Adaptive Path Blog

While technology can changes quickly, our human behavior lags far behind. That’s why some of the older resources about behavior are more true than ever. Take Everett M Rogers’ book Diffusion of Innovations, originally written in 1962 and revised in 2003. Rogers lists five perceived attributes that inform people’s decisions about adopting new technologies:

• Relative advantage - the degree to which an innovation is perceived as better than the idea it supersedes
• Compatibility - the degree to which an innovation is perceived as being consistent with the existing values, past experiences, and needs of potential adopters
• Complexity - the degree to which an innovation is perceived as difficult to understand and use
• Trialability - the degree to which an innovation may be experimented with on a limited basis
• Observability - the degree to which the results of an innovation are visible to others

Whether you’re asking users, customers, or organizations to adopt a new solution, these all make sense as a well-rounded checklist the ensure your innovation’s adoptable. Any one care to try to add to this list?

This entry was posted on Monday, May 15th, 2006 at 9:51 pm and is filed under Product Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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