I recently had an opportunity to take a great class on agile software development. One of the lessons was to make sure your product or service has a good mix of
- mandatory (table stakes)
- linear (the more the better)
- exciter/delighter
features. For example a bed in a hotel room is mandatory. The Westin “Heavenly Bed” is an exciter/delighter. The categorizing method we were taught breaks down somewhat, however, asking you to categorize features into the above mutually exclusive categories. In contrast to this arbitrary mutual exclusivity some companies like Westin and Apple have instead tried to turn mandatory features themselves (like beds and voicemail) into exciters/delighters. Apple put a nice twist on the seemingly mundane with Visual Voicemail in the original iPhone. Mandatories turned into exciters/delighters contributed to making the product a hit in a brutally commoditized category. Most products and services are commoditized or rapidly commoditizing. 100% mandatory would equal a commodity almost by definition, but what if you tried to make some of the mandatories themselves exciters/delighters? What twist would you put on the mundane to make your product or service stand out?
