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).

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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:

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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:

App review: Abra

October 3, 2016 marcabraham3 Comments

abra-1

The main reason why I’m excited about Abra – a US-based peer-to-peer payments startup – is that people become tellers or ‘human ATMs’ who expense cash at hand to the recipient. The Philippines is a key target market for Abra, and it facilitates seamless payments between residents of the US and the Philippines.

Recent stats show that about two-thirds of the adult Philippine population is still unbanked. Currently, Filipinos will have to go to a local exchange ‘business’ (often a one-man band or small operation that does foreign exchange as one of its activities), fill out paper forms to send or receive money abroad. This can be very time-consuming, costly or unreliable.

Abra’s mission is to change all this and make cross-border peer-to-peer payments as easy and seamless as possible. This is how they do it:

Deposit money into the Abra app – Users can deposit money into the Abra app either via a linked bank account, or by using Abra’s network of Abra Tellers, which are like human ATM machines (see Fig. 1 below). Each Teller will set their own fee with the customer, after which the Teller and the customer will meet up in person to accept a cash deposit and credit the customer’s account with funds (or vice versa, if the user wants to cash out) (see Fig. 2 below).
Convert into Bitcoins – After a user’s account is credited with the necessary funds, the money is instantly converted to bitcoin behind the scenes, but still denominated in a traditional currency. What I like about Abra is that it doesn’t really talk that much on its website or its other comms about using bitcoins to underpin these payments. Abra, however, does use bitcoins and shared ledgers to facilitate peer-to-peer transactions without the need for an intermediary.
Send and withdraw money – Customers can use the Abra app to send and withdraw money, or buy things online where Abra is accepted by the seller. The company generates revenue by charging a .25 percent fee to a customer upon transacting with an Abra Teller.
You don’t need a bank account – One of the key upsides of Abra in my opinion, is that you don’t need to have a bank account to do a transaction through the platform. Competitors like Simple and Venmo still require users to add their bank accounts, whereas Abra let’s people transact without the need for a bank account.

Main learning: I’m really excited about innovations like Abra; using bitcoins and blockchain technology to solve a real-world problem and enabling unbanked people transact easily and cheaply.

Fig. 1 – Add money through Abra – Taken from: http://fintechranking.com/2015/03/05/why-we-started-abra/

abra-2

Fig. 2 – Finding and engaging with Abra Tellers – Taken from: https://techcrunch.com/2015/09/10/abra-raises-12m-in-series-a-funding-for-its-bitcoin-based-remittance-service/

abra_maria_teller

Related links for further learning:

App review: PayKey

September 20, 2016 marcabraham1 Comment

I recently came across PayKey and have been intrigued since in the combination between banking and social media. PayKey’s vision is “to make payments in all social chat possible.” To this end, PayKey provides a secure payment keyboard which people can use when they’re in a social network of choice (Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat, Twitter, etc. – see Fig. 1 below).

Fig. 1 – PayKey Startup Pitch at the Mobile Monetisation Summit 2015 – Taken from: http://www.slideshare.net/IsraelMobileSummit/paykey-startup-pitch-at-the-mobile-moentization-summit-2015-startup-contest

The first step is for users to include payment functions in your keyboard.

As soon, as you’ve included the payment capability, you start the payment flow within the messaging service. This enables you to pay to any people within your social network on the messenger service of choice.

The penultimate step involves choosing an account to send to a contact, setting limits that work for you.

Once you authorise the payment, the specified amount will be sent. The authentication that takes place here is one of the critical components of PayKey. PayKey is linked to existing bank payment systems, which means no changes to their current security practices. In addition, users can also choose a unique identifier (e.g. Twitter account detail) to connect with their bank account, making it easier to connect with your bank account.

Main learning point: Companies like PayKey are making the experience around making payments a lot more intuitive. Instead of relying on customers to go where their banks are, PayKey enables customers to connect with banks where a lot of their daily interactions already take place – social networks and messenger apps. Don’t be surprised if Facebook launches a very similar service soon!

Related links for further learning:

CommonBond, learning about marketplace lending

January 23, 2016 marcabrahamLeave a comment

I recently came across CommonBond, an online student loan platform in the US, co-founded by David Klein. In a recent podcast, David explained how the idea for CommonBond came up when he himself had to get a loan to finance his Master’s Degree at Wharton Business School. When doing so, David discovered a few things: “rates were unnecessarily high”, “the process (of getting student loans, MA) was opaque and unnecessarily complex” and “the service was pretty poor.” Together with two co-founders, David founded CommonBond, which he describes as a “marketplace lending platform which to date has focused specifically on student debts.”

Marketplace lending is effectively the same as peer-to-peer lending; instead of a bank lending you money, it’s another user (this can be a person or a private company) lending you the money. Companies like CommonBond, Lending Club, On Deck and Kabbage all act as a marketplace, providing the technology to connect borrows and lenders.

Screen Shot 2016-01-21 at 08.24.47

It was interesting to hear Dave talk about the two main goals that underpin CommonBond’s proposition. Firstly, to lower the cost for graduate students in getting a loan. Secondly, making the experience of getting a loan as easy and speedy as possible. Dave pointed out that the plan behind CommonBond is to eventually expand beyond student loans, supporting borrowers throughout different stages of their life.Currently, the lion’s share of CommonBond’s business comes from refinancing existing loans, but it aims to issue more direct loans to students in the coming months.

Screen Shot 2016-01-21 at 08.48.22

In the podcast, Dave talked about marketplaces starting off with a single asset class e.g. mortgages or credit cards, and then branching out into multiple classes. His view is that there’s a shift happening from ‘unbundling banking products’ to ‘re-bundling banking products.’

In that light, it was interesting to learn that CommonBond recently secured so-called “warehouse lines” from established financial institutions like Barclays and Macquarie Capital. The term “warehouse loan” refers to a loan made and would be repaid as it was securitised and bundled into a broader portfolio that is sold in secondary markets like the New York Stock Exchange or London Stock Exchange.

Main learning point: When looking at the CommonBond site and from listening to Dave Klein, it strikes me how CommonBond is really making an effort to make applying for a loan as simple and as intuitive as possible. Klein refers to Nordstom and Zappos. I love how CommonBond aims to disrupt the traditional way of obtaining loans, starting with student loans but looking to roll their approach out to other loan types in the future.

Related links for further learning:

Coravin – great tech even if you’re not a wine drinker

October 11, 2015 marcabrahamLeave a comment

I’m a teetotal and I don’t have the faintest clue about drinking wine. However, I was intrigued by a new technology called Coravin. The problem that Coravin intends to solve is that once you uncork a wine bottle, and unless you finish the bottle in one go, the quality of the wine is likely to deteriorate. The technology that Coravin uses keeps the cork in the bottle, where it’s been since the bottle was sealed. As a result, you will be able to “pour glasses whenever you like, and know that instead of oxidizing, the remaining wine will continue to age naturally.”

These are the main components of the Coravin technology, which I took from the Coravin website:

Main learning point: Last year, Coravin decided to temporarily stop the sales of their product, after receiving reports of 13 wine bottles breaking under pressure, even resulting in a two chipped teeth and a cut that needed stitches … Coravin dealt with this serious issue by halting all sales, only resuming business as usual after it had sent a repair kit to all existing Corvin owners. I haven’t tested the technology myself, but I’m very excited about the idea behind Coravin as it provides a very innovative solution to a well-known and longstanding problem.

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: 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

App review: Abra

CommonBond, learning about marketplace lending

Coravin – great tech even if you’re not a wine drinker