We explore the concept of productization and uncover the value it offers to businesses and consumers alike. Discover why companies are shifting to a product-first approach and why productization is not a passing trend.

What do iPhone, Big Mac, MS Office, and Mailchimp have in common? They’re vital in shaping our experiences with their respective brands – how we form relationships with them. You don’t know Tim Cook personally, but you know the iPhone like the back of your hand (probably because it’s always in your hand).

Besides being a relationship touchpoint, these products also serve as a means by which companies provide value to us. Ultimately, what we’re paying for. They’re products – items a business can easily reproduce by repeating a production process. At the same time,  customers know their price and the value they’re getting.

In this article, we’ll discuss productization with a particular focus on digital products. We’ll also provide some well-known examples and uncover the underlying value this process offers to businesses and consumers alike. More specifically, we’ll highlight why today’s companies are shifting to a product-first approach and why it’s a trend that will stay.

The key to productization is making items according to the same standard. As we said, the name of the game is repeatable and reproducible. Every Big Mac is (almost) the same. So is the iPhone, MS Office, or Mailchimp. When buying these items, you know what to expect. 

However, even though these examples are household names, productization isn’t just slapping a fancy name on something and calling it a day. A distinctive name accompanied by a sleek visual style can impact the adoption of your product, but if your product isn’t much to begin with, no copy or design will make it work.

Real productization of business capabilities is a serious endeavor. We can show this on a simple McKinseyian chart. All services and products live somewhere on this scale.

Venturing into super app development may seem like an excellent idea. These large-scope, multi-purpose digital products can bring a heap of benefits to a business. However, they also come with an inherent set of challenges. Let’s explore what it takes to build a super app.

Once upon a time, but actually not so long ago, a client came to us with the idea of building an app that would include a number of services with little logical connection between them. It was to include “a little of everything”: an influencers-powered community, financial services, gaming-related content, and a number of other options. In essence, they were looking to build – a super app. 

Super app development isn’t exactly a new concept. For a while, we’ve observed giants like WeChat or Alipay reap the benefits of these all-in-one wonder apps, but with Elon Musk’s ambitious plans about turning the social media platform formerly known as Twitter into one, super apps are back in the spotlight. 

Businesses, no doubt, find the idea of super app development captivating. These large-scope, multi-purpose, web or mobile digital products with numerous features come with an array of potential benefits. However, building a successful super app also comes with a complex set of challenges. Only a handful of global companies have succeeded at it, and even this is in part due to very specific market conditions. 

So, before you start jotting down your billion-dollar app idea like our client, let’s go over the specifics of what it takes to build a super app. 

The definition is simple. A super app is a mobile or web application that provides multiple functionalities and services in one platform. It allows users to perform different kinds of tasks without switching between apps.

The term was first introduced by BlackBerry founder Mike Lazaridis during a speech at the Mobile World Congress in 2010. He was referring to a “new class of applications” that use a digital platform or ecosystem to provide users with a seamless experience across devices. In other words, people can manage both daily tasks and less frequent ones all in one place.

Need to order a pizza? Check. Want to hail a ride? Check. Craving some late-night retail therapy? Double check. Super apps are the Swiss Army knives of the digital world, and they promise to revolutionize the way we navigate our daily lives.

When we talk about super app development, the first example that comes to everyone’s mind is definitely WeChat. Its users can chat, play, order a ride, pay bills, donate money, buy movie tickets, and benefit from a number of other services within the same interface. In China, WeChat is omnipresent: the number of its monthly active users reached 1.29 billion in 2022, and 88% of all Chinese mobile users open it every day.

Other globally known super apps include:

Note: This post has been updated on February 7 to include the information about Vision Pro’s launch.

On February 2, 2024, Apple’s highly aniticipated Vision Pro mixed reality “spatial computing” headset finally made its way into the hands of the users. As the reviews pour in, we share the perspectives of our product strategists Ante and Zach, who commented on Apple’s revolutionary product back when it was first announced on WWDC23.

Just like the original announcement sparked excitement and applause among many supporters while leaving others underwhelmed, our strategists had opposite opinions on this new immersive piece of technology.

If you’re in search of effective meeting strategies, we’ve got the key. Applying workshop principles to meetings makes them more productive, engaging, and overall successful.

“Another meeting that should have been an email,” you think as you’re leaving another not-so-focused session with your colleagues feeling none the wiser.

