What Is Software Product Personalization?
Toyota manufactures products like the Corolla and the Camry; software engineers create mobile and web applications.
Gasoline powers most Corollas and Camrys; content (sponsored and unsponsored) powers many of our applications.
So what really counts as product personalization?
What many seem to be saying is that if I choose to put premium instead of regular gas in my Corolla, I’m personalizing Toyota’s product.
I think this is nonsense. This isn’t personalization because structurally the Corolla product is identical whether it’s burning regular or premium gas. There may be slight differences in the product’s resulting behavior, but that’s not personalization; it’s the result of a decision that I made and an action that I took. Toyota had zero to do with it. In fact, the Corolla is entirely incidental to the entire scenario. It could just as easily apply to any automobile.
Now, you might try to make the case that buying a Corolla LE instead of a Corolla L because I want remote keyless entry and automatic climate control is product personalization. This is similar to the choice between our base and premium software products.
I would counter that again it is my decision and my action that results in a different product purchase selection, based on product options that I find more attractive. Toyota (and our analogous software engineers) are a little more active in this scenario in that they have made options available, but these options weren’t pulled out of a hat; they were driven by user data in the aggregate … not personalized. I would also point out that neither my Corolla LE nor my premium app change structurally (or become personalized) no matter what kind of “fuel” I may run through them.
At this point, Toyota is approaching the practical limit of its ability to “personalize” (in the aggregate) its products in the physical world. I can choose to add a trim package (a preset group of options) or even to add individual options to a model or a trim, but once those decisions are made, the structure of my Corolla is fixed.
But in software, we don’t have those physical limitations.
Our products can change structurally and can intentionally alter the behavior of their features (this is different than altering the content that flows through the product and its features) as the result of explicit or implicit subscriber decisions and actions.
Software Product Personalization — An intentional change to product structure and/or behavior, resulting from explicit or implicit subscriber decisions and actions.
Examples:
- Not displaying or re-ordering tiles, which are structural elements of our product, based on individual subscriber preference. This would be like display elements on my Corolla’s dashboard disappearing or being re-ordered based on the way I want to arrange them.
- Automatically opening a tile when I start the app after observing me doing that 5 times in a row (and asking if I’d like that to be my default).
We need to think carefully and critically about terms like personalization rather than casually accepting the definitions that others may assert.
What is software product personalization? What is it not? And why? Who acts to bring it about? Often we may find that our questions from the virtual world have long-established answers in the physical world. Let’s not forget these origins or the lessons they provide.
