From 0 to 1, how can technology products identify the right seed users?

This is a boiling era. In the past month, Apple, Amazon , and Google have released new technology products one after another. Technology is changing with each passing day, and new products are emerging in an endless stream. Amazon's Echo speaker was a success, but its Fire phone was a complete failure. Google's Chromecast was extremely successful, but Google Glass was extremely disappointing. DJI's Phantom series ignited the consumer drone market, but its Power Egg drone, which was said to have raised 100 million yuan through crowdfunding, is now nowhere to be found... One general's success is the result of the sacrifices of countless soldiers!

1. Face the essence: Who are the seed users of technology products?

Hardware technology products are not like software products, which can be quickly iterated. Once the hardware properties, appearance design, and functional positioning are determined, they are difficult to change. When communicating with many companies and product managers , I always ask a sharp question: Who do you sell your products to and why should they buy them? Among the answers I received , the following two ideas are very ignorant and common:

• The product is a process of exploration. In the early stage, there is no way to determine the target users , and it is a process of trial and error before it is launched into the market.
• Our target users are geeks, who prefer new technology products and drive mass users;

People have a huge misunderstanding of the geek community, and this kind of concept has caused endless harm to product design.

A product that fails to find seed users and relies on geek players is doomed to fail. In the early stages of a product, it needs to focus on core value users rather than geek users who pursue novelty.

Some people may object, wasn't DJI drones driven by geeks in the early days? Aren't Echo's early users also geeks? Didn't the classic book Crossing the Chasm mention innovators and early adopters? Aren't they talking about these technology enthusiasts? Below, I will give you an in-depth analysis of the problem.

2. Dispel superstitions: Who is actually buying the latest tech products?

1. Geeks buy DJI? No, geeks are hacking DJI

When researching emerging products, users who have purchased DJI drones are often labeled as "digital experts" and "geek players." These people will be invited to do user research and market research. But in fact, if they are just buying for novelty, they are not the core user group of drones at all. DJI’s core concern is pilots who can create high-quality works. In our previous article, we mentioned the three circles of DJI users. Regarding the value of aerial photography, from the inside out, they are Hollywood directors, aerial studio photographers and aerial photography enthusiasts. What the public mistakenly think of as geeks are nothing more than inactive users in the third circle. When they see a product advertisement, they will make an impulse purchase, and when they encounter a no-fly policy, they will resell it second-hand.

Some people may say that these geek users are indeed not mainstream value users, but they have made an indelible contribution to the initial promotion of the product. This view is taken for granted. The core value of aerial photography is the aerial works. Apart from these, there are many "geeks", such as model aircraft enthusiasts, and even many black fans of DJI.

Support competition among manufacturers so that we can have high-quality and low-cost aircraft. We need to let DJI know that it cannot have the best of both worlds. ——Comment from a user who purchased the model airplane community

Among the early model aircraft players, the above views, or even more radical criticisms, were very common. It takes time for technology and products to evolve and mature. If you focus on geeks instead of aerial photography in the early stages of a product, that would be putting the cart before the horse.

2. The Survivor of the Cool Floating Speaker

Some people may say that DJI’s drones are only suitable for aerial photography and are not considered trendy digital products. What we are going to analyze next is the super trendy floating speaker.

On Amazon's official website, a real user of a speaker called Orb made the following comment: Might be the coolest speaker ever... This comment was recognized by 547 users.

Maybe someone will say: "Yes, yes, yes, this is the direction of our product design. Coolness is purchasing power." The truth is obviously not that simple.

The originator of the floating speaker is OM/ONE, which was initially priced at US$249. It received negative reviews due to its sound quality and product quality. Among the only 26 certified buyers, 21 gave 1-star and 2-star negative reviews. It is no longer sold on Amazon.

Mars, a rising star, has a unique design but costs $289. The most highly praised purchase review about it is: The sound quality is terrible, equivalent to a $50 speaker, not cool at all. Among the 65 certified purchasers, complaints about the sound quality and price were common.

Bluetooth Only ,Not Good Sound ,Fun Floater. Yet they jammed a $50 Bluetooth speaker into this thing. Not cool guys, not cool at all.——Mars Product Purchase Review

Only the Orb floating speaker, priced at $109, finds a reasonable balance between price and sound quality. It is not overpriced and has no exaggerated gimmicks. It ranks fourth on the Amazon Launchpad Mobile & Wearable Tech best-selling list. Suspension is only an additional difference; reasonable price and acceptable sound quality are the basic guarantees for its success. (The Mars floating speaker is priced at 1999 on Tmall . Would you buy it?)

3. Those cool products that attract attention

In the United States, the Orb floating speaker is a minor success. After all, it relies on the value of the speaker itself. It is very common for technology products that deviate from basic values ​​to fail. We respect failures driven by technological innovation, such as Google Glass; however, we need to be wary of those that are purely a combination of functions. The robohon robot phone priced at over 10,000 yuan, the Poweregg egg-shaped drone priced at 7,888 yuan, and various early childhood education robots with flat panels and wheels...

