in addition to providing improved stoves, what can be done to encourage uptake?
Kaizen is the philosophy of continuous improvement. Spider web businesses searching for product market fit remember they tin can follow this philosophy just by aircraft code.
But shipping lawmaking doesn't mean that yous're making any pregnant product improvements. Similarly you tin can brand undeniable improvements to parts of your production and become no response or appreciation for it. It all comes downward to the type of improvements you lot're making.
What is production improvement?
Product improvement is the procedure of making meaningful product changes that result in new customers or increased benefits realized by existing customers. The ii nearly popular ways to make production improvements are to add new product features or ameliorate existing ones.
Adding new features
New features are risky. You have to exist very confident they will exist valued.
Calculation new features expands the scope of the existing production, ofttimes making a big marketing splash, getting a version bump, and resulting in some printing releases. Ofttimes the fanfare attracts new customers and new use cases for the product. Typically, new features are the only improvements that outsiders (i.e. non-customers) will always hear near.
New features are risky. You have to be very confident they will exist valued, as they're similar children; you lot accept to love them and support them no affair what.
Ask your customers "Would you lot like a [Agenda|TimeTracker|Gantt Chart]?" and they'll reply yes. Information technology'south a one-way "something or nothing" offer. They haven't had to make a merchandise-off between competing priorities. This leads to customers saying they want stuff that they don't actually desire.
Asking your customers "Would you rather that we made the product much faster, or that nosotros added more labelling features?" and you'll get a different answer. Everyone values speed.
Improving existing features
Y'all tin can amend an existing characteristic in 3 different means: you tin can make it better (deliberate improvement), you tin can modify information technology and so customers apply it more than often (frequency comeback), or you lot can change it and so more people can use it (adoption improvement).
Non all improvements will be appreciated by all users
one. Deliberate improvements
Make deliberate improvements when you know why customers utilize an existing characteristic and what they appreciate about information technology. A deliberate improvement seeks only to make the feature ameliorate in ways that volition exist appreciated by the current users.
Use when: There is a feature that all your customers utilize and like, and you lot see opportunity to add significant value to it.
2. Frequency improvements
These are improvements you make to get a client to use the feature more often. Adding more items to an activity feed, or more options to a search tool means that people read information technology more than often, or utilize it for more than tasks each day. This type of improvement can turn a once-a-week feature into an everyday feature.
Use when: There is a characteristic that the majority of your customers use infrequently, and y'all believe they would benefit from using it more.
3. Adoption improvements
Adoption improvements target customers who don't utilise a feature. For example, if you have a agenda feature that only one-half of your user base is using, an adoption comeback aims to win over the remainder. By adding ICS file import or a Google Calendar connection, you don't meliorate it for all users…just you brand it more likely that the non-consumers volition at present adopt it. When you hear phrases like "I'll apply this as shortly I tin can...", then an adoption improvement might help.
Use when: There is an of import feature that a good chunk of your users have yet to adopt, and you lot come across some obvious integrations or changes that will make it easier for them to become on lath.
I write about the dissimilar ways yous can better your application to brand a betoken. Not all improvements will exist appreciated by all users, and information technology's of import to understand where the opportunities for existent improvements are inside your production.
Product improvement examples at Intercom
To make these types of product improvements even more physical, let's talk about what nosotros've improved in Intercom over the years and why.
1. New message types
Awhile dorsum, Intercom's bulletin style was a pop-upwardly to start a conversation.
There are times when that doesn't cut it, for example, if y'all:
- Want to transport a bulletin, non start a chat.
- Don't want to interrupt your user.
- Want to send a rich message with images, etc.
The effect of this was that not all of our customers were using in-app messaging, and those that were, weren't using it for everything. We added notifications (Growl-fashion pop-ups shown higher up) and announcements (large pop-ups without answer) to address this. This is an example of an adoption improvement.
two. New results view
With all these new messages being sent, we wanted to give our customers an easy fashion to see how effective each message is at driving replies or click throughs. This led to a re-pattern of our message results view, to put this information visible anywhere a message is. This is an instance of a deliberate improvement.
3. New filtering
Filtering is how our customers discover who is using their product and how. Our previous filter didn't calibration for complex queries or for large amounts of data. In improver, there were far as well many clicks involved in unproblematic, frequent queries. To solve this we re-designed and re-positioned filters as shown below. Virtually common queries are much quicker, and more complex ones are far easier to configure. This is an example of a frequency improvement.
iv. User notes
Large teams with large user bases need some way to share customer insights that come out of calls, client development meetings, meet-ups and other offline activities. Tagging users is bully for sharing one discrete slice of cognition (e.g. "wants Android App". Just for telling a story with context, notes are far improve. This is an example of a new feature.
Continuous production improvement
In their early years startups have advantages over the incumbents. They can move quicker and adjust faster, without every bit much technical debt, legacy features, compatibility issues, or big value customers restricting their movement. Often this speed and agility can crusade outset-ups to pivot like headless chickens, rather than focusing on improving their product in meaningful ways. To truly adhere to Kaizen, product managers demand to rest 2 goals: firstly, discover improvements that will benefit the business and its customers, and secondly, ensure that these improvements don't get lost on a whiteboard somewhere and actually arrive out the door.
Because if at that place's 1 affair that's ultimately true for startups, information technology'south this: "If yous're non shipping, you're dead." Merely make sure what you transport brings y'all new customers or deeper appreciation of your current ones.
We've learned many lessons from years of making tough product decisions. Get actionable advice on how to ship a production people want
Source: https://www.intercom.com/blog/ways-to-improve-a-product/
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