Understanding perceived pain of adoption

Pip Coburn's The Change Function is an interesting book. It talked about why some technologies take off and others fail. It is a reminder for product creators, especially in the technology field, that a product or service will click if the total perceived pain of adoption (TPPA) is less compared to staying where they are today that shall be worthy of making that switch.

From personal experience, this is how TPPA works for me:

• I will likely not buy an iPod or iTouch in the future as my current phone works well for me and can also save the videos / music that I want to listen to.
  
• Switching to Windows Vista is the farthest thing in mind as my current computer set-up and software works well and suitable for my work.
  
• I may not find myself buying a high-end mind map software as the free editions works well and serve the same purpose.

From a product or service developers' point of view, I am reminded that a product's chance of success is less than 5%. That is true for the DigitalFilipino.com Club where I was able to convert 3% of my contact base to actual customers. At first I thought, I must be doing really bad. But after reading this book and having a better grasp on TPPA, I've become much more of a realist. On the downside, this will make me even slower in coming up with new product or service developments.

My challenge in reading the book is its "voice". After reaching halfway, I just shut down and ended up just scanning. Pip sounded like a nag or too defensive or offensive at times that I just decided to stop reading (which is a form of listening in the case of books).

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However, to its credit, it presented a structure and philosophy that endearing organizations and product creators can embrace like relearning from failures, hiring experts who observe how people are changing, co-designing application with users, having a devil's advocacy process, and being quick to make changes as necessary, among others. These are indeed important factors for innovative product or service development.