3. From 0 to 1 , the Chasm Theory does not apply

In the field of high technology, the technology acceptance model (technology gap) created by Geoffrey Moore has been widely accepted and spread by technology practitioners. But any model is a narrative framework for a business. The Chasm Theory is based on attitude, and for many hardware technology products, they need to be rethought from the perspective of rational value.

1. Two types of acceptance models: emotional attitude and rational value

In all product decisions, the factors we consider can be divided into two parts: emotional and rational.

Emotional factors can be summarized as attitude, product reputation, herd mentality, desire to show off, etc.; rational factors can be summarized as value, product performance, price, design, etc.

We think in two extremes: when we only consider emotional factors and not rational values. There are two bottles of mineral water of the same price. One donates one cent to charity, and the other does not. Which one would you buy? In 2015, when APP software was just emerging, if you could both call a taxi, would you use Didi or just wave your hand to call a taxi? What would you do now? In both cases, users’ decisions are primarily attitude-driven because the value provided by the product itself is fixed.

Let's consider another extreme. If you are a die-hard fan of Go Pro and you need to buy a drone to take aerial photos of the other side of the sea 3 kilometers away, would you buy a Dji Mavic that can transmit images 7 kilometers away or a Gopro Karma that can only transmit 2 kilometers? If you are a middle-class Google fan, Google Glass costs $1,500, would you buy it? In both cases, user decisions are value-based.

Of course, users will have both emotional attitudes and rational values ​​in actual decision-making. For products with similar values, attitude is the driving force; otherwise, value is the driving force.

2. The Chasm Theory is a model based on emotional attitudes

Now that we understand the underlying categories of user decisions, let’s look at Geoffrey Moore’s technology acceptance model. You will find that from the perspective of macro-technological evolution, the model is based on attitudes rather than values.

To ensure accurate understanding, the following text is from the original book.

Early Adopters: Early adopters are not technology experts. Once they discover that a new technology product can effectively meet their needs, early adopters will consider whether to make a purchasing decision.

Early Majority: Their purchasing decisions are ultimately driven by a strong sense of practicality. They know that many of these latest inventions will eventually become obsolete and passé, so they prefer to wait and see what others around them say about new products before buying them themselves.

The model mentions early adopters, which are the geeky users that many tech companies like to talk about. The chasm mentioned in the book is the unfathomable gap that separates early adopters from the early majority. If you look back at Geoffrey Moore's theory carefully, you can clearly see that this innovative technology acceptance model is built on the basis of emotional attitudes. In the early days, the general public was concerned about the opinions of people around them and the popularity of the products.

It is precisely because of attitude that the gap appears. Because of people's herd mentality, only when it reaches a critical point will it become popular like a snowball, and most products die under that gap.

The product is not selling and not becoming popular. What’s the problem? Is there something wrong with the theory? Can the gap be bridged? The chasm curve is a macro perspective of technology acceptance. When it comes to products, you need to rethink the growth evolution of users based on value.

4. Starting from value, achieving user growth evolution

From a technical perspective, you can certainly ignore the price value of the product, because only when the market is mature will there always be products with reasonable value. However, for technology companies, when it comes to a specific product, it is still value-driven rather than attitude-driven, so you have to forget to abandon the way of thinking of the chasm model.

1. Value Drops: Three Circles of User Evolution

In a shorter period of time, the evolution of users is always linear and continuous, without any breaks or leaps. The user evolution model should not be like jumping over a cliff, but more like a drop of water falling into a lake, spreading from core users to mass users layer by layer.

Valuable users: The top users of a product are valuable users. They are not only product users, but also creators or transmitters of product value. DJI drone aerial photography experts, Echo skill developers, Gopro users extreme sports stars; they are often technical experts and media KOLs with extremely high influence. Not all products have valuable users, but if they do, these are the most valuable user value of the product.

Core users: refers to users who are passionate about the core value of the product. Among Echo’s early users, there were indeed geeks who used ifttt to connect their homes, but the novelty of the technology was not its core value point. Enjoying music through voice interaction is the core value that is promoted to the public, so the core users of Echo in the early days were music lovers and home users. (For an analysis of Echo’s early users, see the article Amazon Echo’s Rise – Part 1) Among DJI drones’ early users, geeks who liked model airplanes were not the core users. Only those who were aerial photography enthusiasts were the real core users. They prefer aerial photography rather than dismantling model aircraft.

Mass users: Based on the layer-by-layer transmission of the core value of the product, the final outer circle is the mass users. Here are fans of KOLs, customers who make impulse purchases, geeks who make novelty purchases, and so on. Once the core value of the product is established, the process from valuable users to core users and then to mass users is almost linear and continuous, with no gap or fault.

2. Core value + core users + core scenarios

The vast majority of products have only one core value. Starting from this core value, consider the core users. Unless the core value of a product is technological novelty, geeky users should not be the primary consideration in product design. If the core users of the product are extreme sports enthusiasts, then you need to consider the core scenarios of extreme sports experts. Xiaobai’s usage scenarios and pain points are not unimportant, but they are not a priority. As for the female market , it is even more of a secondary consideration.

Before the value chain is established, give up the idea of ​​selling to geeks and the idea of ​​targeting multiple types of users.

The last thought is, what are the core value, core users and core scenarios of the product you are interested in?