Credit:istock

The Value Imperative

While 2020 will go down as one of the most tumultuous years in history, the silver lining was that it also put products to the value test, thereby reinforcing an important tenet of product management — value. As organizations focus, in some cases over-index, on building the perceived value, its deviation from the intrinsic value may blur. The pandemic forced organizations and individuals to pause discretionary spending and spurred users to strip away the layers of marketing jargons and get down to questioning the real product value.

I reached out to friends in the product fraternity to gather their thoughts on products or capabilities that have really wowed/inspired them as end-users, and equally importantly passed the ‘value’ litmus test. This blog is an aggregation of their responses which cover products in both the digital and the physical space. Thank you Aarthi, Abhishek, Dhruba, Samudra & Vishal for your contributions.

Let me get the ball rolling with a capability in Zoom* that I’m in awe of — ‘Call Me’, which appears as an audio option in addition to ‘Computer Audio’ & ‘Phone Call’.

Background: Of the 3 quality factors in a virtual call — audio, video & screen share, a degradation in audio quality is the most disruptive. A 5-sec interruption in the speaker’s video or a screen share doesn’t impact the call flow as much as a 3-sec break in the speaker’s audio.

The problem: For users such as me who face frequent degradation in internet performance that may occur at any time of the day ( I so wish I could solve this), dial-in by telephone is the preferred option for audio. Most web conferencing tools provide the dial-in option that requires users to dial the conference line number, key-in the conference code and enter the participant ID. For users who are in back-to-back calls most days on a week, the effort associated with dial-in adds up.

Zoom’s solution:

‘Call Me’ requires the user to enter their phone number, a one-time activity since the details persist, and click on “Call Me”. This triggers a call to the user’s phone. They answer, and voilà, they’ve joined the call — without having to provide the conference code and the participant ID.

I’m fascinated by this capability not just for the convenience it affords, but also because it speaks volumes about the product team’s understanding of users’ needs and the environment that they operate in. For me, ‘Call Me’ becomes very conspicuous by its absence when not enabled by the host.

Value: Effort conservation on a high-frequency task thereby delivering user delight.

Aarthi Mohan Markandey; Product: Alarmy

Background: Most of us endeavor to start our day early to exercise, meditate, read or simply leverage the calm of dawn to get into the groove for the day. The sense of accomplishment from completing the morning routine permeates the remainder of the day. We rely on alarms to prod us to get out of bed and put our plans to action.

The problem: Existing alarm options (physical alarm clock, Alarm app, Voice assistants, friend/ persistent parent/the rooster ☺) are not effective. A majority of humans suffer from sleep inertia when we get up in the mornings — that compelling desire to not leave the comfort of the bed, the irresistible urge to go back to sleep. Inertia refers to the concept in physics that an object naturally resists change in its state of rest/motion. Why are the usual alarms not effective to break this inertia? The reason is that the regular alarms are only physically waking up the user out of their sleep cycle. When interacting with an alarm clock, the user’s state of mind at night is very different from that in the morning.

Alarmy’s Solution: Alarmy solves the problem by going beyond just physically waking up the users. It also mentally wakes them up so that they can revive the strength of their resolve from the previous night to overcome the sleep inertia. Alarmy does this job effectively and creatively.

There are 7 different missions to choose from — Typing, Steps, Shake, Photo, Math, QR/Barcode, Memory. Let me take you through two of my favorite ones.

Mission Photo — This mission has never let me down. Before going to sleep, I set the alarm and click a picture of the bathroom sink. The next morning when the alarm goes off, I don’t have an easy way out — the infamous snooze. Instead, I am forced to get out of my comfy bed and click a picture of the same bathroom sink whose picture I clicked the previous night. What’s brilliant about this is that at this stage the grogginess that impairs my reasoning to start my day is gone and my will is strong enough to start my day. For those who want to take this challenge a notch higher, there are advanced settings that will allow you to set the picture sensitivity that decides how closely your morning picture matches the picture you took the night before.

Mission Typing — Select a set of phrases in the morning from a predefined list or add your own. When the alarm goes off, start your day typing out the motivational phrases that will remind you to keep your commitments you had set the previous night.

If you are thinking that you could just switch off your phone or uninstall the app, I’m afraid, not with Alarmy! Wear Kevlar the night before by enabling the ‘Prevent phone turn off or uninstall during alarm’ settings (only in Android)!

Alarmy is all about starting your day with success! So, whether you are a deep sleeper, a snorer, a light sleeper, or a snoozer, I am sure there is an Alarmy mission that will work for you. Go find your mission!

Value: Alarmy ensures that sleep doesn’t get in my way of getting up early and sets me up for success!

