User adoption of new products can be modeled using Rogers' diffusion of innovations theory. This theory outlines five stages of adoption: awareness, understanding, experimentation, adoption, and institutionalization. Data on user behaviors can be tracked through various touchpoints like website visits, documentation views, paid support, and downloads. By understanding which user groups are in different adoption stages, a company can plan customized support like technical information for innovators in experimentation, access to engineers for early adopters in understanding, and case studies for early majority in awareness. This helps maximize adoption rates over time.

1. User Adoption
Modelling, measuring and planning for success
Alice Sowerby, ClusterHQ

2. Who are they?
What are they doing?
How can we track their behaviours?
Open source user

3. Who are they?
What are they doing?

4. Modelling

5. Diffusion of innovations

7. Stages
Stage 1: Contact
Users have exposure to the existence of the product, they have heard of it.
Stage 2: Awareness
Users have an idea of what the product does in a broad sense, they know something about
its context in the market
Disposition Threshold

8. Stages
Stage 3: Understanding
Users know what the product can do and broadly what applications it has.
Stage 4: Positive perception
Users are building up the idea that this is a product that is of use to them and validating its
potential place in their world.
Action Threshold

9. Stages
Stage 5: Experimentation
Users validate whether the product does more or less what they think it does by trying to
achieve some limited test goals with it.
Stage 6: Adoption
Users conduct a longer trial period with a real system to evaluate it for further use.
Reversibility Threshold

10. Stages
Stage 7: Institutionalisation
Users promote the product to their core stack and use it as a matter of course.

11. Measuring

12. Time to round up some data

13. Data touchpoints
● Contact
● Awareness
● Understanding
● Positive Perception
● Experimentation
● Adoption
● Institutionalisation
Events
Website
Docs
Paid
support
Our
blog
3rd
party
blog
Git
Hub Downloads

14. Real data!

15. Planning

16. Mashup!

17. Combining the models
Each user group needs different support as they move
through the User Adoption stages.
+

18. User groups’ adoption over time

19. Innovators
AKA “Techies”
● Contact - They find you
● Awareness - Values their own and peers’ judgement over marketing
● Understanding- Likes to get into technical details straight away
● Positive Perception - Learns by doing and tinkering
● Experimentation - Dive straight in with trying the product for kicks
● Adoption - Personal projects, may be the final step
● Institutionalisation - Only if the innovator is the business owner

20. Early Adopters
AKA “Visionaries”
● Contact - Seeking a breakthrough opportunity through new product
● Awareness - Looking for glimpses of new solutions
● Understanding- Needs to see benefits to assess a match
● Positive Perception - How can the product be used?
● Experimentation - Proof of concept, fast validation
● Adoption - High value, high risk projects
● Institutionalisation - As soon as possible to realise benefits

21. Early Majority
AKA “Pragmatists”
● Contact - Exist in a mainstream environment
● Awareness - Seeking safe “forever” changes
● Understanding - Needs to see their own problems solved
● Positive Perception - Product has been validated in the mainstream
● Experimentation - Assessment of risk
● Adoption - Staged, low risk first
● Institutionalisation - Full process and tooling

22. Late Majority
AKA “Conservatives”
● Contact - Knows mature products in a mainstream environment
● Awareness - Seeks de facto standards
● Understanding - Turn key solutions, serviced offerings
● Positive Perception - Full breadth eco-system and support
● Experimentation - May outsource this, seek consultancy
● Adoption - Managed project to introduce the organisational changes
● Institutionalisation - Full organisational change.

23. Laggards
AKA “Skeptics”
● Contact - prefers to stay unaware
● Awareness - accepts change as last possible option
● Understanding - Hands off attitude
● Positive Perception - Needs to experience benefit with no risk or outlay
● Experimentation - Rejects unless zero effort
● Adoption - Ideally an invisible, incremental change
● Institutionalisation - Part of the furniture

24. Actions

25. Which user group at which
stages?
Innovators contact→ adoption
Early Adopters contact→ understanding
Early Majority contact

26. Which user group at which
stages?
Innovators (contact→ adoption)
● Technical information
● Blog posts
● Access to engineers
● Hackathons
● 3rd party tech blogs

27. Which user group at which
stages?
Early Adopters (contact→ understanding)
● Tech news
● Leading edge events
● Product vision
● Access to decision makers

28. Which user group at which
stages?
Early Majority (contact)
● Mainstream events
● 3rd party specialists, resellers and integrators
Prepare for:
● Case studies
● Support packages

29. Thanks!
Alice Sowerby