An enjoyable RPG-inspired workshop exercise to make sure you’ve considered your product idea thoroughly and to generate ideas for enhancements using some lateral thinking It may or may not be evident, depending on your familiarity with role-playing games. When I was playing the fantastic Divinity: Original Sin 2, I found that I spent a lot of time looking at and comparing item descriptions like these in order to improve my characters’ equipment. Although it may not seem like it at first, item descriptions are a very detailed synopsis of what a product is. I found it intriguing to try applying this idea to different kinds of products because it closely mimics the decision-making process that customers go through.
I discovered that creating an item description card for your product was a fantastic brainstorming exercise and an intriguing derivative of the now popular Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) approach by analyzing the RPG principles and modifying them to find real-life equivalents. Let’s examine the various components of an item description to see what queries it could raise for you and your product.
Item name: Is there a catchy name for your product?
The item’s name appears first in the item description. Similar to product names, object names can be anything from boring to fierce. The “First impression your product will ever make on a potential customer” might very well be the name you have chosen for your product. The distinction between the basic crossbow and the other two in the aforementioned examples
In a similar vein, you should probably give your product a name that expresses more than just the category it falls under (more on that later). One approach to think about it is to take a cue from Kathy Sierra’s book Badass: Making Users Awesome and ask yourself, “What would a badass user name their favorite tool?”
Action Points: How much work do I need to put into your product?
The quantity of action points is the second component of an item’s description. For those who are unfamiliar with turn-based role-playing games, action points are the price of utilizing an item. They work on their own without any input from the player. In other words, they “automate” their task and do not need any input from the player.
What does this mean for your product?
People can only do so much. You can only think about how much work is need to use your product. In order to maximize your product’s value, your product should ideally need the least amount of work (assuming that people do not enjoy the work).
Item Category: Does your product fall into a distinct category?
Each item falls into a category, just like actual products: crossbow, wand, shield, dagger, spear, staff, boots, two-handed axe—you get the picture. It’s crucial to consider your product category for at least two reasons: Once you have determined that your product falls into a specific category, you will choose your direct rivals as well as some of the marketing channels that your target audience will use to find you (e.g., an Amazon category page, or a Google results page when people search for a particular type of item).
The second, and possibly more significant, consequence of doing so is that you may be tempte to artificially restrict your thoughts to a specific category when your product actually belongs in a different one. For instance, you may believe that you are developing a time-tracking mobile application such as Controlio, but what if generating context-aware logs would make another type of product a superior solution?
A crucial aspect is that your competitors are only partially define by your product category. Depending on what consumers hope to accomplish with their soft drink, soft drinks compete not only with other soft drinks but also with water, whatever else people can eat or drink while watching TV, and so on.
Item Damage: How do you assess the value you offer your users?
This section of the description, which explains what the product performs for the user, is likely the most crucial. It serves as the product’s primary objective. It’s the work it does. It is the reason it exists. The tectonic plate is the measure across which all boundaries are defined if categories are used to define the borders of various nations. The goal of a weapon is to inflict damage. The purpose of armor is to shield the character. These advantages are conveniently quantifiable in Divinity through the use of armor and damage points.
Disclaimer
The information provided in this article is for general informational and creative brainstorming purposes only and should not be considered professional business, marketing, or product development advice. The RPG-inspired framework discussed is a conceptual exercise intended to encourage creative thinking and idea generation, and its effectiveness may vary depending on the product, market, and implementation. References to specific concepts, games, or tools (including Controlio) are for illustrative purposes only and do not constitute an endorsement. Readers are encourage to supplement this approach with validated research methods and professional guidance when developing or marketing products.
John