App review: Forest

August 29, 2018July 17, 2019 marcabrahamLeave a comment

My quick summary of Forest before using the app – I think I first heard Nir Eyal, who specialises in consumer psychology, talk about Forest. Given that Nir mentioned the app, I can imagine Forest impacts people behaviour, helping them achieve specific outcomes.

How does Forest explain itself in the first minute? – “Stay focused, be presented” is Forest’s strap line which I see first. This strap line is followed swiftly followed by a screen that says “Plant a Tree” and explains that “Whenever you want to focus on your work, plant trees.” This suggests to me that Forest is an app which aims to help people focus on their work and eradicate all kinds of distractions.

How does Forest work? – The app first explains its purpose in a number of nicely designed explanatory screens.

After clicking “Go”, I land on a screen where I can adjust time; presumably the time during which I want to focus and avoid any interruptions.

I set the time at 10 minutes and click “Plant”. I love how, as the time progresses, the messages at the top of the screen keep alternating, from “Don’t look at me!” to “Don’t look at me!” to “Hang in there!” Nice messages to help keep me focus and not fall prey to checking my phone. At any stage, I can opt to “Give up” which presumably means that the tree that I’ve been planting – through staying focused – will be killed.

I’m motivated to see this through and plant my first tree. When I complete my 10 minutes of uninterrupted time, I expect to see a nice tree right at the end of it. Try and imagine my disappointment when I don’t see a tree but instead am encouraged to create a Forest account.

Did Forest deliver on my expectations? – I can see how Forest helps people to focus and avoid checking their phone constantly. Just want to explore the gamification element of the app a bit more.

Product review: Rocket Mortgage’s Instant Mortgages

June 18, 2018 marcabraham2 Comments

Can the whole process of getting a mortgage made a lot easier!? Whether you’re looking to buy a home or refinance your current one, the mortgage process can be a real pain in the neck: slow, stressful and opaque. Given the emergence of players such as Trussle, Habito – both UK-based online mortgage brokers – and my professional interest from leading product at Settled, I’m keen to explore this further.

Let’s start with a look at Rocket Mortgage, an “instant mortgage” product by Quicken Loans.

My quick summary of Rocket Mortgage before using it: I expect a product that makes it very quick and easy for a me as a consumer to apply for a mortgage.

How does Rocket Mortgage explain itself in the first minute: “You May Be Surprised to See How Much You Can Save – Can’t Hurt to Look” and “We’ve Reinvented the Mortgage Process to Put the Power in Your Hands” are two strap-lines on Rocket Mortgage homepage that stand out to me. Both lines are ‘above the fold’ and do make me curious to learn more about what Rocket Mortgage does (differently) to established mortgage providers.

How does Rocket Mortgage work? Mortgage applicants can submit their personal and financial information online (“Share Your Info”), and they receive a mortgage quote in return. This initial quote can be reviewed and customised to meet one’s personal needs and circumstances (“Explore Your Options”).

Let’s look at the individual steps in more detail:

User answer pre-approval questions

To apply for a Rocket Mortgage loan, you’ll first need to create an account by entering your name and email address, followed by choosing a password. Once you’ve clicked the “Save & Continue” button, you’ll be presented with a number of questions about your personal situation, both from a personal and a financial point of view:

User uploads personal assets

Rocket Mortgage will connect to your bank account(s) and your asset information will then be uploaded automatically onto the platform. You can then update the information or remove assets from consideration from your mortgage application, , after the boxes have been auto-filled. With the advent of PSD2 and open banking, I expect loads of US mortgage lenders and startups to enable a similar synchronisation with a user’s personal accounts.

If you have any other financial assists, like investments in shares via platforms such as Betterment and Wealthify, you will need to enter this data manually as well as related documents. The same applies to Rocket Mortgage requiring you to enter specific info to be able to generate a personal credit report and score. In future, I expect platforms like these to seamlessly integrated with credit score companies like Experian and Equifax.

User explores options

User obtains a mortgage rate

Once you’ve locked down a mortgage rate, there’s a separate Rocket Mortgage online tool which lets you finalise the mortgage.

