Deep Dive: Augmented Product & The Design Mix

Image courtesy of @mael_bld via Unsplash.

Our ‘Deep Dives’ will be an ongoing series of blogs in which we will take a closer look into specific techniques and principles you can use to improve your business, focusing on branding, design and business.

Our goal is to empower you with everything you need to build better solutions for your consumers and clients.

So strap on your flippers and top up your breathing tank ready for some game-changing wisdom.

In this edition, we are going to talk about the concept of the augmented product, and how to create one using the Design Mix.

Image courtesy of @juliandufort via Unsplash.

How do you improve your product offering?

Do you often wonder how to improve your product offering?

What can your product or brand offer that your competition doesn’t?

The answer could be developing your augmented product.

Let’s start with defining what the augmented product actually is - it’s a model for providing a complete consumer experience, going beyond just the physical product.

It allows us to build a wider experience around our products beyond just the physical items.

Sometimes this model is called ‘Three Levels of a Product’ - the best way to show this model is three concentric circles.

In this deep dive, I’ll use the mega-brand Apple as an example to showcase what augmented products are and how they fit in with the Design Mix.

Image courtesy of @juliandufort via Unsplash.

The Core Benefit

This is what makes your product or service valuable.

It’s the reason people buy your products over everyone else's - your major differentiator, your unique selling point.

Every choice you make as a brand or business should have its roots firmly planted around this statement.

Understanding the benefits of your products and brand is crucial to building a real and meaningful connection with consumers.

It stands to reason that this impacts the augmented product format a great deal, as the model is only as good as its core benefit.

For more on benefits and features check out our blog dedicated to the subject here.

Apple’s Core Benefit:
Connection.

Now let’s move out into the middle level…

Image courtesy of @juliandufort via Unsplash.

Physical Products

This is where your physical tangible product sits.

This level is where we record the users’ experience of your products: performance, packaging, features, usability, styling, quality and form.

Apple’s Physical Products:
iWatch, iPhone, iPod, iPad, iTunes etc.

Image courtesy of @juliandufort via Unsplash.

The Augmented Product

The final and outer level is the augmented product.

This is the non-physical or intangible part of the product, where we can add a lot of value to our consumers. 

Often, these are the things that we base our purchasing decisions on, including (but not limited to): brands, finance, installation, retail experience, service, promotion, warranty, updates, or delivery.

Think how many times you have chosen one product over another very similar product based on these kinds of extras.

Apple’s Augmented Product:
iStore, Steve Jobs, Brand Recognition, Joni Ives, Advertisements etc.

How do I create an augmented product as strong and recognisable as Apple’s?

Right about now, you're probably thinking this is all well and good, but how do I create an augmented product as strong and recognisable as Apple’s?

That is where the Design Mix comes in - to create a great augmented product requires the mix of design disciplines and synergy of design disciplines.

These design disciplines could include product design, packaging design, service design, interaction design, information design, app design… the list goes on and on.

Each one of these design disciplines must have your brand or business's core benefit at the centre of everything it does.

This is the thing that will connect and bind all the disciplines together; it’s the glue that holds your brand and business together.

Ignore your core benefit and ignore your business

This is something Steve Jobs knew all too well.

He understood early on that it’s often what the augmented product can offer that draws consumers in.

Think about it: Apple doesn’t really have the best products, but it does have some of the augmented products in the world - the connectivity between all parts of the brand and its products. 

This is what resonates with consumers and keeps them engaged in the brand and its offering.

It turns consumers into followers, and followers will bring you success and all the rewards that come with it.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself and your business to get the best flavour from your design mix:

• What part or parts of the augmented product model drives consumers to purchase in the market?

• Which of these parts of the augmented product is already being offered by your competition?

• What design skills or categories do you have available to you right now?

• What design skills do you need to learn or get access to?

• Establish cost, benefits and possible results for each of these parts?

Now you have everything you need to map out your own design mix for your business or brand and begin to build better augmented products for your consumers.

If you take one thing away from this deep dive, remember that we as consumers buy not just the tangible product on the shelf, we buy into everything around the product - the brand, the service, and the packaging. 

Don’t underestimate the value of this concept with your consumers.

That’s all for this deep dive, and time to get out of these wetsuits and flippers so we can start implementing what we’ve learned!

Let me know if you have any questions about this blog in the comments below.

Stay tuned for more Deep Dive blogs in the future.

I just wanted to say a massive thank you to all my sources of inspiration:
Chris Do and the whole team at The Futur, David Brier, Blair Enns, Fabian Geyrhalter and Douglas Davis, just to name a few. 

Not forgetting every source from my research-trawling of the internet and my old university lectures on design in business.