When building a better mousetrap is not enough: shoelaces, switching cost & Jobs to be Done
Knowing that you built a better mousetrap, or in this case a shoelace, why do people fail to switch? In this post, I will try to explain how situational context might serve as a driver for people deciding to persist with a product they are currently using or switching over to something else.
Anyone who knows me well knows that I have loyalty towards Puma sneakers that stems back to my college years when I snagged a coding project that they were offering in exchange for…you guessed it sneakers! What can I say, they had a low budget and, at the time, I would have probably spent my money on sneakers anyway. Twenty years later, not much has changed.
Beyond the brand, one thing that all my sneakers have in common, and likely many of yours, are shoelaces. As a matter of fact, shoelaces date as far back as 3300 BC. Remains of am ancient lacing system were identified on Ötzi “The Iceman”, a mummy that was found in 1991. Not many innovations can compete with the shoelace in terms of longevity, but why? Is it the perfect solution? I don’t think so, but you could find them everywhere.
Many new lacing innovations have attempted to make their way into our lives, but none has been able to make a dent in the shoelace market.
Nike even offers a Self-tying Shoes, straight out of Back to the Future!
The list goes on and on, with lacing innovations. What I find to be most notable is that every alternative to the shoelace is probably a better lacing solution in terms of functional process. Laces take seven steps, lock laces take two steps, Velcro and ratchet are one step.
Not only are the alternatives fewer steps in a process, but all of those solutions I mentioned would likely reduce or even eliminate the problem of your shoelaces getting untied. Yet, an unprecedented majority of sneakers sold use the same lacing system that was found on a 5000-year-old mummy.
A conclusion we might make is that both the Need of tying your shoes and Satisfaction of their current solution is high. That is to say, while it may be important to keep my shoes attached to my feet, I am completely satisfied (or satisfied enough) with how I am tying them today, and not willing to change. This means there is a switching cost that is higher than the return I would receive on my investment.
ROI of tying your shoes? WTF Alex?!
To figure out what the cost and benefits are, we need to dig deeper than merely socio-demographic details and task analysis, in this case, “How do you tie your shoe”. In other words, we need to know more than just who and how.
Adding some context
Okay, it’s clear that the simple lace has won the battle of keeping footwear on people’s feet, but did it? In actuality, it has lost miserably in certain situations. Here is where context becomes really important. Let’s take two examples.
Scenario 1: Experience
Congratulations, you are a parent to an active toddler that really makes use of their sneakers but has not yet learned how to tie their shoes. In this scenario, there are a few forces at play.
Suppose that you need to buy a pair of new sneakers for your child. What do you buy?
- The child needs to learn how to tie their shoes. That equates to training costs. Velcro, has little to no training cost for a toddler. Switch to velcro.
- You, or worse, their teacher, which has twenty other students, needs to tie the child’s laces multiple times a day. That is an effort cost. Switch to velcro.
- The child needs to be diligent enough to tie their shoes every time they get untied so they don’t get hurt. That is the cost of governance and safety. Switch to velcro.
The result
In this example, the ROI of switching to an alternate solution far exceeds the cost of staying with the simple shoelace. As a matter of fact, most daycares mandate that all children come in with Velcro sneakers to save the staff time and frustration.
Demand for this alternative for this age-group is so high that it is difficult to find any traditionally laced sneakers for young children on Zappos.
Scenario 2: Environment
It turns out that along with my fascination with sneakers, I was also an avid snowboarder for many years. There are a few requirements for snowboarding that need to be true in order to be able to participate. First, you need a snowboard. Second, you need snowboarding boots, and lastly, you need a mountain with snow. Everything else is optional.
Like any other footwear, snowboarding boots need a lacing system to keep your feet in the boot. In terms of the process in which you lace your boots, snowboarders tie their laces much like any other sneaker. The only difference is that a snug fit around your shin and calf is really important for steering. Having loss laces would be a problem.
Aside from the boot itself, there is one additional element…snow. As we all know from science class, the snow has two distinct characteristics: it’s wet and it only exists in cold environments (around 32° F and below). Snowboarders spend hundreds of dollars on gear in order to keep themselves dry and comfortable in cold weather. Eventually, the inevitable happens. Their boot gets untied. Trying to tie wet laces snuggly could be a challenge. Trying to tie them with gloves on is impossible. That means you have no choice other than pulling off your warm cozy gloves in sub-freezing temperatures, grab wet laces, and attempt to tie them before your fingers freeze. Trust me, not fun at all.
