Digital products are everywhere today, but they don’t seem to be doing us much good. Instead of empowering us and making our lives easier, they get in the way of getting things done or coming up with creative solutions to solve our everyday problems.
It’s time digital products started empowering us by making our lives easier! Let’s take a look at 3 ways digital products can start empowering us today and help you build better products for your audience tomorrow!
The Problem,
As digital products start moving into more places in our lives, they continue to isolate us rather than empower us. They’re designed around profit and page views instead of human needs, not around helping you achieve your goals or helping you make friends.
So it’s time for a change! At Wish Labs, we created a product that connects to your existing calendar, so it knows what you already have going on each day. It automatically picks from thousands of experiences based on your interests — and lets you know how long each one will take (so no unexpected hours-long hikes).
What does that mean? In short: Less time planning and more time doing with real people IRL. Our goal is simple: To bring back unplanned outings with friends.
We’ve all been there. We try a new app or buy some shiny new productivity tool, and we’re psyched. But then we actually start using it and our enthusiasm quickly fades.
The reason? Most products aren’t built with a focus on helping us achieve our goals — they’re built around making their creator's money. As a result, they’re buggy, complicated, and loaded with features you don’t need. That needs to change. Here’s how
There are so many tools and resources out there that empower us. Yet, most of them aren’t using their powers for good!
The Challenge
In a world driven by innovation, technology, and information, it seems like everything is changing. New tools and products seem to be emerging all the time: Twitter, Square, Venmo, Shopify. Yet one thing remains constant: The consumer’s quest for convenience.
Thanks to digital tools and mobile devices, we’re able to make purchases in ways that weren’t possible even just five years ago. But while our options are growing exponentially as new technologies emerge, there are still many fundamental issues that plague online shoppers from all walks of life.
I believe that it’s time for digital products to start empowering us and helping us overcome these everyday frustrations with shopping through convenient solutions.
It’s time digital products start empowering us. And they need to do so by doing what you believe that digital products are currently empowering us? If so, what are your criteria for empowerment? If not, why do you think they’re not empowering?
Do you feel digital products can be empowering or just a waste of time? How would you define digital products, and is there such a thing as empowerment in a box? Should businesses focus on creating new ways to empower us, or try different approaches with existing technologies/products?
The Solution
One of my favorite things about digital products is that they make it so easy for people to get started, without having a ton of money. You can sell your courses or books at a premium price, but many also have options that are $20 or less.
I think we need more and more low-hanging fruit-type offerings because when you’re just starting out, getting your first 10–50 clients is really what matters most. It’s much easier to get there with a low-priced product than it is with no product at all.
In fact, we’ve seen some great results ourselves recently by introducing a lite version of our flagship course. It’s time for a change in digital products, and I want to lead that change. From here on out, we need digital products designed with our well-being in mind, rather than just asking us to sacrifice privacy and attention.
And sometimes even dignity so that they can make money. Digital products can be built into tools of empowerment. They should ask us what we want rather than tell us what we’re going to get. They should build trust not by taking our information, but by respecting it.
For many, early retirement is an appealing fantasy. The freedom of time and money only achievable by quitting your job sounds like a dream come true. However, with so many competing interests in our lives these days, it’s often hard to muster up the discipline required for consistent progress towards our goals.
What Can We Do?
There’s a time and place for everything, and if you have an idea or message that really resonates with people, using it as a platform to make money is a great way to get it out there.
When used in conjunction with other marketing strategies, digital products can help attract attention from new customers and engage those who already know your brand. But before creating something like an e-book or workbook (although these are great too), think of ways you can add value first.
Say, by offering free webinars or a free trial of your service? This can give potential customers confidence in your expertise and make them feel more comfortable committing their hard-earned cash.
A large majority of tech products on the market today were created and marketed by men. They were built with male users in mind and made it easy for women to create uploads, and use these apps.
Most digital products remain gender-neutral (see: Airbnb, ordering at restaurants). For those that don’t, they are often missing features that would make them more accommodating or appealing to a broader set of consumers.
To empower ourselves, we must be proactive. We have to reach out and take what we want, not just hope that opportunities will come knocking on our door. We must think about creating things and about pushing ideas forward instead of being spectators, sitting by, and watching others get ahead.
It’s time for us to stop waiting and start working; it’s time for us to put an end to traditional methods of work and set our own standards. It’s time for digital products to start empowering us!
How can we be empowered?
Whenever we’re given a digital product, like an online course or self-published book, there is a common expectation that we need to be empowered and instructed as users of these products.
To do what? That’s left up in the air. We’re never told what it is that our digital products are supposed to empower us with — but with more courses and books on sale than ever before, there must be something those products are trying to do.
What if one day you woke up and discovered that you had all of your most important values and needs in a digital product format that automatically manages those things based on your past activity? Could that really happen? Yes, and it’s time it happened.
But we’re not talking about just any products here — we’re talking about digital products designed to solve personal and professional problems. We’re talking about digital products meant to help us live more organized, productive, creative lives.
We are constantly being bombarded with information, stories, articles, and advertisements about how great it is to be empowered. They tell us that empowering others is a great way to feel like we’re part of something bigger than ourselves.
This all sounds pretty positive on its face. However, as I think about what I’ve observed over time, empowerment has started to become more about power and less about what it means from an actual humanistic standpoint.
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