When Product Vision Goes Right
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 | vision book
We’ve looked at bad product visions, so let’s now look at good ones.
The effects of good product vision are represented in this diagram. It’s called a Feature -> Objective Chain diagram because each feature of the initiative leads to an outcome, which leads to other outcomes in a chain. This type of diagram is useful for understanding the “whys” behind a set of activities.
Click to enlarge, or download a printable pdf poster of this diagram
When I look at successful products, I see two echelons: some product visions are “pretty good” and others are outstanding. In baseball, a pretty good vision is like a consistent single and double hitter. It gets the job done reliably. An outstanding visions is like the slugger who hits home runs. Its success is more spectacular. Some parts of this diagram are activated by pretty good visions; “outstanding” visions activate more parts.
Pretty good product visions
With a pretty good product vision, there is a clear idea of which customer problems you intend to solve. The idea is well-justified and grounded in a solid understanding of customers and their needs. However the product is not necessarily a radical advancement from what has been done before. Some of the best performing companies have consistent visions that are “pretty good.” Given competent execution, they can do very well year after year, as long as competition is not too hot.
Here are some of the effects described in the chart:
A good product vision is executed more efficiently. The concept is complete, so it gives clear guidance to the team. Major flaws in the idea are shaken out early, before development begins. It is coherent and well-justified, so the definition is more stable, which avoids wasted effort. Features that wouldn’t be appreciated (and rewarded) by customers are avoided, saving more time.
Products with clear visions have a lower risk of failure because the idea is well-justified, executed more quickly, because it gets to market before the window of opportunity closes. The feedback loop is tighter, so remaining flaws do not linger.
A product with a good vision has long-term direction. The ideal product is fleshed out systematically over multiple releases. Today’s product is a step towards that long-term vision. This gives us clarity and peace of mind about the trade-offs we make now. We avoid over-scoping to cram everything into this release, which adds risk to the current project. If cutbacks must happen, they can be done intelligently, without undermining the value of the current release, by shifting the line between the SSNiFs addressed in version x and version x+1.
Products with good visions are easier to sell. Someone once said, “you don’t have to lie to sell a good product.” By definition, a product with a good vision satisfies important unmet customer needs, so selling can be more an act of education than of persuasion, and it withstands scrutiny. Customers who really like our product spread the word through word-of-mouth and positive reviews.
Great products improve our brand reputation, because people who are happy with our products are happy with us. That trust makes it easier to sell future products.
So what is wrong with pretty good visions? It may seem less risky to take solid incremental steps rather than swing for the fences, but this carries its own risks, as the breakthrough opportunities are left to competitors.
Outstanding product vision
Breakthrough products come from outstanding visions. Think of products like the Nintendo Wii, the iPod, the iPhone, the Toyota Prius, Netflix, Amazon and others. These are the visionary products and services, and they can have astronomical success.
As the diagram above suggests:
Outstanding product visions are founded on deep insight into the customer situations and needs, and the opportunities that competitors leave behind. (These are key elements of the Understanding layer of the Design Pyramid.) This insight leads to great product visions. Important unmet customer needs are addressed far better than competitors. The product is therefore of higher value to customers.
A beautiful example of this is the Nintendo Wii. In 2006, Microsoft, with the XBox 360, and Sony, with the PlayStation 3 were competing head-to-head for hard-core gamers, with increasingly complex, violent games preferred by adolescent males. Nintendo realized that there were legions of regular people who would love to play videogames casually, if they could only be made more accessible. They designed a system with a simple, intuitive controller that anyone could pick up and wave in the air for instant gratification, without having to make sense of a dozen buttons. The games were genuinely fun for throngs of casual gamers, young and old. Casual games called for good, not great graphics, which permitted Nintendo to use older, cheaper technology for the Wii. Whereas Sony and Microsoft were selling their cutting-edge consoles at steep losses, the Wii was sold at a profit from the beginning. Two years later, the Wii is still in high demand.
Products with outstanding visions can be extremely profitable. Development costs are lower, because the product is executed smoothly and irrelevant features are avoided. Sales costs are lower because of the positive reputation of the product and the brand. Revenues are higher, because of increased margins and increased sales volume.
Products with outstanding visions are more defensible. Is not the first to market that matters, but the first two adequately address an important set of customer needs can grab and hold onto the market share for years.
Visionary products are harder to catch up to for two reasons. First, the farther ahead the vision is, the bigger the lead, and the more time the company has to milk the idea before competitors catch on. Second, competitors tend to have trouble inferring the real vision behind the design. Others may copy the features, but if they do not understand the vision behind it, it will be a poor imitation. By the time they copy where you’re at now, you’ve advanced to the next version. Outstanding vision leads to long-term business success.
A good example of this is Apple’s iPod. Device manufacturers kept trying to copy and outdo the iPod’s feature set, adding things like voice recording and FM radio reception. But year after year, they missed essential parts of the product vision, which is that how you manage music and get it onto the player is an important set of scenarios and needs. Apple provided iTunes desktop music management application, and used the more expensive Firewire connectors in the very first iPods. These made obtaining and transferring music to the device easy and fast. Device manufacturers had a blind spot to that part of the vision, because their forte was hardware, not desktop software. Apple’s integrated solution was the first to pass the bar of usability. They went on to successfully position the iPod as the coolest player. “iPod” became synonymous with “portable digital audio player” and their success snowballed. Apple was so successful with the breakthrough iPod that they have dominated the market for stand-alone music players from when they entered it to now, as the market fades away. (The age of is almost over, as mobile phones subsume audio playback functionality.) While competitors could see the iPhone’s features, they were unable to decipher the underlying vision, so they left the market to Apple for years.
Strong product visions have a long-term time horizon. Great product visions define not just one iteration of a product, but a long-term time line.
The years of evolution on an iPod and iTunes illustrate this well. The early iPods were distinct because they uniquely solved the needs for simple, efficient music management. Later, the music store was added, addressing the needs to learn about and buy music efficiently. Then, a way of syndicating audio programming was integrated, giving birth to podcasting. Video support was added, followed by purchasable TV shows, followed by movies that could be rented for viewing on a laptop, on a TV or on the iPod. Notice that each step didn’t just add features; each step expanded the set needs (aka. they covered more SSNiFs). I cannot say whether Apple was able to foresee and premeditate this multi-year strategy. But it nevertheless demonstrates meaningful long-term expansion of a product vision by expanding SSNiFs and needs, where every step, even the first one was a valuable, high-quality products.
Now that we’ve seen what bad vision, pretty good vision, and outstanding product vision brings, we can summarize what it is exactly that we will want to get out of our product vision efforts. Stay tuned.
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You can download a printable pdf poster of the Product Vision Feature -> Objective Chain diagram.
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2 Comments to When Product Vision Goes Right
[...] looking at bad, good, and outstanding visions, now we have an idea of what we are shooting for with product vision. In short, we want to [...]
October 31, 2008
[...] Apple’s iPod (2001) - Apple made a great player, but they understood that it was more than just about the player. It was the whole user experience, which included managing the music and getting it onto the device. Competitors tried year after year tog usurp the iPod, but they too missed the essence of the iPod/iTunes vision until iPod was entrenched and it was too late. [Read more at : When Product Vision Goes Right] [...]
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October 31, 2008