Social Machines: How to Develop Connected Products That Change Customers' Lives

Chapter 9

Spheres of Use, or Why Your New Product Should Do Things You Never Envisioned

Abstracting your physical product into a series of services available on a network opens the door to further innovation by others. I hope I’ve convinced you of that by now. And to the extent it helps further engage your imagination, I think it helps to recognize that the way your product will be used may diverge somewhat, or entirely, from what you anticipated—which is a wonderful thing. Knowing that, the decisions you make at every level of product development may change. You might recognize that product features and functions that impede its free and open use should be scrutinized and reevaluated. Everything from licensing to documentation to application programming interface (API)/avatar design should be examined with an eye toward removing friction.

I mentioned in Part I that the metrics for product success should evolve to include more than just unit sales. Products should be graded, in part, by their foundation value. That is, how many others have used them to build upon and launch their own successes? What better way for social machines to contribute to society than to serve as cornerstones for its advancement? Figure 9.1 is a good illustration of the potential. You can’t possibly imagine every conceivable use of your product design (for example, my friend’s young son uses his iPhone as a hammer!), and that shouldn’t bother you too much. What you should concentrate on is making sure you ...