Designing for the Internet of Things

Chapter 4. Product/Service Definition and Strategy

BY CLAIRE ROWLAND

We all aspire to create the killer product or service that people want to buy and love using. The key to this is ensuring that the product solves an actual problem that people have, in a way that appeals to them. At a pinch, it might provide them with something new and wonderful that they never knew they needed. It sounds simple and obvious, but it can be remarkably difficult to get this right. Right now, the IoT market is skewed toward innovators and early adopters. There’s huge potential to create great new products for consumers, but they may have to contend with new types of complexity.

This chapter introduces:

• Productization as part of IoT design (see “Making Good Products”)

• Moving from innovation to mass-market products (see “From Innovation to Mass Market”)

• How products differ from tools (see “Tools Versus Products”)

• What makes a good product (see “What Makes a Good Product?”)

• Building service offerings around products (see “The Product is Pleasing to Use”)

• Business models in IoT (see “Business Models”)

This chapter addresses the following issues:

• Why a clear value proposition is a prerequisite to great UX design (see “Why is This in a UX Book?”)

• The different types of market for consumer IoT products (see “Value Propositions for IoT”)

• Why consumers want products, not tools (see “Tools Versus Products”)

• Why it’s important to design the service offering around a product (see “Building a Service Offering”)

• How business ...