Don’t be Digital-Only.
When and How you Should Go Physical
Here’s something you’re probably surprised to hear a Director of Product at a tech startup say: Digital isn’t always the answer.
How can it be?
Technological Progress = Digital, right? Everything must be faster, more integrated, more automated, and less physical!
Not true.
In a world of never-ending Slack messages, a smartphone that you check over 200 times per day, and screens everywhere you look (literally!), physical has regained a LOT of power to attract our limited attention.
5 Powerful Ways to Leverage Physical
There are many simple ways to leverage the uniqueness and attention-grabbing nature of physical today.
Here are 5 easy (and powerful) ways you can leverage physical for your startup, company, and personal life.
- Handwritten Thank You’s: At Upside Travel, we’ve been doing handwritten thank you’s since we started and they have had an incredible impact on our customer’s experience with us!
Even better, handwritten notes have a 3–4x open rate compared to form letters, which makes the time creating them well worth it.
(http://www.digitaldogdirect.com/handwritten-mail-and-direct-mail/)
Don’t have time to write the notes yourself?
No problem, check out these sites for affordable help with handwritten notes:
2. Oversized Physical “Demos”: Are you working on something digital that can be represented physically? I’ve found that by making an oversize physical “demo” of your digital product, you can keep what you’re working on top of mind with your coworkers and tap into their collective creativity.
One recent physical demo we built at Upside was of the new home screen for our iOS and Android apps. You can pull off the “cards” in the feed section of the homepage, rearrange them, add new ones, and even create cards of your own, all thanks to the magic of Velcro!
This demo has already helped us collect more than 20 ideas for new “cards” that can be added to the Upside app home feed.
Upside iOS App: http://apple.co/2v5yCV1
Upside Android App: http://bit.ly/2weYkvh
3. Posters for Events: There’s a reason Facebook founded it’s own “Analog Lab” (see more on it here: https://www.facebook.com/analoglab/).
In today’s digital-first world, analog stands out and captures attention. Don’t just promote your company events digitally, go analog and see your engagement and interest increase.
4. Key Metrics in Highly Visible Places: Tracking the metrics you care about on digital dashboards around the office is great, but eventually most people stop paying attention.
P.S. if you aren’t displaying your metrics in highly visible places, start tomorrow!
“That which is measured, improves” is one of the most true axioms I’ve encountered.
Recapture your co-workers attention by posting key metric goals in highly visible places.
Tape them to the fridge, put them by the elevator buttons, paste them by meeting room entrances. The more visible and the more unique the place the better.
The toilet stall door may be going a bit too far, but I’ve seen it done before!
The trick here is to keep it fresh and keep it entertaining. Similar to the digital dashboards, these analog equivalents will grow stale eventually and it’s on you to pull them down when they do.
5. Creative Burn Down Charts: Do you and your team have ambitious plans for the next quarter, 6 months, year? Take over the biggest space you have in your office with a physical “burn down” chart.
Create a cut out for every major feature you are considering in the near future. Add a post-it flag every time you hear about this need or feature in a customer interview, piece of feedback, or focus group.
Soon you’ll have a massive feature burn down chart with clear indications of what’s missing from your product today and what customers want (note: not saying that you should always prioritize in this way…)
And man, oh man, is it fun to check off items on this burn down chart as a team with an oversized Sharpie!
Go Physical!
Hopefully these examples have helped you think of a few ways you can bring physical to your digital business.
Don’t be worried if you get a few odd looks when you’re hanging up your key metrics around the office or building your burn down chart.
Analog is different, and it’s just that fact that will make analog/physical an important and effective part of your tool kit.
More from Alex Mitchell
Check out Alex’s Book: Building Digital Products
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Building-Digital-Products-Ultimate-Handbook/dp/1522824936
Digital Download: https://gum.co/CLccb