Who else is doing this? I had a brief look at “mello”, the digital loan platform by loanDepot, and the product and its experience feels quite similar to Rocket Mortgage. In the UK, Molo is a new player on the scene, promising to “reimagine mortgages.”

Main learning point: It’s clear for everyone to see that these players are aiming to make the experience of applying for a mortgage as intuitive, transparent and quick as possible.

Related links for further learning:

Why Square and Klarna are looking to become banks?

June 11, 2018June 12, 2018 marcabrahamLeave a comment

Just a short post this time, as I just wanted to share my excitement about the likes of Square and Klarna becoming banks (eventually). As an outsider looking in, I can see the rationale for companies like Square and Klarna, payments platforms, for becoming full blowing banking entities:

Logical extension of the payments ecosystem – Given that Square and Klarna already process payment transactions for thousands of merchants and their customers, it means that they’ve got a strong foot in the door with small businesses. It therefore makes total sense to offer new products and services to both merchants and their customers.
Data, data, data – I can imagine that with the amount of transactional data being processed, Square and Klarna no doubt have built up great customer and merchant data profiles, and are now looking to further monetise on this customer understanding. Offering lending products jumps out at me as a key reason for Square and Klarna wanting to become banks. This pattern fits well on the trend involving challenger banks like Monzo and Chime starting out with limited features, but gradually expanding into fully fledged bank accounts.
Regulatory relationships – As Square and Klarna start offering more bank-like products and services, they’ll need to put robust regulatory compliance frameworks in place. Establishing regulatory relationships by becoming a bank helps with establishing these frameworks.
Hook at point of sale – Being able to engage with both consumers and merchants at the point of sale feels like a pretty strong hook to me! Loved how backend payment platform Adyen recently got valued at $8.3 billion, and it shows you that the financial sector is way off from calming down.

Main learning point: Whilst there are concerns about small businesses being impacted negatively by the likes of Square becoming banks, I’m excited by the ongoing disruption of the financial sector. Recent applications for banking licenses by Square and Klarna are a sign that the Fintech startups and challengers are scaling. As long scaling doesn’t happen at the detriment of the customer – both consumers and merchants – this can only be a good thing!

Related links for further learning:

What’s so special about SenseTime!?

May 9, 2018May 9, 2018 marcabrahamLeave a comment

Question: What do the following products have in common?

Product 1 — Smart glasses worn by Chinese police officers

https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/08/chinese-police-are-getting-smart-glasses/

These smart glasses connect to a feed which taps into China’s state database to detect out potential criminals using facial recognition. Officers can identify suspects in a crowd by snapping their photo and matching it to their internal database.

Product 2 — Wrong360, a peer-to-peer lending app

https://technode.com/2013/06/24/rong360-online-financial-product-search-platform/

Wrong360 is a Chinese peer-to-peer lending app which aims to make obtaining a loan as simple as possible. When users of the Wrong360 app enter the amount of loan, period, and purpose, the platform will automatically do the match and output a list of banks or credit agencies corresponding to the users’ requests. On the list, users can find the institution names, products, interests rate, gross interests, monthly payment, and the available periods, etc. Applying for a loan can done fully online, and the app uses facial recognition as part of the loan application process.

Product 3 — Security camera

Security cameras in public places to help police officers and shopkeepers by improved ways of face matching. Traditionally, face matching is based on trait description of someone’s facial features and the special distance between these features. Now, by extracting the geometric descriptions of the parts of the eyes, nose, mouth, chin, etc. and the structural relationship between them, search matching is performed with the feature templates stored in the database. When the similarity exceeds the set threshold, the matching results are shared.

http://www.sohu.com/a/163629793_99963310

Product 4 — Oppo mobile phone

https://www.notey.com/blogs/device-SLASH-accessories?page=4

Oppo specalise mobile photography and uses artificial technology to enable features such as portrait photo-taking, bi-camera photo-taking, and face grouping.

Question: What do the following products have in common?

Answer: They’re all powered by SenseTime artificial technology.

Whether it’s “SenseTotem” — which is being used for surveillance purposes — or “SensePhoto” — which uses facial recognition technology for messaging apps and mobile cameras — it all comes from the same company: SenseTime.

The company has made a lot of progress in a relatively short space of time with respect to artificial intelligence based (facial) recognition. The Chinese government has been investing heavily in creating an ecosystem for AI startups, with Megvii as another well known exponent of China’s AI drive.

