Badass: Making Users Awesome

6

The Challenge

Prologue



Luck always plays a role

Our job is to shrink

the role luck plays.

We don’t have the luxury of rolling

the dice and crossing our ngers.

We must increase our odds.

When it’s not luck or marketing

or lowest price... what is it?

7

The Challenge

Prologue



Does the best product win?

Does desirability increase as a function of quality?

Desirability

Quality

We use “desirability” here to include not only what we want-

but-don’t-have, but also what we have-and-want-to-keep/replace.

When you remove luck, marketing, and price from the equation,

is it quality that drives desirability?

Is it simply best product wins?

And if it’s quality that drives desirability, who denes “quality”

and “best” for a particular product or service? Is it based on

objective measurements of craftsmanship and materials? Is it

about speed or durability? Beauty? Strength? User-friendliness?

How does our denition of quality shift depending on the

product type and market demographics?

No, there are too many

examples where “best” is not

the bestseller...

8

The Challenge

Prologue



This is also true

Even if we could dene “quality” in some useful,

objective way for a given product or service, if we

really like something, we’re willing to accept aws,

problems, issues, even a higher price.

Quality can drive desirability.

Desirability can drive (perceived) quality.

Tolerance for problems is a

function of desirability

Amount of

crap we’ll put

up with

Desirability

And high desirability makes us willing to

do more than just tolerate aws…

9

The Challenge

Prologue



And this is also true

Desirability changes our perception of “aws.” The more we

love something, the more likely we are to not just tolerate

problems but reinterpret them as not problems.

We minimize, downplay, deny.

We spin bugs as features.

Product/service love is (nearly) blind.

For our formula, we’ll have to look somewhere else. Quality

(whatever that actually means) doesn’t guarantee desirability.

Amount of crap

we’ll reinterpret

as NOT CRAP

Reframing problems as not-problems is a function

of desirability

Desirability

If highest quality isn’t our answer,

where else can we look? If the goal is

desirability, what makes that happen?

10

The Challenge

Prologue



Just because we don’t have a marketing budget doesn’t

mean we’re not doing marketing. But when we look at

sustainably successful products and services, the common

attribute is not their marketing.

We can all name high-prole massive marketing failures

(think: Windows 8).

But our challenge explicitly rules out a big marketing

budget. Out-spending the competition on marketing is not

an option, but what’s the alternative?

None of this matters if nobody knows

about us. We need marketing!

Let’s ask some “friends”...