The author of Hidden In Plain Sight, Jan Chipchase, has a very enviable and unique job. His job, essentially, is that of a cultural anthropologist – he studies people. More specifically, he studies the little things we do and decodes them to help companies understand us better. Our habits, reactions, behaviors, needs, and desires all contain valuable insight and inspiration.
Why is this book important for a designer such as myself? Chipchase explains that “for companies looking to bring new products and services to market, understanding the push and pull of adoption – where personal motivations, context, and cultural norms collide – is critical to success.”
He also asks and answers what drives some people to adopt early to new technologies? Why are some late? Why do others reject technology altogether? And how can we use this understanding to develop, target and then market our product or services in a way that will give us the greatest chance of success?
Chipchase then goes on to explain the “Diffusion Process” – a set of five stages that we all go through on the path to adoption of a new idea, called the Adoption Curve, which describes each of the groups along the path to adoption – those being the Innovators, Early Adaptors and the Laggers – and why understanding these concepts are so critical to the design process.
Chipchase advises that “savvy designers and marketers do well to tailor their offerings as they traverse the Adaption Curve”, meaning, we should be judging our design and marketing efforts against all the groups along the Adaption Curve – Innovators, Early Adaptors, Laggers (which he further divides into Recusers and Rejectors – in order to target each at the point so it will resonate with them).
This was a very interesting book giving me a very different way to thinking about marketing approaches.
