4 Strategies for Making Your Product 'Smarter' A fertile frontier for invention is upgrading familiar products to make them more responsive and useful.

"Smart" is the dominant trend in the area of entrepreneurship and innovation. In recent times, a plethora of new products have arrived that make an existing product "smarter" by incorporating sensors, connecting the product to their backend or adding intelligence in the product. Reimagining existing products to be smarter and better for the end user is a gold mine for innovation. Here are four ways to rethink your products and make them smarter.

1. Understand user intent and motivations.

Make your products smarter by making it listen and understand the intent of your user. What is the user trying to do at a given time or at a given location on a specific channel? By listening for signals that motivate the usage of your product, and accounting for how variations in these signals change how your product is used, you can predict and influence how your product should adjust to better serving the end user.

For example, a smart refrigerator can detect the contents, match it against the required ingredients for a decided dinner menu and remind the user to restock a certain missing ingredient.

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2. Reach users at the right time.

You can make your products smarter by reaching the user at the right time with the right message, even if the user is not using the product at a given point in time. Making the product aware of the user's environment offers the opportunity to craft a personalized message to enhance the user experience. You can then motivate and influence the user to use the product at the opportune time in the manner that is most beneficial for both the user and the product.

For example, a smart app can detect the user's location in a particular grocery aisle and alert them an item they need to replace is on sale.

3. Enable good decisions.

Smart products help the user make the best decisions. By understanding the user's context and their current environment, you can suggest alternatives, recommend choices or simply notify them of changes in their environment they might otherwise not have noticed. This capability enables the user to make informed choices and decisions, thus enhancing their experience and satisfaction from the product.

For example, by integrating traffic signals in a navigation system, the user can be notified of alternate routes when there are problems in their usual route.

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4. Enhance user experience.

You can make your products smarter by enhancing the user's experience, regardless of where they are in their journey with your product. If they are a new user, your product should help them onboard. If they are an active user, your product should make them more productive. If they are a dissatisfied user, your product should detect their dissatisfaction and offer the appropriate support and guidance to help them recover. In parallel, the product should learn from their situation and use this feedback in redesigning or refactoring the product.

For example, a product company that performs sentiment analysis on their twitter stream is able to swiftly detect user discontent and feed that into their support ticketing system for immediate response and follow up.

The ability to collect telemetry of how your product is being used, use sensors to detect the environment in which it is being used and use customer usage history in the backend to understand user intent has the potential to reinvigorate your existing products to be smarter and more beneficial for their users. Similarly, reimagining or innovating using the above principles offers entrepreneurs the opportunity to disrupt current products and markets and ride the "smart" wave to success.

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