How do you tell your Early Adopters from your Early Majority?
The technology adoption lifecycle model theorizes that the adoption of a given product follows a fairly predictable bell curve. Crossing the Chasm, from Geoffrey Moore, talks about the importance of being able to transition specifically from Early Adopters to Early Majority. I was curious about how to know the distinction between the two, so I brought it up during discussion this week in #MVPDesignHacks. How do you tell your Early Adopters from your Early Majority?
Some key differences:
- Early adopters don't need to be convinced that there is a problem to be solved. They already know it.
- Early adopters have a higher pain tolerance for prototype-looking interfaces and buggy experiences.
- Early adopters have a lot of insight (sometimes too much!) for you about features and use cases. It's important to help filter those into feedback you can really take action on.
On the other side...
- Early majority wants social validation before buying into your idea.
- Early majority needs convincing that there's a problem to be solved.
It'll be interesting to see specific examples of one or the other as we conduct our market research. Really excited to continue taking this course. :)
MVP Design Hacks - Build a Faster, Smarter MVP
