Can innovation be learned?
Do you often struggle to get innovative ideas for your product, or in a PM interview? :P There are many amazing frameworks you can actually use to structure your thoughts and ultimately get ideas, I am writing this to share one approach which has worked the most for me.
Amazon’s Kindle is one of my favorite products. In particular, I love the feature of highlighting content, and also the one which shows me “% read left”, as it encourages me to read a bit more everyday to reach the 100% goal. I was once asked to think of some innovate features for the product, but how do you top that? When I thought about these features, I realized it’s mostly the “during reading” stage where Kindle has amazing user experiences, but there is a scope of improvement in “before reading” and “after reading” stage.
In the before reading stage, there is an option to search for a book, but there is very limited personalisation eg: reading goals, and book recommendations based on those goals, summarized report on goal met and reminders to read etc. In the after reading stage, in addition to sharing reviews, there could be forums where people can discuss about the books, form book clubs, and share further book recommendations etc.
The importance of user journeys — If you have a product, or you are thinking of innovative ideas for any product out there, try to break it into a high level user journey. The moment you come up with a high level user journey, you will realize that your problem is automatically broken into stages itself. Think about how the product is fulfilling the needs at each of these stages, and try to find gaps.
Let’s try another one:
BookMyShow (considering movies in this case):
- User journey: Let’s first think of a high level user journey
- Approach: Now if you start to think from this direction, you will realize that while BookMyShow has done a great job at the booking stage, there is a scope of innovation at the during movie stage and the after movie stage.
- Outcome: During the movie stage, ability to order snacks while watching the movie, or request a seat change. In the after movie stage, there could be a way to read and discuss about the movie experience and theories (could be really useful for sequels or the ones with abstract ending).
Now, for some mature products, there could be cases where all basic needs of a high level user journey might already be implemented. In such cases, try to focus on any one stage, and explore by listing down all the use cases at that stage.
Let’s try this last one with a B2B product now:
Google Meet:
- User Journey
- Approach: No intention of promoting Google :p, but I believe Google Meet is trying to implement innovative features in each of these stages. Eg: Ability to add agenda, edit invites etc. (before meeting stage), cool backgrounds (during meeting stage), recordings automatically attached to calendar invites (after meeting stage). In order to get more ideas, I will approach this by thinking about major use cases during the meeting stage.
- Outcome: Considering group meetings, what could be some possible reasons for a group meeting?
- A presentation/demo by one more members
- A group discussion
- A fun event
Focus on anyone and try to think of solutions. Eg: For a presentation/demo use case, an option to open “recently worked on” docs from the Meet window itself, rather than the user having to search among multiple open tabs. Another idea could be an option to take ratings for the presentation.
Yes, this approach is tough to apply for complex products with multiple inter-connected user journeys, but if you focus on 1–2 user journeys and try to find ideas, there is good chance you will get some. Please note that this framework is only to get innovative ideas, whether the idea is right for the product or not depends on a lot of other factors — objective and direction of the business, availability of resources, user data analysis, feedbacks and competitive landscape.
Did you think you can innovate? Try this approach now on some of your favorite products and leave in the comments, your experience and ideas. If you struggle to get results, please share the product name in the comments and we can try it together :)
Cheers!
