delight

Minimum viable mobile app

  • Thursday, 13 January, 2011
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I was recently challenged by a product owner on how you can deliver a minimum viable mobile app.  Her concern was that she only gets one shot at launching her app on the app store, customer feedback is gold dust and the last thing she wants is to launch a half baked product that will result in a low customer rating.  Good stuff may come later, but if the first tranche of customers rate the product poorly, the product has already failed.

This is a valid concern, however when you review product feedback that consumers give, it is usually around the experience they have with the product shipped, i.e. issues with what it does, rather that what it does not.  Go to the app store and look for apps with really bad reviews. People complain that an app isn’t usable, is buggy, is hard to use (or is just plain ‘bad’). They don’t complain that it doesn’t have features.

Jason furnell recently blogged about the launch of the REA iPhone app. This was built with close collaboration between designers and developers, launching a Minimum Viable Product Minimum Delightful Product  that after a week was #1 in the Top Free Lifestyle Apps Category.

Getting the basic product right and introducing new features ‘enhancements’ later is preferable to releasing a fully featured product that fails to delight.

How to keep magic moments magic

  • Thursday, 18 September, 2008
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This is rather sad, I was thinking about this post in the shower this morning.  The past few weeks I’ve been going into the same Starbucks on the way to work.  After a few days the barista saw that I am a creature of habit and no sooner had I walked in was she preparing a small black coffee.  The first time that happened was a real magic moment (via Experience Zen).  After a while though, that magic moment becomes the norm.  What delighted me at first I now expect when I walk in.  So in the shower this morning I was thinking about this and wondering how do you keep magic moments magic.  But before I come to that, as I went into Starbucks today the barista asked me my name and introduced herself (this isn’t the US, a Cantonese local asking a stuffy Brit their name breaks social conventions I think!)  So now we are on first name terms.  That’s a magic moment of sorts.  But after a while that too will become the norm.  The real lasting magic moments are going to be those that randomly delight me.  What if one day she says “don’t worry Marc, it’s on the house today”.  That would be unexpected, random and special.  Like being offered an upgrade on a flight without asking for it.  What can you do today to randomly delight your customer?

Are you doing the simple things well?

  • Thursday, 10 May, 2007
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Anthony Bourdin in Kitchen Confidential writes “Good food is very often, even most often, simple food.  Some of the best cuisine in the world… is a matter of three or four ingredients.  Just make sure they’re good ingredients, and then garnish them.  How hard is that?”

How hard is that indeed.  There’s a lesson there for building out your product set.  Are you doing the simple stuff well?

Another meeting, another executive talks about the need for innovation and creative thinking and pushing the boat out and beating competitors with something new.  Meanwhile, doing the the simple “hygiene” things that will delight existing customers (reducing customer attition and churn) get lost with the innovation hyperbole foccused on “capturing market share”.