Grandma’s Smart Phone

“A product with the Right Feature can be a perfect solution for a problem !!”

I wanted to tell you a story to describe a problem and how a feature in a product solved the problem which made the product the Right product for this problem.

My Grandmother is 80 yrs old who cannot read or write English and lives alone in her house back in India in a Metro city.

What is the problem?  ” Me including her other grandchildren live  in different countries and visit India only once in 2 years on average and we wanted to see her more often at least through some kind of video calling”

We had set up a desktop for her in her home in 2011 with and used Skype for video calling.

Firstly she never used a computer in her entire life, so she had zero computer skills.We asked her not to shut down the computer to avoid the pain of rebooting the computer and then turning on Skype which is nearly impossible for her to do.This was not an Ideal solution in her case.
Below were some of the limitations of the so-called solution/product for her (Desktop with Skype) we had chosen

• During power failures, which is very common back home, Grandma did not know how to reboot the computer and connect back to the Internet.
• Grandma did not know how to open the application, in this case, Skype if it was closed.
• She had to always wait for the inbound call from one of her grandchildren which was a limitation by itself because of her limited computer Skills.
• The other reason this was not an ideal solution as she would sometimes travel to the village to meet her siblings (yes you heard me right their bond is amazing they are 7 sisters and 7 brothers and half of them passed away but rest of them get together often).

What do you think her reaction was? She said we were wasting a lot of money on the computer; electricity by keeping the desktop always on even though we were not using it and the solution was not working out as expected.

So what next? How do we solve this problem with a solution which is simple, easy to adapt for Grandma (Persona/Customer in our story) and within budget?

Let’s take a minute to think about what the solution that should address all the problems of Grandma?

• The solution should appeal to a Layman who don’t have knowledge of computer So that she doesn’t need any one’s help to use the product.
• Independent of the connected power supply so it would work even during power cuts.
•  Always connectivity – This is very important because she should not go through the pain of connecting to the internet.
• Portable – She should be able to carry the product where ever she goes.

I am an android user but my wife is an iPhone user and uses face time pretty much every day to keep in touch with her family back home. I never considered this solution as I thought the smartphone itself will be overwhelming for my Grandma’s problem but I wanted to give it a shot.

Last year I ordered her an used IPhone 5C which I got it for around 100 bucks and I asked my brother back home to plug in a sim card with data included. My cousins and I had an iPhone in some form or the other and guess what Facetime was our solution to talk to Grandma.

 

We just asked Grandma to use the IPhone for Facetime only and asked her to continue to use her Nokia phone for her regular calls.  With this solution everyone was happy.

Is Smartphone, in this case, a perfect solution?  Maybe not but we got a working solution which is better than the existing product /solution (Desktop with the internet).

You might still have the question whether Grandma was happy with the solution?

There were some challenges like getting used the touch screen but she is very happy with the current solution when compared to the older solution. We call her more often now as we all kind of get a sense that she is more reachable to us now.

I want to highlight some of the Salient characteristics that most of the great products have in common:

• Easily adaptable
• Disruptive – In our story persona ( Grandma) is encouraged to switch to IPhone.
• Stickiness is the great factor again to retain the user ( In Above use case keep using the Smartphone for a Feature -Facetime)

I just came across a book which captured the other feature of the great product which is Simplicity.

According to B.J Fogg, Director of Persuasive technology Lab, Stanford University. Simplicity can is very important for the user to adapt to your product. Below are the elements of Simplicity or the factors that influence whether the person will perform a behavior or not.

• Time – It is very important how much time does it take to complete the action?
• Money — very important factor as the financial impact of taking the action of switching?
• Physical — Amount of labor involved.
• Brain cycles — Amount of Mental effort required.

All the above factors were considered in our use case as Time (by using the Smartphone we certainly have the advantage over desktop as Smartphone is always connected and easy to access). Money ( Yes this factor is true too as we solved the problem with the low-end smartphone by replacing the expensive desktop), physical ( Smartphone makes it less labor intensive as easily accessible and no preconditions involved to make a video call). Brian cycles (There is a huge saving in this regards in our use case as the desktop is overwhelming for Grand Ma whereas in Smartphone she just has to remember the Application e.g. FaceTime).

” In some cases a product as a whole might not be appealing but a Feature that is offered by the product  might be a perfect  solution for the End user’s problem which the product so compelling for the End User”.