According to a survey of 150+ senior managers in a range of industries, here are some of the factors that give meetings a bad rep:

On the other hand, as appealing as it may appear, email is not always an adequate substitute for meetings. So is all lost, or is there a way to make meetings effective? We’ve got good news.

Our experience has shown that the most efficient way to kick off projects is with discovery workshops.

Workshops are meetings in the sense that you get people together, either in a room with coffee and donuts or on Zoom, but that’s where the similarity ends. 

Many clients are positively surprised by the outputs of discovery workshops, commenting on how efficient the workshop was, how they learned plenty, and how they generally developed an awareness of things they hadn’t previously considered.

Here’s how to prevent participants from scrolling through LinkedIn in packed meeting rooms and create effective meeting strategies by applying the principles of workshops.  

It’s important to prepare an agenda and essential to respect it. Ideally, you would assign a timebox to every item on your agenda to make sure all important things get the attention they deserve.

For starters, predict a 5-minute timeslot right at the beginning so everyone can catch up, and you don’t have to backtrack later to fill somebody in. The idea is to create a common starting ground and eliminate assumptions with facts.

Also, if you’re doing a presentation, leave time for feedback. If it’s a discussion, limit the duration for each discussion point.

Every workshop has a facilitator. That’s the person who creates the agenda, moderates sessions, and ensures discussions are on point. They are also responsible for asking critical questions and making sure all the participants are engaged. 

Why not appoint a facilitator for a meeting? It should be someone who is aware of the participants’ strong sides and areas of expertise. The facilitator should also maintain a healthy balance of engagement among the participants, encouraging those who aren’t contributing enough and tactfully pulling the brake on those who tend to hog the discussion.

A workshop always has a goal or desired outcome, and activities are curated to direct the participants toward reaching that goal. 

Think about the type of meeting you’re organizing:

Establish the goal of your meeting beforehand. That way, you’ll know what is the best path to reach it.

When people come to meetings, sometimes they believe that clicking “accept” on the invitation is preparation enough. These people will show up in the allotted time slot but stay muted with the camera off so they can continue scrolling through LinkedIn. And can you blame them? Too many meetings end without a tangible output or defined next steps. 

In comparison, when people come to workshops, they come prepared. They know there’s work to be done and that they are expected to be productive; otherwise, they’re wasting time. The difference is in the mindset, and having the right mindset makes all the difference.

So there you have it: an agenda, a facilitator, a goal, and the right mindset could turn your meetings around. Try applying these workshop principles to make meetings effective, engaging, and overall successful.

And don’t forget to turn action points from your meeting into tasks in your agency management tool! We use Productive, because it makes us, you know, more productive.

And if you’re looking to build a digital product, take a shortcut and let Infinum facilitate a discovery workshop for your team.

Design sprint. Crazy 8’s. Flowchart. Ideation. If you’re a start-up founder or product owner, you’ve probably heard these words several times over when communicating with your digital transformation partner.

Every profession has its jargon. But if it’s not your profession, talking to design and product strategy professionals may feel like visiting Cambodia without an interpreter.

We’ve facilitated dozens of product discovery workshops for clients from various industries, so you know you’re getting insight straight from the source.

A person who breaks ties in voting, usually one with a vested interest in the project’s success and power over the budget.

Basically, another way of saying that the boss has the final word.

Google-developed workshop framework for coming up with ideas and testing them in five days.

Google-developed workshop framework done by people who couldn’t get into Google.

Thursday, 7.30pm

“Thank God tomorrow is a holiday!” — Beta saying this to me was the third cue we were burned out. The first one was skipping lunch for four days in a row. The second was working 9+ hours every day.

Doing workshops remotely can take its toll. Here are ten ways to make it easier for yourself, inspired by personal experience. We learned this the hard way so you don’t have to.

Let’s say the client forwards you two years’ worth of customer research. Don’t get yourself in this situation. Clients believe that “everything is there; you just need to read it through.” We tried to read AND understand it all —  mission impossible. Unlike the client, we (and you probably) don’t have the business knowledge to guide us to insights. 

What to do? Send the client a structured checklist (feel free to use ours) and tell them they should make a presentation deck that answers all those questions. Tell them to be brief and keep it visually simple.

