making the intangible tangible

I came across a very insightful chapter in Tony Fadell’s (chief engineer of iPod and iPhone, Founder of Nest Labs) book ‘Build’. The chapter is titled ‘Making the Intangible Tangible’. He states that when you’re building a new product, the actual tangible product itself is only one tiny part of a vast, intangible and often overlooked user journey that starts long before a customer ever gets their hands on the product. Your product isn’t your product alone but rather the whole user experience. So prototyping the product alone isn’t just enough, but we should aim at prototyping as much of the user experience possible. We should start by mapping out and visualizing how exactly a customer discovers, considers, installs, uses, fixes and even returns your product.

Each element of the customer experience journey has to carefully and creatively crafted so as to deliver the maximum possible effectiveness for both the product and organization. Mapping out the whole product value chain and touch points sequentially:

1. awareness: PR, social media, online search, targeted advertisements

2. education: company website, email, blog, trial/demo

3. acquisition: partners, payment model, up-selling/cross selling, delivery

4. product: design, UX, performance (often the sole focus in customer journey)

5. onboarding: quick guide, account creation, how-to-guide, tips

6. usage: reliability, usability, updates, lifespan

7. support: troubleshooting, knowledge base, call center, community

8. loyalty: new products, newsletter, promotions, ratings/reviews