Abhishek Nandan; Product: The Hand-press Juicer

Background: “Embrace a healthy lifestyle”, I heard my inner voice whisper. I heed and put myself on a routine — exercising, meditating, and yeah eating healthy. A few days go by…all’s well and I’m feeling good about myself. It’s late afternoon and I want to snack. I open the refrigerator and there a couple of options staring right at me — a piece of delicious-looking cheesecake and a bunch of oranges (I absolutely love fresh fruit juices, orange juice in particular, but totally loath the process around extraction). I make a choice, relish it and suddenly the “feel good” factor has vanished. Sounds familiar?

The Problem: I have used an entire gamut of juicers — from those that require muscle to those that use electricity and are accompanied by fancy accessories. I found each one to be tedious. Being a designer with high sensitivity to UX, any inadequacies are jarring. Consider the primary steps involved in an orange juicing process:

• Preparation: Washing, peeling, slicing, etc.
• Setting up: Juicer assembly — sometimes they are so complicated that you just give up.
• Cleaning: The most tedious part! Disassembling the gadget and washing every component.

If you’re planning to add fresh home-made juice to your daily diet, these steps work against you.

The Solution: I recently stumbled upon a juicer, and I am all gaga over it. It is a locally designed product (from a small manufacturer in India) and hasn’t been christened. Let’s call it the ‘Hand-press Juicer’. It presses fruit between two cups when you rotate the lever. Btw, the cold press is in!

To me, a great product considers the entire user journey. A juicer may be easy to operate, but if cleaning is a hassle, the product doesn’t go far enough since that will create a barrier to adoption. Here’s how the ‘Hand-press Juicer’ eases each step outlined above:

• Preparation: Wash the orange and cut it in half. No peeling required.
• Setting up: None really, I just have to place the lower cup in its slot.
• Cleaning: Run the lower cup under water and wipe the upper cup. Done!

The reason the ‘Hand-press Juicer’ earns top marks from me is that it flawlessly does what it’s designed to do. It isn’t a fancy-looking product (there’s room for improvement), however, it provides the best UX.

Value: the ‘Hand-press Juicer’ helps me stick to my healthy diet goal.

Dhruba Bhattacharya; Product: Freeletics

Background: Freeletics is a digital coach for intensive physical exercises. Freeletics started in 2013 in Europe and has acquired over 48 million users across 160 countries since then. They claim to have 600K paid subscribers across the globe and are considered Europe’s #1 fitness app. It’s literally a “ gym in the pocket “ and is rapidly disrupting the fitness industry. It costs $15 for 3 months which is substantially cheaper than a gym subscription and hiring a personal trainer.

The Problem: A good number of people who’d like to adopt a fitness regime are unable to do so because they either don’t have access to facilities/instructor, can’t afford them or the timings just don’t work. YouTube provides an alternative but lacks the mechanisms to keep users going and the exercise plan/instructions aren’t personalized. The outcome is underexercise leading to an entire spectrum of challenges from a bruised self-esteem to health issues.

Freeletics’s Solution: For someone like me who has the willingness and the commitment to exercising every day but isn’t well versed with exercise techniques and doesn’t have gym-like equipment at home, Freeletics is a boon. Let me walk you through the Key Features/Benefits of Freeletics:

1. Built for people of all fitness levels — Freeletics allows users to select individual warm-ups, exercises, runs, and cooldowns or choose from packaged pre-planned workout options. By doing so, Freeletics serves both user segments — those who know their exercises and understand the impact and those who need prescriptive guidance. This app delivers reminders, nudges, and motivational audio stories to keep the users engaged. These are all the things that a physical trainer does.
2. Coach — Like a personal trainer, Freeletics Coach provides a workout plan for each week. It also celebrates the completion of a workout and collects feedback at the end of each workout. By doing this, Freeletics keeps the user engaged throughout the workout like a real coach.
3. Tracking Personal Best — If the user does the same workout again, Freeletics shows their previous performance (time) against their current personal best, nudging the user to do better.
4. Gamification & social — Users earn points for doing exercises — the higher the difficulty more the number of points. These points are used to promote users to higher levels and to position them on a global leaderboard. Competition keeps the users going. Freeletics also allows users to find public workout spots nearby where other Freeletics users are working out, thereby spurring social interaction.

Freeletics also provides additional benefits such as mindset coaching through motivating audios and stories as well as diet coaching.

Value: Freeletics helps me stay healthy. I get an intelligently curated workout program every day. I don’t have to worry about picking an exercise, deciding the intensity, and figuring out the right technique. All I need to do is focus my energy on getting into the habit of exercising daily.

Samudra Neelam Bhuyan; Product: Fishbowl

Background: Fishbowl is a quasi-anonymous professional community platform. They were initially focused on consultants, and have recently been making inroads into Silicon Valley / Tech industry. And this is their (not-so-secret) secret sauce — rather than focusing on growing big fast and diluting their communities’ ethos and etiquette, they have focused on growing deep engagement in smaller communities with high trust and minimal churn. These highly engaged communities in turn foster other communities as they arise, and thus grow the pie as well.

