sábado, 18 de abril de 2015

How Users Adopt Products

In one of the companies that I used to work for, a group of very smart engineers decided that we needed to opt for a unified development tool for all developers. There were two tools in the market: product corpX and product rebelY. Since they had invested some time and plugins to refine corpX, they wanted to force its use. They had little success on adoption rates. They claimed that some of the problem was in those badass users of rebelY that kept convincing the rest of the team to shift. These badass users were evangelizing the features, they were forming groups of users, they were showing off their results, and even they were wearing proudly political propaganda of the rebelY product (wearing t-shirts and other pride items). Those rebels were resisting and were winning the battle. So they decided it was a moment to force the good in them.

The reaction in itself seemed to me motivated more by emotion than reason (or data), so I decided to write what little I know about product adoption because my friends were going in the wrong direction.


A key feature to highlight is desirability; or said in other terms, that thing that we want and don’t have. Desirability is what drives people to product love. And product love is blind and passionate. It makes users make comments about how they feel empowered by the product. And eventually, those comments reach us, our friends, family members or colleagues. “Can’t believe Marco can do that in one click”. Marco is cool we think. I need to get it (the tool not Marco).


And yes, we really believe more what those close friends say or do than any other corporate advertisement or political propaganda. So what inspires people to make those comments? The answer is simple: Users do not evangelize to their friends because they like the product, but because they like their friends (and the company they work for) -- to quote Kathy Sierra. Users enjoy the bigger context not the product. The bigger context is to create good software and be productive. And results tell the story: "I can create a test in a fly!" "See how Marco can search the repo!" "I can catch bugs before they happen". All of that makes me a better developer so I want to share that with my friends.


The problem is that these badass users are so empowered that they do not shut up. They continue talking. But what is worse is that they do not need to talk. People see the way they work and the results that they are getting. That is even more powerful. They are getting better results.

My claim is not to treat people like puppies. We are rational people making conscious choices. We like to have tools that empower us. And developers need to always think in the big context. The result of the initiative, as in any European movie, is left for you to figure out.