In workshops, you need to be able to rely on your partner and be ready to jump in at a moment’s notice. Study the workshop exercises, get to know their flow and goal. Make sure both team members leading the workshop know all the planned exercises.

Prevent exhaustion by switching between the role of the moderator and that of the facilitator. The moderator is the one talking, leading the exercise, and encouraging participants to, well… participate. The facilitator’s role is not that prominent. They need to keep tabs on the discussion, note anything important, and possibly prepare the materials for the next exercise.

Switching between roles will keep you fresh for exercises you’re moderating by giving you time to charge your batteries when you’re facilitating.

(Wo)man plans, God laughs. Well, design Gods must have had a wonderful time with our workshop. The client’s team couldn’t open Figma or Zoom due to IT security restrictions. Cue panic attack. We googled solutions on-site in real-time. Panic keystrokes led to these discoveries.

Zoom alternatives: Whereby (no install needed, our favorite), Jitsi, Meetup (G Suite)
Figma alternatives: Miro, Jamboard (G Suite), mural.co

How did it go? They all used Zoom on their iPads. We couldn’t solve the problem with Figma, so we gave them “pen-paper-photo” homework. It even helped the participants get more creative. Sometimes it pays off to go analog.

I (Beta) lived 300 m (less than 1000 feet) from my high school. Do you know who was always five minutes late for class? My friend Josephine. She lived 200 m from school. And I, of course. Remote workshops are always “one click away,” meaning people will postpone getting there until they’re late. It happened on 7/7 days of our workshop.

Shuffle exercises or skip them if you already got that insight. And for each day, plan a 30-minute buffer. Focus on the main problems you are trying to solve rather than covering everything. If you get the core things right, everything else will fall into place. Prepare “nice to have” exercises (like tone and voice) in case you have some extra time.

As you probably know, participants aren’t that pumped at the beginning of in-person workshops – and even less so when it comes to remote workshops. How to tackle that?

Do what you would normally do. Have an ice-breaking activity, just a digital one. In our case, we asked participants to write down their three favorite dishes on post-its and move them into the correct cuisine rectangle. The topic will spark some jokes and most importantly, raise everyone’s spirits. All the while they’ll learn how to duplicate post-its, write on them and move them around the board. Win-win.

Have you ever watched sports on mute? It’s boring. It’s the commentator that gets you immersed. Utilize that in your remote workshops. For the first three activities, we needed hydraulics just to get a “yes/no” out of participants. 

Then it hit us: what if we made one or two of them commentators? They would be appointed to talk to us, discuss, and provide us with their insights. Listening while their colleagues talk will spring others into action – they’ll likely expand on something.

We’ve all done it in college: Blend in with the mass of other students at the lecture and not pay attention. The same thing happens when everyone’s cameras are off.

Asking people to switch them on has several benefits for you as a workshop moderator:

Sometimes, getting workshop participants to talk can be difficult. Other times, it might be hard to get them to stop. You could run into one of their long-lasting internal struggles. Everyone starts discussing something that’s important business-wise but is not making you any wiser.
In those situations, having a “for later” page/board in Figma was a lifesaver. Magic words when we felt control slipping away from us: “How about we put this on the Important issues board and get back to it at the end of our workshop?”

In a live workshop, we would usually step outside for a second and silently coordinate about the next steps. Being on a video call makes that hardly possible. 

We used Slack as a back channel. Skype or any kind of chatting tool will be just fine. Btw, turn your notifications off when screen sharing. You don’t want your clients to see the kinds of profanities that get shared on the #bad_jokes channel.

Chatting on Slack helped us keep things flowing smoothly and monitor the workshop’s progress. It’s also great for venting your frustrations and encouraging each other. Believe us, you’ll need it.

In previous remote workshops, we noticed that a 2-4 hour duration was the sweet spot. Everyone’s brains turn into mashed potatoes after that. That’s why we opted for a shorter workshop duration but more instances overall.

We used the rest of the daily hours to summarize the work completed so far. Starting each day with a summary of the previous day gives participants the feeling of progress and energizes them for the day ahead. 

There you are. Use these tips well, and you’ll do your remote workshop like a pro. We’d be glad to hear back about how these tips worked for you — drop us a line.

Here’s how a sleazy salesman’s pitch for workshops would go: What if I told you there’s a way to save money and time, lower the risk of your project failing, and get your team to come up with better ideas? Would you be interested in that?

