Ecosystems and the Hierarchy of User Needs: How Ecosystems Are Redefining User Experience

Building for a product or building for a solution? The answer lies in the Hierarchy of Needs and an ecosystem model.

Google is entering the smart car business; Amazon is ditching its book retailing and now taking up the Whole Foods refrigerators (and even launching space shuttles). Why do many disruptive companies keep redefining their business models, ambitiously partnering with adjacent businesses and services, and even rewriting their vision statements?

One thing that disruptive companies have in common is branching out into doing something else that’s not core to their business. As the tech giants are keen to look outside their core competence areas, we see a new breed of user experience on its way. What’s happening with them?

Theodore Levitt put it, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!”

Your users (customers) want a quarter-inch hole rather than a quarter-inch drill [i]. It is a highly thought-provoking message that sums up the nature of the Hierarchy of Needs [ii]. Indeed, designing a tool that works well and that is safe and easy to use has been an uncompromising goal for designers for many centuries.

Today, however, we know that a “functional, safe and reliable” design alone cannot solve our problems. Most of the pain points we experience happen to be lurking somewhere else of which we probably are unaware. As a result, we see quarter-inch drills in many shapes and colors overflowing the market that don’t do anything good for the user.

Most users don’t have a clue how they can fix the wall and what kind of tool can help them.

In most cases, the user’s problem is not something we can see or understand easily, and it’s one that’s left hidden somewhere else that’s not immediately visible to us. This situation is where Scrum teams need to go into the problem space rather than rushing their way to the solution space. Who is the intended user? What’s the underlying motivation for them to want to use a drill? Or is there something else that has caused the problem in the first place that hasn’t been identified?

If we have identified the real problem, the situation now requires more than a quarter-inch drill. Unfortunately, the problem that’s been uncovered isn’t likely to be simple, and coming up with a solution will require good collaboration and partnership across many stakeholders. And it isn’t very likely that the solution will be a product that your Scrum Team can easily bring out through a few Sprints. Now, the situation calls for an ecosystem where the co-creators can collaborate so they can bring out a coordinated user experience as a solution to the user’s problem.

Why ecosystem, and who are the disruptors?

Think of an iPhone — a phone that is more than a phone. A quarter-inch drill is a situation where the user can make a phone call easily anywhere using the mobile device. But chances are, what the user really wants to do is not exactly to make a call. Their real needs? These needs are to get things done on the move, get connected with friends and feel cared for, or connect my wife and me but also connect me and my laptop when there’s no WiFi at BART stations. Apple knew it very well early on, so they built an iPhone ecosystem rather than just a cellphone.

Now Uber, the ride-hailing app, doesn’t just come with a single “Order a Ride” button. It comes with geolocation map features, a digital payment solution, a driver’s profile, a rider’s review, and an in-app chat or call option; you name it. Of course, the Uber ecosystem doesn’t dwell on the interface design of a ride order. As we track the Hierarchy of Needs down to the bottom (up in the pyramid), we realize again that there’s something else in the hierarchy of desire that’s more significant than just wanting to get a ride.

Back to the Hierarchy of Needs

That something else is this — it’s the fact that everyone wants to get around freely. People want to go to many places for the things they want to get, in real-time at the incredible speed of now [iii]. When people look for freedom of mobility rather than just a cab ride, it’s a moment when a single app cannot do much, no matter how many of the smartest features it comes with. This moment is when Uber starts to design an ecosystem for food delivery, autonomous vehicles, electric bicycles, and motorized scooters.

And this is a moment when a quarter-inch drill cannot do much, no matter how functional and reliable the design can be. Now, the situation calls for designing an ecosystem, co-creating the content and features, and orchestrating the experience going into the ecosystem. Coming to this picture is a strategy for growth and sustainability of the ecosystem and a clear rule of governance and force of modularity [iv].

By researching the Hierarchy of Needs in depth, many disruptive companies are strategically embedding this something else into their roadmap that goes beyond their core product while relentlessly working to construct their ecosystem strategy that will enable such user experience.

An experience ecosystem on its way to disrupting the market

Without a doubt, what’s behind their ecosystem strategy is a relentless effort to understand the gap between where their current product sits and where the user’s real motivations and goals lie across the Hierarchy of Needs. This critical task cannot get done in a few Sprints, which is why many disruptive companies are moving away from their core product to researching and experimenting relentlessly to discover something else.

Here are a few examples of tech, retail and financial giants exploring the idea of something else and a way to nurture an ecosystem that can continuously make their experiments sustainable.

• Google–Waze and self-driving car
• Amazon–Amazon Prime and Pay
• Apple–Apple TV+, Watch and Fitness
• Uber–Uber Eats and Postmates
• Ping An Insurance — Good Doctor
• MetLife–Health360 and UpWise
• Nike–Run Club
• ……

In search of something else. In search of the user experience.

Building an ecosystem or disrupting the existing market is never an easy task, but it starts with a very simple problem statement — get to the bottom of the user’s needs. Understanding the Hierarchy of Needs and ideating and designing an experience based on the Needs analysis with the vision of an ecosystem at its heart is how, as a designer, you can genuinely win the user experience. Do you and your Scrum team have that something else in the current product roadmap?

[i] Clayton M. Christensen, Scott Cook and Taddy Hall (2006), “What your customers want from your products”, Harvard Business School, https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/what-customers-want-from-your-products

[ii] Therese Fessenden (2017), “A theory of user delight: Why usability is the foundation for delightful experiences”, Nielsen Norman Group, https://www.nngroup.com/articles/theory-user-delight/

[iii] Uber website (2022), “We are Uber”, Uber.com, https://www.uber.com/jp/ja/careers/values/

[iv] Michael G. Jacobides (2019), “In the Ecosystem Economy, What’s Your Strategy?”, Harvard Business Review, https://hbr.org/2019/09/in-the-ecosystem-economy-whats-your-strategy