The Problem: Generally, almost all aspects of our social life need us to put our names and identities behind them. And it is not any different in the professional domain. When we see on LinkedIn a post (e.g. “Samudra has shared XYZ” or “Samudra asked a question”), the content becomes more important because of the (little) social authority that my name carries within my network. My social identity is attached to that content or message and thus draws on my identity to solidify its own authority.

But what happens when the social identity that a message is attached to, becomes a hindrance? When people do not speak up because they worry about the fallout if “they found out”? When people do not ask tough questions because of stigma? As the last few years have shown, not being able to voice honest opinions can lead to disastrous results for professionals and companies. Whether it was at the Weinstein Company or Theranos, not having a platform for honest and candid conversations led to management failures and critical lapses that ultimately led to business disaster.

That is why anonymity is such a critical power to give to people who might not feel comfortable speaking up about certain topics. And it becomes even more critical in a professional environment, where the cost of failing to do could be potentially catastrophic for the business.

Fishbowl’s Solution:

Fishbowl have used their deep insights about online community behavior and funneled that through great product design to empower users to engage with the level of anonymity they desire.

The simplest example of this is the ability for a user to present themselves in multiple forms on the app — e.g. I can start or join a discussion as a “Product Manager”, “Works at RingCentral” and “Samudra Bhuyan” (my full name). The fact that the user has so much choice — that’s key to instilling confidence that I can be as anonymous as I want to be (the default is the most generic one)! This is such a simple but key feature — I still shake my head at the fact that nobody else has copied this yet!

Value: Fishbowl gives me control over my anonymity, and in doing so allows me to maximize both my contribution and the benefits I derive from the community.

Vishal Shah; Product: Unified Payments Interface (UPI)

Background: Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is an IMPS (Immediate Payments Service) based system developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for real-time interbank payment transactions. According to data gathered by The Economic Times, UPI is the fastest growing digital payment platform in the world since its inception with a CAGR of 246% between FY2016 to FY2019.

The Problem: India has mainly been a cash economy, but dealing with cash has its innate set of challenges. Consumers must carry cash and that means regular trips to ATMs. Many times, even having cash isn’t enough because denominations matter — I’ve found myself with Rs 100 notes while purchasing something worth Rs 5. In such cases, it’s very likely that I’ll end up either overpaying or not making the purchase at all. If the transaction is made, I’ll end up with a bloated wallet full of loose change which will ultimately end up lying around at home or in my car. On the other hand, vendors have to wrestle with the overhead of securing physical cash and lost business due to lack of change (the Rs 100 & Rs 5 example above). Cash transactions also mean lost tax revenue for governments and a higher crime rate since small vendors are plagued by petty thugs who use the money to fund nefarious activities.

NPCI’s solution (UPI): In the last decade, the banking system has made deep inroads in India. Layer over the ubiquity of smartphones phones and the availability of cheap data plans, and you have all the building blocks for disrupting the cash economy. NPCI spotted and ceased upon the opportunity to bring these foundational elements together and make digital banking a no-brainer for users. But just having the building blocks in place wasn’t enough. NPCI also developed an intimate understanding of their users’ (vendors in particular) view of the world and understood that for mass adopt, UPI will need to solve 2 things in particular:

Simplicity — A majority of the population isn’t tech-savvy. UPI, therefore, needs to be simple to set-up and use. For a user to get a UPI account, all you need are 3 things — a bank account, a smartphone with a data connection.

Trust: In an economy where for generations, handling cash (including physically going to the bank to deposit cash) has been the preferred option, a digital middle-man must earn users’ trust. UPI’s robust security features helped it do that.

• Linking a bank account: A user must access UPI via a mobile number registered with their bank account. In addition, the UPI account set up requires authentication through the Debit Card linked to that bank account.
• Authorization: UPI requires 2-factor authentication — one controlled by the front end app that provides the UPI services to the end-user (such as Google Pay) and the second controlled by the UPI system. This ensures that the transaction is in fact authorized by the user.

Further, NPCI has been astute about partnering with big tech (Google, Facebook, Amazon, Walmart (Flipkart)) and banks to accelerate the proliferation of UPI. With WhatsApp Pay, future expansion will be exponential. Various countries and organizations have deeply studied UPI. The graphs below speak to its success.

Value: I can use UPI to pay a roadside vegetable vendor, an auto/taxi driver, a friend, or a business. UPI does not exclude anyone. It has helped bring 1.3 billion people within the fold of digital banking.

That’s it, folks! That’s the first list of products of value, from those who develop products. Sans the jargons, what’s the value of your product? Curious to hear about other product(s) that pass the value test for you as a consumer.

*May not have been the original inventors of the ‘Call Me’ capability;** Standard & Poor’s; PS: Here’s Samudra’s detailed blog on Fishbowl.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.