2xTuesday: Manipulation Matrix

Welcome to another edition of 2xTuesday, our series that brings you one 2x2 every week.

This week’s 2x2 comes from Hooked author Nir Eyal. While his focus was much more on answering whether you should attempt to build a product that hooks users, I think it has a broader application to the B2B software world as well. As you can see, the X-axis focuses on whether or not a product maker uses their product, and the Y-axis looks at how much the product improves a user’s life. While there are a lot fewer entertainment apps in B2B than B2C, I think the question of whether you use your own product or not as a B2B software company has a lot of bearing on how you approach your messaging and go-to-market.

Eyal breaks things for facilitators a bit more in his excellent post:

When you create something that you will use and believe makes the user’s life better, you’re facilitating a healthful habit. It’s important to note that only you can decide if you would actually use the service and what “materially improving the life of the user” really means.

If you find yourself squirming as you ask yourself those questions or needing to create a preamble starting with, “If I were a…” STOP! You failed. You have to actually want to use the product and believe it materially benefits your life as well as the lives of your users. The one exception is if you would have been a user in your younger years. For example, in the case of an education company, you may not need to use the service right now, but are positive you would have used it in your not so distant past. Note however that the further you are from your former self, the lower your odds of success.