Endorse

When first introducing a new technology to the world, companies often need to appeal to innovators and early adopters. They need to explain the nascent technology’s functions and possible benefits to the world, while also proving its viability. At this stage, it’s imperative to prove that the new technology is ready for prime time—that it complies with established regulatory standards, for instance. A company might produce an incredible new form of high-speed wireless Internet connectivity, but it will never get beyond the conceptual phase if it has the unfortunate side effect of disabling all cell phones within a five-mile radius. Because a new technology may be spotty in its performance, it’s critical to design an offering that leverages its strengths and minimizes any potential glitches. That means constraining not just the feature set, but also the settings under which people can experience those features. Designers seeking to endorse a new technology may find it most useful to choose a physical form that doesn’t reference any prior art.

Alexander Graham Bell helped fuel the adoption of the telephone by installing the first commercial models at hotels. He did this for both technical and strategic reasons. From a technical perspective, it’s a lot easier to install a hundred phones in one hotel, which all route to a front desk operator, than to wire a hundred households in a village. Strategically, ensuring that most people’s first experience of a phone would occur away from home meant reaching people when they were at their most adventurous. Vacations represent a great new product adoption opportunity because people view travel as a time to experiment. Most importantly from a strategic standpoint, the phones Bell installed at hotels did only one thing—connect a traveler to a front-desk clerk. Bell chose a performance benchmark that would be easy to hit every time—carrying a voice from a hotel room down to a front desk. In a few short decades, the telephone leapt from hotel rooms to most homes in the United States. Having proven that the telephone was ready for the world, Bell could then focus on increasing its capabilities and improving its reliability.

Curate

As a new offering begins to reach early adopters, companies can further adoption by selectively highlighting aspects of the new technology that demonstrate specific benefits and use. Curating is often achieved through iconic designs that are desirable because they emphasize easily understood and valuable functions. At this stage, clean and simple designs can often help a product to explain itself, and so it’s no surprise that so many unfamiliar technologies have leveraged the formal clarity of Bauhaus Modernism and its intellectual successors.

When MP3 players were first introduced in 1997, the market was tiny, and initial designs either compromised storage space for the sake of portability or bulked up on size to allow more storage space. All of them offered a wide range of functionality, but they also required a power user’s level of computer expertise. When it was first launched, the iPod was almost simplistic by comparison. The Apple design team ensured that users could convert music from their CD collections into Apple’s iTunes software with relative ease. Whenever the iPod was connected, it would automatically load every song in the library. The physical interface was equally simple—an iconic scroll wheel that made navigation through long lists of songs a snap. Yet for all of its benefits, the first iPod was actually a very limited product. It worked only with Macintosh computers. Its hard drive came in only one size. It lacked features such as an FM tuner. Still, the product was iconic. It leveraged a simple geometric form. Rather than release a family of iPods at first, Apple released the one iPod—one model, one color, one size. The company wanted to send a clear message—it had nailed the formula for digital audio players. Designing for early adopters and the mainstream is a lot like being the curator of a museum. You need to select your pieces, have a clear point of view, and guide visitors through the experience.

Integrate

Unlike early adopters ,mainstream users are often unable or unwilling to make the compromises needed to work with a new solution. Companies should therefore look for ways to integrate a technology into people’s habits and routines as a product reaches the early majority. Products need to work the way people already work. They need to adapt, connect, or respond to other solutions around them. When appealing to the mainstream, making a product stand out is often less important than “how it will look in the living room.” An integrating strategy can help a company take a new technology from novel niche to household name.

In the 1990s, Kodak found new ways to integrate disposable film cameras into the mature photography market. Although Fuji had established itself early on as the market leader, Kodak found a way to take back ground quickly. Rather

than enter into a suicidal price war, Kodak realized it could create different kinds of premium disposable cameras by tailoring models to the activities in people’s lives. The company developed a model for underwater use at the beach. It sold a wide-angle-lens version at the Grand Canyon. It started to package multiple cameras together for use at weddings. By contextualizing their use, Kodak’s designers were able to integrate disposable cameras into the lives of ordinary people, many of whom already owned a traditional camera. Kodak was able to reclaim market leadership and drive the adoption of the technology. Firms sometimes find a single solution insufficient when following an integrating strategy. Often, accessories and ancillary products are needed to respond to a particular application. Flexible platforms may be required to support customization for multiple applications, customer targets, and channels. The ability to integrate a new technology into people’s lives often serves the dual purpose of driving sales volumes while keeping margins high.

Related posts:

1. Five Key Strategies for Making Metrics
2. Illustrate the Application
3. The Perils of Partial Credit
4. Technology Should Be Boring
5. Build to Learn