Of course, you would. 

Unfortunately, that’s not always the case, and many workshops (and other activities marketed as such) will fall short of that promise. 

To have workshops truly work for you, there are three essential steps you should follow:

These steps apply to every digital product and every client looking to obtain one, from pre-seed startups to industry behemoths. Heck, Google is a factory of workshopping techniques! They’ve gotten where they are today because they’ve mastered the ideation process. But I get ahead of myself. We’ll get back to Google in a second.

To start things off, you need to do your research and gather all the information that might be relevant to your future product.

Phrases like “my wife uses these a lot”, “I like how this app does that”, and “we could make the scanning automatic” get thrown around in workshops a lot. However, none of them are relevant or helpful. Such opinions and assumptions won’t get you anywhere.

Let’s work in reverse. What do you need to know before you go into a session? First, the reason why someone would use your app. And second, how they are doing that right now. In product design, we have some fancy names for these two things: persona and user journey.

A persona identifies the goals your app could help people achieve and the pain points you can help them avoid. Think of your app as either a vitamin pill or a painkiller.

The user journey lays out what people are currently doing to solve their problems, step by step. It also identifies the thoughts and feelings connected to each of those steps. People may be excited or confused at checkout, and any case is a completely different design ball game.

There are multiple ways you can gather insights about a persona and the user journey:

The final step is to compile your findings and create personas and user journeys. There are gazillions of templates for personas and user journeys available. Going with Figma’s or Miro’s official templates is a safe bet.

One rule that should be applied for your groundwork research is the same as for leg day: don’t skip it. Operating on the grounds of assumptions ensures you’ll get the least out of the next phase – ideation.

This is the part where Google comes in. One of their employees, Jake Knapp, created a workshopping framework called Design Sprint. The TLDR; in five days, teams can create a solution, test it with users and know whether or not the idea is viable. Yes, five days and done. When you’re Google, things need to happen fast. 

The other workshopping framework we’ve adopted is Design Thinking by IDEO. Similar to Design Sprint, it starts by empathizing with the users, follows with solution ideation, and wraps things up by showing the solution to the target users and getting their feedback.

By marrying these two approaches, your team can come up with ideas quickly, iterate through them, and validate the winning idea.

Your team needs to feel comfortable in the session. Before the workshop, you should have a short one-on-one call with all the participants. Show them around the workshopping tool so that they’re comfortable with it on the first day of sessions.

Next, plan for an ice-breaker at the beginning of the workshop session. Two truths and a lie is a cheesy one, but it never fails to make everyone laugh.

Also, don’t forget to set clear rules of communication:

There’s one more crucial step: Assign the role of a decision-maker to one of the participants. That’s the person who has the budgeting power and skin in the game. They’ll steer the product and break any ties in voting.

Now it’s time for all of that groundwork research to shine.

Show the personas, the user journey, and your competitive analysis to the participants. Give everyone enough time to go through all the insights. 

Start the discussion. What do the participants think? Does this align with their experience so far? Do they disagree with some of the insights and have the data to back up their opinion? 

Once everyone has ingested all of the data, it’s time to decide what’s going to be the focus of your ideation. Tip: choose the part of the user journey that can make or break your app, and is closely connected to the persona’s goals and pain points. Let the participants vote on it. If tied, it’s the decision-maker’s call. 

For instance, the checkout stage is not the most impactful part of the user journey for Amazon. But discovering products is. That’s probably their focus when workshopping.

Time to put everyone’s ideas in black and white. Everybody sketches at this point. Sketching makes any idea concrete and helps avoid pointless abstract discussions.

When sketching is done, participants vote on others’ ideas. But there should be no pitching. You want participants to evaluate the ideas on their own. 

Everyone gets as many dots (i.e., votes) as they want. They place dots on the things they believe are great. That can be the whole concept or a part of it.

In the end, you have a heatmap of great ideas. Your design team can easily combine them into simple screen designs that will be tested by users. You need to validate if the concept really hits the mark with your users.

Find six people who represent your persona, i.e., your target audience. Reach out to them and ask if they can help you with an app you’re working on. Usually, you’ll need to provide some incentive for them to participate. We use Prolific to recruit participants. 

Avoid using your friends and family as testers. They’re biased like Fox News. They want you to succeed, so they’ll praise the product and brush away some things they actually didn’t like. Go for total strangers instead of your aunt Tonya.