A project with the code name “Viper” is the latest in the range of products that SenseTime is involved. I’m intrigued and slightly scared by this project which is said to focus on processing thousands of live camera feeds (from CCTV, to traffic cameras to ATM cameras), processing and tagging people and objects. SenseTime is rumoured to want to sell the Viper surveillance service internationally, but I can imagine that local regulations and data protection rules might prevent this kind of ‘big brother is watching you’ approach to be rolled out anytime soon.

Main learning point: It seems that SenseTime is very advanced with respect to facial recognition, using artificial intelligence to combine thousands of (live) data sources. You could argue that SenseTime isn’t the only company building this kind of technology, but their rapid growth and technological as well as financial firepower makes them a force to be reckoned with. That, in my mind, makes SenseTime very special indeed.

Related links for further learning:

App review: Warby Parker

March 25, 2018 marcabrahamLeave a comment

I recently listened to a podcast which was all about Warby Parker and its makings. After listening to the podcast, I was keen to have a closer look at Warby Parker’s website:

My quick summary of Warby Parker before using it – Warby Parker is disrupting the way in which consumers discover and buy glasses. I expect a product which removes the need for physical opticians.

How does Warby Parker explain itself in the first minute? – Accessing https://www.warbyparker.com/ on desktop, I see a nice horizontal layout, dominated by two hero images. There are two main calls to action. Firstly, “Try frames at home – for free”, which then offers me to either “get started” or “browse frames”. Secondly, “Shop online” which lets me shop for eyeglasses and sunglasses.

Getting started, what’s the process like? – After clicking on “Get started”, I can choose between styles for men and women.

Having selected “Men’s styles”, I’m pleased that there’s an option for me to skip the “What’s your fit?” screen as I’m unsure about the width of my face 🙂

Selecting a shape of frames feels somewhat easier, but it’s good that I can select all three shapes if I wish. Instead, I go for “rectangular”.

The same applies for the next screen, where I can pick colours and I select “Neutral” and “Black” simply because I find it easier to visualise what the frames will look like in these colours.

I decide the skip the step involving different materials to choose from. The icons on this screen do help but I personally would have benefited from seeing some real samples of materials such as acetate and titanium, just to get a better idea.

It’s good that I’m then being asked about my last eye exam. Wondering if and when I’ll be asked for the results from my last eye test in order to determine the strength of the glasses I need.

The next holding screen is useful since up to this point I hadn’t been sure about how Warby Parker’s service works. The explanations are clear and simple, encouraging me to click on the “Cool! Show me my results.” call to action at the bottom of the screen. I now understand that I can upload my prescription at checkout, but I wonder if I need to go to an eye doctor or an optician first in order to get a recent (and more reliable) prescription …

I’m then presented with 15 frames to choose from. From these 15 frames, Warby Parker lets me pick 5 frames to try on at home. I like how I can view the frames in the different colours that I selected as part of step 4 (see above). If I don’t like the frames suggested to me, I can always click “Browse all Home Try-on frames” or “Retake the quiz”.

I like the look of the “Chamberlain” so I select this pair of frames and click on “Try at home for free”.

As soon as I’ve clicked on the “Try at home for free” button a small tile appears which confirms that I’ve added 1 out of 5 frames which I can try at home. I can either decide to find another frame or view my cart.

When I click on “Find another frame” I expected to be taken back to my previous quiz results. Instead, I can now see a larger number of frames, but there’s the option to go back to my original quiz results and matches with my results have been highlighted.

I really like how the signup / login stage has been positioned right at the very end of my journey – i.e. at the checkout stage -and that I can just continue as a new customer.

My Warby Parker experience sadly ends when I realise that Warby Parker doesn’t ship frames to the United Kingdom. No matter how I hard I try, I can only enter a US address and zip code 😦

Did Warby Parker deliver on my expectations? – Yes and no. I felt Warby Parker’s site was great with respect to discovery and customisation, but I do think there’s opportunity to include some explanatory bits about Warby Parker’s process.

