How can you use the Kano model to launch a successful product?

Prioritization is bread and butter for a PM. One must be really thorough with the process. There are tons of frameworks that assist a PM including 1. RICE (Reach, Impact,Confidence, Effort) 2. Value vs Effort 3. The MoSCoW method 4. PERT 5. Opportunity Cost Analysis And the best of all Kano model. Kano factors in implementation vs customer staisfaction as attributes and categorises the features requests into : 1. Basics (Must Haves) 2. Performance (Wants) 3. Delighters (Exciters) This helps PM make an informed decision with respect to ones backlog. #ProductManagement #FeaturePrioritization #KPKR

1. Customer Research: Conduct surveys to gather customer opinions on features. Ask about feelings, importance, and satisfaction. 2. Feature Classification: Categorize features using the Kano model: Basic Needs, Performance Needs, and Excitement Needs. 3. Graphical Representation: Plot features on a graph to visualize their impact on customer satisfaction. Identify areas for focus. 4. Strategic Decision-making: Use insights to prioritize features. Focus on balancing basic needs, enhancing performance, and introducing excitement for a successful product launch.

In my career, I have seen various product teams create roadmaps with features based on their opinion or what is feasible to build quickly (or worse... throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks) vs. prioritizing what customers actually want. The Kano model helps you get clear on what is most important to customers. It will also help you align teams (design/engineering/stakeholders) on a prioritization model and will help you think about how to differentiate your product from competitors. I cannot stress enough how effective the Kano model has been in helping my product teams build what matters most.

If there's one thing I learned from my time as a PM at Apple: If you only delivered features that customers asked for, you cannot delight them! There are many prioritization frameworks, but the beauty of the Kano model is that it's the only one that explicitly makes the case for exciting and unexpected features! It also clearly outlines how neglecting basic product expectations (availability, reliability, security, performance) can hurt you big time. e.g: Doesn't matter how fancy and fun your car is, no one will buy it if the brakes don't work reliably!

In using the Kano model to launch a successful product: 1. Customer Research: Conduct thorough research and surveys to classify features based on customer satisfaction and importance. 2. Questioning Approach: Pose questions like feature impact, importance, and satisfaction to categorize features accurately. 3. Graphical Representation: Plot features on a graph, visualizing the relationship between customer satisfaction and feature implementation. 4. Strategic Decision Making: Utilize insights from the Kano model to strategically prioritize and implement features for enhanced customer delight.

If you are in a competitive market with low switching costs or if retention is a big challenge, the Kano model is ideal. It's the only framework that focuses on maximizing satisfaction by choosing the right mix of functionality and level between the 3: a. Expected: You absolutely nail the basics and don't give them a reason to complain! Your product works reliably b. Performance - Unlike other products, your UX is simple and helps the customer with their main want - "help me do my job more efficiently!". The less training needed, the better. There's very little they don't use c. Exciting - You've made them a loyal customer by giving them features that delight, that make them say "Wow" or make them feel good.

Like all frameworks, there are pros and cons. The Kano model often requires more upfront research, which can be time consuming. It can also be difficult to predict and measure how delightful some features truly are. It is best to follow a test & learn approach to find product/market fit quickly.

The Kano model is heavily biased towards customer research to gather data on which features would be liked, expected or disliked. The challenges are: 1. Customer surveys take time. Low response rates from surveys, leads to biased scores as the "silent majority" may not bother to respond. 2. The scores are based on the customer's perception of value, which are subjective. An enterprise customer may have different expectations than one who is a small-business. 3. Surveys can only measure explicit preferences, rather than actual usage. Customers may say a feature is very important, but actual engagement might be low 4. Lastly, the Kano model over-relies on satisfaction and neglects other important business factors for prioritization

Some ways to address the weakness of using the Kano model: 1. Leverage other sources that provide a window into customer's implicit preferences and actual adoption - Product analytics, A/B tests 2. Augment the Kano model with other prioritization frameworks stressing customer and business impact like RICE or the weighted scoring framework 3. Use primarily when you have a large customer base and are prioritizing improvements. Avoid using for new products as the survey questions become hypothetical and less reliable indicators