In this scenario, a snowboarder is about to purchase new boots. What forces might influence their decision?
- My hands are freezing, I want warm hands. This is the cost of comfort in a specific environment. Switch to Ratchet.
- My shoe won’t untie, or even loosen all day. This is a savings on effort, safety, and frustration. Switch to Ratchet.
- If the ratchet breaks, I likely won’t be able to ride until I get them fixed at the snowboard shop. There goes my $100 lift ticket. If I had laces, I could just buy pair for couple of dollars, but the probability that this would happen is very low. This is a risk of changing. Stay with Laces.
The result
In this example, even with a compelling con to using a non-traditional lacing system, snowboarders are flocking to anything other than laces. A quick scan of Burton’s online store shows that only 3 of 20 boots in their catalog use a traditional lacing system. All others are either BOA (rachet) or Speed Zone technologies.
What might be happening?
If we look at the Jobs-to-be-done literature we start to get a clue on why the simple lace has withstood the test of time. Essentially, there are forces that are at play that feed into the decisions on whether or not to switch solutions and behavior.
Change Promoters (green arrows)
These forces move you toward switching.
Push is about the pain that a potential customer is experiencing in their current situation that is pushing them to seek and adopt an alternate solution in hopes of a better outcome. The BOA ratchet technology was invented by a dad that was tired of tying and re-tying his kids' snowboarding boots. He didn’t find an alternate solution, so he made his own.
Pull is the attraction to the new way or solution that’s pulling them towards it. This might range from a novel innovation to a slight tweak to a process that better aligns with a potential customer’s context. Keeping my hands warm while snowboarding surely sounded attractive when I bought my first ratchet laced boot.
Change Detractor (red arrows)
These forces keep you away from switching.
Inertia is about anything with a potential customer’s current situation that makes it harder to change. (ie. stuck in a contract, don’t have the cash, etc). While there are only 3 out of 20 snowboarding boots on Burton’s website customers are willing to pay close to $50 extra for a non-lace boot, however, the same system on an everyday sneakers does not get much traction. For sneaker, the additional cost in not worth it.
Anxieties are about the concerns, worry, and uncertainties around the new way or solution. (ie. will have to learn a new system, unsure of the risks, etc). It is quite possible that there might be some social anxiety with adults wearing velcro sneakers since they are most commonly used by toddlers and seniors. It turns out that many jobs have social and emotional aspects to them that have nothing to do with the functional aspect, yet drive decision making.
Identifying the switch event
Safi Bahcall, author of Loonshots, states that we should “Listen to the suck with curiosity”. This phrase has been cemented in my mind ever since I’ve read it. It is gets to the essence of always looking to learn from events that turn people away from our product to pursue others. The Switch interview is a Jobs to Done technique that was introduced by Bob Modesta and Chris Spiek to answer the question, “Why do customers ‘hire’ a given product?”. The goal of this interview is to uncover the critical moments in their experience that cause a person to leave your product for another, and vice-versa. To get started, take a look at the at the timeline of events and have the person you are interviewing work through their thought process along that journey describing the moments that moved them through each phase.
- First thought: This is the initial moment of doubt in a product often times implicit.
- Passively looking: The person is not actively looking, but they start to become aware of alternate options. This is the moment when the act of switch, while low is poking its head into reality.
- Actively looking: This is when the person start to place energy into familiarizing themselves with other options. This person is at the cusp of deciding.
- Deciding: At this point the person is comparing alternatives against each other. They already have a good sense of what they are missing, so they are actively looking to fill in that gap.
- Consuming: Once they make a switch, the person uses the product or service.
- Satisfaction: After some time, the person will form an opinion whether thier needs have been satisfied or not. If not the loop starts again.
In our shoelace example the events that triggered a switch to happen for the snowboarder and parent which do to circumstances in which the job was being performed. Changes in circumstances have a strong effect on the success and failures of a solution.
Often designers focus all their energy on who is being affected by the problem (actor/performer), what they are trying to do (job), and how they are doing it (process). While important to be user-centric, we also need more than a surface-level understanding of the person and drill down deeper into their motivations and desired outcomes to figure out the “why”. Motivations and product satisfaction can be highly dependent on situational factors. As demonstrated above, by keeping all other variables the same, and making adjustments in context a solution that has survived 5000 years breaks down when we layer on when and where information. This is how disruption is born.
To learn more about how to take an attitudes based approach to answering the “who” in your job statements, check out my post on The ABCs of attitude-based archetypes for design.