Related links for further learning:

My product management toolkit (18): Keeping an eye on consumer trends

February 9, 2017 marcabrahamLeave a comment

As a product manager, I know how easy it can be to get trapped into the every day and lose sight of what the future could bring. We tend to get immersed in the more tactical, day-to-day stuff and forget about the bigger picture. Also, there’s a daily avalanche of new technology developments and market trends, and it can be tempting to act on the latest trend, out of sheer fear to miss out. But how do you know whether it’s worth following up on a specific trend!?

A few months ago I learned more about how to best identify and assess trends by listening to a podcast with Max Luthy – Director of Trends & Insights at TrendWatching. TrendWatching have developed this very handy framework in the “Trend Canvas” (see Fig. 1 below).

screen-shot-2016-12-28-at-16-50-02

Fig. 1 – The Trend Canvas by TrendWatching – Taken from: http://trendwatching.com/x/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/2014-05-CONSUMER-TREND-CANVAS1.pdf

The Trend Canvas distinguishes between the “Analyze” and the “Apply” stages. During the Analyze stage, you assess a trend and its underlying drivers. What are the basic consumer needs a trend is serving and why? What kinds of change is this trend driving and why? In contrast, during the Apply stage you’ll look at ways in which you and your business can best tap into a trend, and who would benefit from this trend.

I’ve found the Trend Canvas to be very useful when exploring and assessing trends. The thing I like most about this framework is that it forces you to think about the customer and how a customer is impacted by a particular trend. Let’s take the trend of electric cars as a good example:

electric-smart-car

Fig. 2 – Smart Electric Drive – Taken from: https://cleantechnica.com/2015/07/31/11-electric-cars-with-most-range-list/

Analyse trends

Basic needs – What deep consumer needs & desires does this trend address? – I haven’t spoken to many electric car owners yet, but the ones that I’ve spoken to mention “environmental consciousness” and “cost saving” as the basic needs that drove their purchase of an electric car. The experts at TrendWatching mention some other typical types of basic of needs worth considering as part of your analysis (see Fig. 3 below).
Drivers of Change – Why is this trend emerging now? – What’s changing? – To analyse the drivers of change, it’s worth looking at ‘shifts’ and ‘triggers’. Shifts are the long-term, macro changes that often take years or decades to fully materialise. For example, a rapidly growing global middle class and increasing scarcity of oil are significant drivers of the appeal of electric cars (this report contains some interesting insights in this regard). Triggers are the more immediate changes that drive the emergence of a consumer trend. These can include specific technologies, political events, economic shocks and environmental incidents. I feel that recent improvements to both the technology and infrastructure with regard to electric cars are important triggers.
Emerging Consumer Expectations – What new consumer needs, wants and expectations are created by the changes identified above? – Where and how does this trend satisfy them? – Purchasing expensive fuel for your car is no longer a given, and consumers starting to become much aware of the cheaper and environmentally friendly alternative in electric cars.
Inspiration – How are other businesses applying this trend? – When analysing a trend, a key part of the analysis involves looking at how incumbent businesses are applying a trend. For example, the Renault-Nissan alliance has thus far been the most successful when it comes to electric cars and learning about the ‘why’ behind their success will help one’s own trend analysis.

Fig. 3 – Basic needs categories to consider when analysing trends – Taken from: http://trendwatching.com/x/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/2014-05-CONSUMER-TREND-CANVAS1.pdf

Social status
Self-improvement
Entertainment
Excitement
Connection
Security
Identity
Relevance
Social interaction
Creativity
Fairness
Honesty
Freedom
Recognition
Simplicity
Transparency

Apply trends

Innovation Panel – How and where could you apply this trend to your business? – To me, this is one of the crucial steps when exploring trends; asking yourself that all important question – how can I best apply this trend to my business? For example, how does a specific trend fit in with our current offering of products and services? Why (not)? It’s similar to when you assess a product opportunity and go through a number of questions to look at the viability of a trend for your business (see Fig. 4 below).
Who? Which (new) customer groups could you apply this trend to? What would you have to change? – How often do we forget to think properly about who this trend is for and why they benefit from it. Which demographic is this trend relevant for and why? For instance, with electric cars, one could think about middle class families who are very cost and environmentally conscious consumers.

