Showing people how to use a product can be easy, or it can be hard. If the product is itself a complex one, and especially if it is one that might need specialist training to operate, the demonstration needs to be as simple as possible.
Complexity of use is a major barrier to adoption—so it is worth ensuring that the product looks easy to use. This may even need to be included as part of your product design.
The idea
When Remington first introduced the typewriter, they realized that most people would consider it to be a big investment, considering that a pen or a pencil seemed to be doing the same job perfectly adequately.
The company needed to demonstrate the speed and efficiency gains that a typewriter could provide—if it could not write faster than someone with a pen, it was a pointless exercise buying the machine and learning to use it. The company therefore laid out the top line of the machine as QWERTYUIOP so that its demonstrators could type the word TYPEWRITER extremely quickly.
The rest of the keyboard was arranged to minimize the keys jamming in use, even though this slowed down the operation (the later DVORAK keyboard is much easier to use). Remington’s keyboard layout was so successful in marketing the new technology that the QWERTY keyboard survives to this day, despite being relatively inefficient: the alternative might have been that typewriters might never have been adopted.
In practice
• This works best for complex products.
• Don’t be afraid to redesign the product to make the demonstrations more striking.
• The easier something looks to operate, the more likely it will be adopted.
The idea
When Remington first introduced the typewriter, they realized that most people would consider it to be a big investment, considering that a pen or a pencil seemed to be doing the same job perfectly adequately.
The company needed to demonstrate the speed and efficiency gains that a typewriter could provide—if it could not write faster than someone with a pen, it was a pointless exercise buying the machine and learning to use it. The company therefore laid out the top line of the machine as QWERTYUIOP so that its demonstrators could type the word TYPEWRITER extremely quickly.
The rest of the keyboard was arranged to minimize the keys jamming in use, even though this slowed down the operation (the later DVORAK keyboard is much easier to use). Remington’s keyboard layout was so successful in marketing the new technology that the QWERTY keyboard survives to this day, despite being relatively inefficient: the alternative might have been that typewriters might never have been adopted.
In practice
• This works best for complex products.
• Don’t be afraid to redesign the product to make the demonstrations more striking.
• The easier something looks to operate, the more likely it will be adopted.
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