training, so you may pay for software or storage to help you make the most of
connected devices, or personalized health or energy saving advice based
around data gathered from your devices.
Author’s note: In this book, we use the term ‘product’ loosely to refer to a
packaged set of functionalities that solves a problem for people or fits neatly
into their lives. That could be a physical device, a service, or frequently a
combination of both.
Why is this in a UX book?
To some of you, this may seem outside the remit you normally associate with
UX design. You may work in a company where productization is handled by
product management, or perhaps marketing. In others, it might be considered
strategic design. UX is not always involved in identifying the opportunity and
framing the solution. But most UX designers would walk over hot coals to be
involved from the start, especially if they have first hand knowledge of user
needs from conducting research.
Whoever is responsible for it in your organization, it provides the strategic
foundation for UX design. It’s not possible to design a great product or
service experience if users don’t want, or understand, the service in the
first place.
Value propositions help sell products. But they also drive UX. A clear
proposition helps users decide whether to buy it in the first place, but also
helps frame their mental model of the system and what it does (see figure 4.2).
When users are confident that they understand what the system does for them,
they have a good basis for figuring out how it works (the conceptual model),
and then how to use it (the interaction model). All the clever design in the
world can’t overcome a murky or unappealing value proposition.