.  We’ll give it a 2. (And we’ll say more about aesthetics later.)
• Need for passenger capacity – The Prius comfortably sits five people.  We’ll give it a full 3 for passenger capacity.  (If we included minivans in the comparison set we’d have to give the Prius only a 2.)
  
• Need for cargo capacity – the Prius has a large trunk and fold down back seats.  Quite good for a sedan, so we’ll give it 3 for cargo capacity.
• Need for ease of learning and use – Part of the Prius’s appeal is that it operates like any regular car.   Unlike some alternative fuel vehicles, it requires no special training or change of habits.  We’ll give it 3 for learnability and usability.
• Need for refueling convenience – With an electric car, you better make sure you’re near an outlet at the end of the day.  The Prius, on the other hand, is gassed up like any other car at any gas station. We’ll give it a 3 for refueling convenience.
• Need for low initial costs – The sophisticated new engine on the Prius adds a couple of thousand dollars to the sticker price.  We’ll give it a 1 for low initial cost.
• Need for low maintenance cost – More sophisticated cars require special training on the part of car shops, and are therefore more expensive to repair.  We’ll assign the Prius a 1.

We can now visualize these values in a table:

This is the needs profile of the Toyota Prius. The set of dimensions along the top is called the needs space and it will serve as the basis for comparison between products.

Notice that needs are always expressed in the positive. Bigger and darker numbers are always better.  Standardizing on this scale makes it easy to read the table and make comparisons.

What’s going on here?

Thinking of a product in terms of its needs profile forces us to think at a higher conceptual level.  for the Prius, we see beyond the details of its hybrid engine technology, funky styling and other features to the relevance those features have to the customer at the end of the day.  The needs viewpoint is intrinsically customer-centric.  When thinking needs, we can’t help but think of our product from the viewpoint of the people whom we want to have buy it.

The needs profile is a much more manageable way of understanding a product.  Thousands of minute variables are synthesized down into a reasonable set of dimensions that we can wrap our head around.

Using needs for our dimensions is not arbitrary.  We don’t just make up the needs.  Needs ultimately come from customers in particular situations (see SSNiF Analysis). The features of the Prius or any other product can be traced to specific needs that fall out of specific situations that are experienced by a specific set of customers (or stakeholders).  Even a feature as minute as a wide cupholder is traceable to a situation (buying Big Gulp at the drive-thru) and a resulting need (to put it down somewhere stable while traveling in a moving vehicle).  Because needs are always traceable to SSNiFs they are less arbitrary and more reliability.

We now have a the beginnings of a new conceptual model for dealing with product vision.  I call this approach to looking at products (and soon, customers), Formal Needs Analysis.  Things get more interesting when we use the same basis of needs to compare products, so let’s do that next.

See also

• Choosing the Right Problem to Solve
• Other examples of needs analysis: Reusable shopping bags | Moviegoing
• SSNiF analysis (Modeling scenarios in terms of Stakeholders, Situations and Needs, and connecting them to Features)

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Philip Haine is principal of Product Vision Associates, a product innovation consultancy that helps product leaders and their teams envision new, breakthrough products and reboot older ones.  To follow him on Twitter click here.

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