Design Strategies for Technology Adoption
We wrote this article written to complement Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm and Everett and Roger’s Diffusion of Innovations. In working with tech companies, it became apparent that many folks struggled with putting Crossing the Chasm to work. Crossing the Chasm is grounded in 50 years of academic research on diffusion theory, which articulates how new ideas spread through different populations and psychographics. Crossing the Chasm has a become a business classic. Its maxim to cater to early adopters by ‘crossing the chasm’ from fledgling startup to a rocket ship with scale has become widely practiced. However, it focuses primarily on marketing and business strategy level and has few recommendations on how to best design and develop product accordingly. This article does just that.
Design Strategies for Technology Adoption outlines approaches for designing a product according to where it is in its adoption lifecycle. The approach is human centered and takes into consideration the needs and mindsets of different psychographic profiles along the adoption curve. Designing a product or service offerings that uniquely appeals to innovators versus early adopters versus the early majority are different. They are different types of users and care about things. To hit scale, it’s important that you make changes in the product design at the appropriate time in a business’ growth.
I wrote ‘Design Strategies for Technology Adoption with my colleague’s Dev Patnaik and Pete Mortensen at the time at Jump Associates. They both are supremely talented authors and it was my good fortune to work alongside them. I continue to reference this body of work in my current role as head of design at Interana and the various companies I mentor from time to time.
