Goals of the littleBits digital platform:
littleBits is a hardware company, it sells awesome hardware building blocks that can be combined into a myriad of inventions? So the goals of the online platform are along the lines of:
1. Sell, Sell, Sell
2. Develop online connections with people who will buy or influence buyers of your product.
3. Information on the hardware and what can be acomplished with it: Creativity, Invention, Education
How are the goals supported right now?
1. Comprehensive e-commerce shop enhanced by a exit intent software powered by BounceExchange. The BX software basically helps with increasing conversion.
2. Educator, Community and Inventor sections thoroughly address developing connections via Global or School Chapters, education curriculums, challenges, inventions etc
3. Each product, particularly the kits, is accompanied by a very detail description of what it is, what can be built with it, and any other perks it can generate (combine with other toys, reusable, etc). Also littleBits is open source which means that anyone who wants to build the bits of hardware on their own, has access to the "blueprints".
What else could be done to support these goals?
In order to understand what else we can do to support the goals of the organization we have to go to our users and re-evaluate the ways in which we provide value to them. There are 2 main types of users:
A. The users that want littleBits and can have them. For the most part, these guys' needs are amptly covered by the current digital platform.
B. The users that want littleBits but for some reason can't have them...YET. Let's explore these users and try to understand who they are and what are some of the obstacles preventing them from purchasing.
1. Underprivileged youth. Some young adults don’t have the means to buy the littleBits hardware product, their houselholds have very tightly run budgets where resources are allocated only to necessities or things that provide the highest utility. One of the things that provide the highest utility are smartphones. This group jettisons traditional computer ownership or Internet access at home in favor of accessing the Web on their handsets. Young adults may lack buying power but they don't lack influence.They have a very high social media presence and they spend an obscene amount of time online, consuming content or playing games. If we think abou their needs in relation to the littleBits product we can come up with the following:
As a young adult with no money, I want to be able to barter for the littleBits hardware with my social media presence so that I can save money.
As a young adult with no money, I want to be able to borrow littleBits hardware so that I don't have to buy it.
As a young adult with no money, I want to be able to build inventions digitally so that I don't have to buy the hardware
2. Parents of small children. Introduce the younger generation to littleBits early on! Parents of young children may not want to purchase the hardware just yet given the dangers that ingestible "bits" represent. BUT they still want to encourage buildin/exploring/ educating very early on
As a parent, I want to be able to introduce my kid to the Little Bits "building" inventing experience digitally so that I dont fear they will ingest the parts
As a parent I want to be able to test out the littlBits experience before I commit to buying so that I better understand if it's something my kid would benefit from.
3. Educators. While some educators may be able to tap into their institution resources for funds to dedicate to littleBits, some may not be as fortunate.
As an Educator I want to be able to have digital alternatives to buying hardware so that I can still excite and engage students about inventing
As an Educator I want to be able to show my school leadership results on how littleBits can help engagement and increase performance so that they aloccate funds to my chapter
There are a lot of use cases above and very diverse types of users. So let's narrow it down by running a Prioritization Matrix.
littleBits: New Features Case Study
Overview:
In September 2016 I came across a company called littleBits. The company's mission is to "Democratize Hardware by empowering everyone to create inventions, large or smallI with [their] platform of easy to use electronic building blocks" As I was going through their digital platform, I tried to think of ways in which I, as a Product Manager, could enrich the digital User Experience and further the brand's goals.
After becoming fully familiar with the website and IOS app I realized the following: While I can browse through great content and get inspired by other people's inventions, there is no way for me to mimic the experience of snapping pieces together without committing to buy. The closest thing to the experience that I craved was the video below:
Some of the Stories here have already been covered.
For example, Test before buy is covered within the littleBits 30 day return policy with no questions asked.
Access to data for school proposal can easily be created using some of the existing case studies on the Educators section.
One CLEAR trend emerging from the matrix is that each user group would like to have a digital littleBits experience The way each of the users extract value from the same story, further offers validity when it comes to a recommendation.
Posible Design Solutions
1. LittleEBits*, digital building blocks.
LittleBits can empower all users that cannot yet afford the hardware (or for some other reason are not yet able to buy it) by offering a similar building/inventing experience, digitally. Users can pick their building blocks and connect them on a touchscreen device in order to start building things digitally! The spirit of invention lives on and the experience is made available to a much wider audience. The digital product can be "tiered" where any user, regardless if they are a paying customer or not can have access to a fixed amount of "EBits" to build/invent with. If they want more EBits, they can purchase them or earn them via a social media push.
Existing customers would have access to the standard EBits, plus all the EBit/EKits counterparts for the bits or kits they already own. They could also buy/earn additional EBits if they want to test it first in their digital inventions.
Benefits include:
-Wider exposure and increased brand recognition
-Earlier introduction to users into the franchise
-Added benefit/service for existing customers
-Additional revenue source
Potential Cons:
-Mission Messaging inconsistency “The mission of littleBits is to democratize hardware by empowering everyone to create inventions… Building a product that would move the physical experience of building to an online counterpart might be damaging to the littleBits Brand mission
-Cannibalizing sales. Having an online building experience may prompt some users to abandon buying the hardware if they believe they will get the same utility/satisfaction from the online experience.
*littleEBits.com and littleEBits.org are available domain names