Fig. 4 – Assessing “Innovation Panel” when applying trends – Taken from: http://trendwatching.com/x/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/2014-05-CONSUMER-TREND-CANVAS1.pdf

Vision: How will the deeper shifts underlying this trend shape your company’s long-term vision?
Business Model: Can you apply this trend to launch a whole new business venture or brand?
Product / Service / Experience: What new products and services could you create in light of this trend? How will you adapt your current products and services?
Campaign: How can you incorporate this trend into your campaigns, and show consumers you speak their language, that you ‘get it’.

Main learning point: The Trend Canvas provides a great way for anyone to assess trends and innovations, looking at a trend from both a consumer and a business point of view.

Related links for further learning:

Some good conversational UI examples to learn from

December 19, 2016December 22, 2016 marcabraham1 Comment

It was Dennis Mortensen – CEO/Founder of x.ai – who made me aware a few years ago of the concept of ‘invisible interfaces’. He talked about applications no longer needing a graphical user interface (GUI), taking “Amy” – x.ai’s virtual personal assistant as a good example (see Fig. 1 below).

hi-im-amy-xai

Fig. 1 – Amy, x.ai’s virtual assistant – Taken from: http://www.agilenetnyc.com/business/x-ai/

Since then, I’ve been keeping more of an eye out for bots and virtual assistants, which can run on Slack, WeChat, Facebook Messenger or Amazon Echo. Like “Amy” these applications can be driven entirely by complex machine learning algorithms, or can be more ‘smoke and mirrors’ and operated entirely by humans. Let’s just have a look at some relevant examples to illustrate where I think some of these virtual assistants and chatbots are heading.

Example 1 – Nordstrom Chatbot and Operator offering personalised discovery:

US based Nordstrom recently launched its first chatbot for the 2016 holiday season. If you’re already on Facebook Messenger or Kik, Nordstrom’s virtual assistant is only a click away. Users who engage with Nordstrom’s bot will be asked a number of questions about who they’re shopping for. The bot will then respond with bespoke gift suggestions based on the user’s responses.

nordstrom-v1

Fig. 2 – Nordstrom Chatbot – Taken from: https://chatbotsmagazine.com/the-complete-beginner-s-guide-to-chatbots-8280b7b906ca#.l5e2i887r

You can get a similar experience using Operator, which is driven entirely by human experts who’ll provide you with personalised advice on what to buy (see Fig. 3 below).

screen-shot-2016-12-19-at-20-46-37

Fig. 3 – Operator’s experts providing tailored advice to its users – Taken from: https://www.operator.com/

Example 2 – KLM sharing flight information via Facebook Messenger:

KLM, the well known international airline, now enables customer to receive their flight documentation via Facebook Messenger. After booking a flight on KLM’s website, customers can choose to receive their booking confirmation, check-in details, boarding pass and flight status updates via Messenger. It’s built on a Messenger plug-in which customers only have to enable in order to receive ‘personalised’ messages from KLM (see Fig. 4 below).

screen-shot-2016-12-19-at-20-17-33

Fig. 4 – Screenshot of KLM’s Messenger app – Taken from: https://messenger.klm.com/

Example 3 – Telegram using buttons for discovery and shortcuts:

As much as it’s great to have a very simple ‘single purpose’ conversational user interface, there are messenger apps and virtual assistants out there that do offer user functionality that works better with buttons to click. A good example is the Telegram app, which has buttons for specific actions and shortcuts (see Fig. 5 below).

Fig. 5 – Screenshot of the buttons in Telegram’s messenger app – Taken from: http://alistapart.com/article/all-talk-and-no-buttons-the-conversational-ui

Main learning point: I’ll no doubt learn more about conversational user interfaces over the coming months and years, but looking at simple examples like x.ai, Nordstrom’s Chatbot, Operator, Telegram and KLM’s Messenger feels like a very good starting point!

Related links for further learning:

As I learn …

This site is about everything digital, giving an update on new things as I learn

Category: Online Trends

App review: Forest

Product review: Rocket Mortgage’s Instant Mortgages

Why Square and Klarna are looking to become banks?

What’s so special about SenseTime!?

App review: Warby Parker

My product management toolkit (18): Keeping an eye on consumer trends

Analyse trends

Apply trends

Some good conversational UI examples to learn from