First, write down the tasks you want users to be able to perform in your app, whether it’s looking for vacuum cleaners, recording their performance, or sending $50 to a friend. You’ll base these tasks off the user journey. 

These tasks will steer your design and prototyping. There’s no need to design screens that are unrelated to the tasks. Keep the designing process as lean as possible. You’re testing the core of the experience, not designing the whole app.

Your design team needs to go beyond just static screens. They need to make things interactive. We suggest going with Figma’s prototyping. It’s simple, seamlessly integrates with your design team’s work, and is easy to share with participants.

Once the prototype is done, you’re ready to interview users.

Here’s how Google does interviews in their Design sprints:

Boom, done in around 45 minutes. You’ve captured the participants’ previous experiences, seen them using your product, and heard their reactions in the end.

Yes, there’s some nuance to it. But it really is that simple. 

One trick that helps us a lot in the validation process: let every workshop participant listen in. They can simply turn off their cameras and mics and listen to the user. It packs more of a punch than reading a report.

There you have it. Three fairly easy steps to get the most out of discovery workshops. If you have questions and need answers, reach out to us.

UX is all about people, and funnily enough, so is psychology. That’s why we have three psychologists on our team, two of whom are writing this. 

Some impactful psychology findings and theories are in almost every UX article (?  hey there, Gestalt principles), while others are left behind. So, here’s a list of lesser-known psychology insights you can apply right away on your next project.

People remember things that stand out. Out of the ordinary, unusual and strange. Break rules of the physical world in your designs on purpose to make people remember something.

When to use: onboarding screens, delight points in user flow, splash screens

German researcher von Restorff found that “sticking out to be remembered” works even without bizarreness. For instance, people will better remember the word “chair” if words for fruit surround it. 

How to apply it in UX? Stretch your brand book a bit and create a few distinctive screens. The visual novelty will make them more memorable.

When to use: critical screen (e.g., checkout), onboarding, new features’ screens

We hate losing two to three times more than we like winning or gaining something. Playing it safe is what kept your ancestors from eating that “maybe rotten” mammoth.

Frame the (in)action in your app as avoiding something bad for users, and you should see an uplift in that behavior. But don’t overdo it, don’t scare users all the time.

When to use: upsell, permission priming, landing pages, pricing pages

Psychologist Zeigarnik discovered that people better remember tasks they haven’t finished than the ones they have. So, break user flows (or content) into smaller chunks to make people come back for more.

When to use: shopping carts, profile setting, learning lessons, long forms

Dad’s smile, mum’s hug, grandparents’ bribe sweets – that’s how you’ve learned your native language. They’ve praised every linguistic step you’ve taken. So do the same for your users: praise them every time they take the desired action.

When to use: success screens, first interactions with the app, teaching users more complex features, confirmation emails

This one is simple: tell people why they should do something. Be clear and concise in your copy and design, and you should see more users taking that action. Bonus points: combine it with a “You lose!” insight.

When to use: checkout, small new features, permission priming, upsell, error messages

Compliments work. Even when people are warned that someone will try to flatter their way to a “yes”.

Use it for praising the user’s action (like “Tap on the back”) or as a primer for asking users to do something. Keep your compliments specific and believable. 

When to use: onboarding, landing pages, success screens

We love to think our behavior is consistent. We value it in others and in ourselves. Leverage that in UX. Occasionally, remind users how using your app aligns with their previous behavior.

When to use: additional requests, escalating user commitment, soft retention

Next time you’re in a cafe, observe people when they’re sitting down at the table. Everyone moves their chair around a bit. Why? We like to customize our environment. Your app shouldn’t be an exception.

When to use: customizable UI color, personal shortcuts in the app, favorites, user name visible

Getting better at something feels good. From tiny things like making your first real dish (fish sticks don’t count) to getting an MA in whatever makes you happy (or rich).

Acquiring a new skill or understanding a new concept is a reward in itself. Takeaway: match the UX to the users’ competence level. 

When to use: reveal complex features and subfeatures, add shortcuts, remove UI elements (e.g. labels)

Should you apply all of these insights straight away? Of course not. Choose the ones that fit your project best.

If it works out, cool. Be sure to mention us in your Apple Design Awards acceptance speech. If not, it’s a long list, choose another insight and bake it into your designs. After all, to design is to experiment, right?