Pick an object near you. What attributes do you consider as important for this product? How would you improve it?

This is a product improvement qn:

Object -  laptop

Step 1- Describe the product- Allows users to browse internet, check emails, code, work on documents, work on spreadsheets etc.

Step 2- Clarifying qn:

Do we have to focus on a specific fn of the laptop e.g. playing games, listening to music, education, AR/VR etc.?

Step 3- Goal-

Improve user engagement with the laptop leading to increased laptop sales

Step 4- User groups

1) Business users (includes office goers, infra monitoring etc.)

2) Students

3) Casual users - checking emails, listening to music

I will focus on students since the learning environment has now moved to remote and students will be the fastest growing user group in the laptop space

Step 5- Pain points of my user group

a) Size of the laptop. Cheaper versions of laptop are heavier and larger than the slim laptops used by office goers

b) Computing power- Laptops used by students have relatively lower computing power and becomes a bottleneck when used for writing code as part of training purposes

c) keyboard- English is standard key board but difficult to use it for regional languages

d) Memory- Cheaper laptops come with low disk space(hard drive and RAM)

f) Software- Usually open source or comes with limited features

g) Child proof features e.g. spillproof, shatter proof etc.

Step 6- Solutions

a) Students usually use laptops at home or schools. Seperate the keyboard + processor from the screen. Allow laptops with interface with TV or shared monitors at home/school erc.

b) Allow laptops to use cloud computing during high CPU utilization. Package laptop with cloud packages say for 3 years. Thus if the laptop runs out of computing power, it can connect to cloud and leverage cloud based instances

c) Construct keyboard as a flexible touchscreen. Thus touch screen based keyboard can provide various format as well as support different languages

d) Memory- Solution as (b)

f) Software- Metered pricing of software features. E.g. if someone need work to type a letter for an hour. Only charge him/her for an hour for MS Word

g) Child Proof- Eliminate the laptop hinge by using shared monitors + create strong cradle for the keyboard and CPU components

Step 7- Prioritization of solution

Priority 1- High Impact + Low implementation cost

a) Students usually use laptops at home or schools. Seperate the keyboard + processor from the screen. Allow laptops with interface with TV or shared monitors at home/school etc

b) Allow laptops to use cloud computing during high CPU utilization. Package laptop with cloud packages say for 3 years. Thus if the laptop runs out of computing power, it can connect to cloud and leverage cloud based instances

Priority 2- Medium Impact + Medium implementation cost

f) Software- Metered pricing of software features. E.g. if someone need work to type a letter for an hour. Only charge him/her for an hour for MS Word --Since most software manufacturers already provide home, school version of their softwares

d) Memory- Solution as (b) - Students tend to use a thumb drive to store or share data.

Priority 3- Medium, Low Impact + High/Medium implementation cost

c) Construct keyboard as a flexible touchscreen. Thus touch screen based keyboard can provide various format as well as support different languages --> This will not be kid proof, will be prone to breakages

g) Child Proof- Eliminate the laptop hinge by using shared monitors + create strong cradle for the keyboard and CPU components --> This will make the laptop expensive

Step 8- Metrics

Acquisition

Sales of student specific laptop

Engagement

Use of laptop for coding vs writing assignments,  listening to class sessions etc.

Revenue

% of total revenue from hardware sales vs software sales vs purchase of accessories etc.

Referral-

Net promoter score. How many of parents of laptop users will refer it to their friends