If I were Product Manager at Apple or Fitbit for a Day
A post from the playground.
A while ago, I started a series called ‘The Product Playground’. In the Product Playground, Product ideas live. These could either be ideas of new products or iterations of existing ones. This is the second post from the Playground.
As part of the requirements for a product management course I took a while ago, I had to come up with a marketing mix for different products. What this required me to do, was to define a strategy to focus on products that were at different stages of the product lifecycle.
This exercise in itself isn’t one that is new, as Product Managers often spend time weighing in on existing products, even if casually; or thinking up ideas for new products. In fact, I won’t be surprised if more PMs than not, have an ‘ideas book’ where they jot down different product ideas. My notes app has a section for this.
Personally, I found engaging in this exercise particularly fun and loved the accountability that came with having to share. So here goes.
Getting Started
There are 4 stages in the product development lifecycle — introduction to market, growth, maturity, and decline. For this exercise, I chose products in the growth (Fitbit) and maturity stages (Apple).
The marketing mix involves coming up with a product strategy that is usually a combination of product enhancements, price updates, promotion activities and figuring out distribution(better known as the 4th P, or ‘place’ in the marketing mix). Here’s what I came up with for both products I selected.
Enter the Fitbit Dux
I’ve been a long-standing fan of wearables and got my second fitness tracker in 2015 which was a Fitbit flex. I have been a huge Fitbit fan since then.
Enter the Fitbit Dux. The Dux (which means ‘guide’ in Latin) is a HUD designed to bring your fitness experience to life. The Dux will have the following features:
- Heads-up Display: this will be in the form of a hybrid-sweatband with lenses that users can wear to enhance their runs. While maps are useful tools in helping to navigate an unfamiliar run trail, users either have to rely on audio cues (which is not always a pleasant interruption to the run playlist) or glance down intermittently during the cause of a run to ensure they’re still on track (no pun intended). Using augmented reality (AR), the Dux will help runners track their routes effortlessly, by overlaying the map of the run trail complete with directions.
- Integrating with ‘Smart Equipment’: another strategy will be partnering with ‘smart equipment’ manufacturers, such as dumb-bells. The smart workout equipment will have been integrated with sensors and connected to the Fitbit app. This will help users keep more accurate logs of their workouts (e.g while using a skipping-rope or lifting weights) and also serve to broaden the IOT ecosystem by connecting more devices together.
- AR trainer: this will see AR trainers becoming mainstream and replacing the virtual coaches by replacing videos with a training experience that’s more interactive.
The Apple Remix
This was a bit harder to do, because, who doesn’t love their iPhone? The product enhancements for the iPhone include:
- AR App Store: while AR in itself isn’t new, it's been gaining more and more ground of recent. One strategy to drive the growth and development of AR apps for Apple will be to build an AR app store. The store will serve 2 purposes. The first, similar to the Wikitude AR browser, will be to drive the discovery of AR products. The second will be to build a strong native AR engine, which other applications will leverage to render their AR displays. This will also tie the AR apps more tightly to the Apple ecosystem.
This was a fun exercise to conduct as a PM. If you were a Product Manager at Apple or Fitbit for a day, what would you do differently? Let me know what you think about these enhancements and more in the comments below.
If you enjoyed reading this you can check out the first playground post here.
