QCon 2019 | Developing a Digital Product: What It Is and How

Building a great digital product requires designing and developing an experience and a platform together. The presentation will go over the implications and what it takes to build a great digital product in the digital economy and how to leverage the network effect.

We will go over the mindset as well as practical considerations and steps that are required to build a product platform. With several years of experience building public API and digital platforms, this presentation will be based on real use cases and successes from companies I led both in the US and Brazil.

presented at QCon São Paulo
https://qconsp.com/sp2019/presentation/developing-digital-product-what-it-and-how

Transcript

1. 1 Developing a Digital Product: What It Is and How Roberto Mameli, Head of Product Technology, Creditas QCon São Paulo May 6-9, 2019
2. 2 Developing a Digital Product: What It Is and How. Agenda • What It Is (for this presentation) • Leveraging the Platform Economy and Network Effect • Experience As the Product • Platform As the Product • The Architecture and Its Components • Step-by-Step • Successes / Examples / References
3. 3 Developing a Digital Product: What It Is and How. What It Is (for this presentation): A Digital Product is the experience offered to a customer around a product that is available in the physical world typically as a good or a service. What do they all have in common? Examples: • Uber: cabs, point to point transportation • Airbnb: accomodations • Loggi: point to point delivery • Open Table, iFood: food/restaurant delivery • Art.com: art (physical or digital) • Esurance, Youse: insurance services • Gympass: gyms, fitness access • Creditas: online loans
4. 4 Developing a Digital Product: What It Is and How. What It Is (for this presentation): What do they all have in common? • They provide value to the customers in a Customer First mindset • They provide an addictive experience: Experience is king, not just the product itself. The Product is the Experience • They have multiple touchpoints: they are there when you need them ✧ POS (point-of-sale) presence • They have a Platform Economy business model and ride the Network Effect
5. 5 Developing a Digital Product: What It Is and How. Leveraging the Platform Economy and Network Effect: The Platform economy is the open digital connection of providers and consumers that interoperating generate increased economic, social, human value Image By Vc20 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71922428 • A platform is a mindset besides a technology foundation • Everyone can adopt a platform business model if they think of it and build it that way • Call to action: Technology teams are the principal agents of the platform economy • The treat the Platform as a Product
6. 6 Developing a Digital Product: What It Is and How. Experience As the Product: We live in an Experience world. We went from the Industrial Age, to the Information Age (with the Web 1.0 and 2.0), but we are now in the Experience Age (*) Methods and systems for viewing objects within an uploaded image. Patent eu 11195726.2 - 2218, EP2469473A3 (Roberto Mameli, Geoffroy Martin, Mike Larson) … except that too many companies (and Technology teams) are still in the Information Age and build systems for the Information Age • Experience = Information + (Senses + Emotions + Connections) • A Digital Product must include an Always Present and Available (ubiquitous) Experience o Physical / Digital o Augmented (AR)* o Virtual (VR) • A Digital Product requires a Technology Platform that must therefore build and account for Experience
7. 7 Developing a Digital Product: What It Is and How. Platform As the Product: For a Digital Product, if the Experience is the Product, the Technology Platform that delivers it needs to be imagined, designed, architected, and built as the Product as well • Digital Product is the result of the Product Experience built on a Product Platform • For a Technology Platform to be a Product Platform it means that it is: o Business Modeled o Open o Public o Self-Learning o Multi-Tenant o Configurable o Scalable (horizontally besides vertically) o Secure
8. 8 Developing a Digital Product: What It Is and How. The Architecture and Its Components: The building blocks of a Digital Product Platform Multi-Channel Customer Experience Layer IoT / 3-Party Apps Layer Legacy Systems Internal Systems (InHouse/3rd-party) Common Platform Services Data Platform (Big Data, DS, Data Lake, BI/DW) Business API Platform Layer Business API Façade 360o Customer View Personaliz’n ML Orchestration Automation
9. 9 Developing a Digital Product: What It Is and How. Step-by-Step: Customer Experience Layer Multi-Channel Customer Experience Layer IoT / Partners Layer Legacy Systems Internal Systems (InHouse/3rd-party ) Common Platform Services Data Platform (Big Data, DS, Data Lake, BI/DW) Business API Platform Layer Business API Façade 360o Customer View Personaliz’n ML Orchestrati on Automation Self-Service • Web (Mobile First), Native Apps • POS Integration (via Plug-in widget API, Kiosk) • Messaging Enabled (WhatsApp, Messenger, SMS) • Voice Enabled (IVR, Alexa, etc.) Assisted • Agent-based • Bot-based (AI) Modalities • Physical (when it applied) • Digital (multi MIME-type compatible) • Augmented Reality (AR): digital overimposed to the physical Experience API (optimized over Business API)
10. 10 Developing a Digital Product: What It Is and How. Step-by-Step: Customer Experience Layer Multi-Channel Customer Experience Layer IoT / Partners Layer Legacy Systems Internal Systems (InHouse/3rd-party ) Common Platform Services Data Platform (Big Data, DS, Data Lake, BI/DW) Business API Platform Layer Business API Façade 360o Customer View Personaliz’n ML Orchestrati on Automation Technology Stack • Digital rich experience via HTML5, CSS3, ECS, native. Tip:Leverage camera, video, voice • Webserver (Polymorphism) (e.g.: ReactJS) • Dynamic Acceleration of Content (App Accelerator, besides CDN) • Content Management Systems (Drupal, WP,...) Tip: Use CMS for Experience Configurability! • AB Testing Platform • Tag Container Platform Experience API (optimized over Business API)
11. 11 Developing a Digital Product: What It Is and How. Step-by-Step: Customer Experience Layer Multi-Channel Customer Experience Layer IoT / 3-rd Party Apps Layer Legacy Systems Internal Systems (InHouse/3rd-party ) Common Platform Services Data Platform (Big Data, DS, Data Lake, BI/DW) Business API Platform Layer Business API Façade 360o Customer View Personaliz’n ML Orchestrati on Automation IoT / Partners Layers • Think white-label: never hard code experience and styles • Be social: enable for connections in the experience • Be prepared to integrate with IoT devices: Tip: Lambda very convenient!
12. 12 Developing a Digital Product: What It Is and How. Step-by-Step: Business API Platform Layer Multi-Channel Customer Experience Layer IoT / 3-rd Party Apps Layer Legacy Systems Internal Systems (InHouse/3rd-party) Common Platform Services Data Platform (Big Data, DS, Data Lake, BI/DW) Business API Platform Layer • Business API because it exposes a “business” object model and not a system object model o Think Vocabulary: what you call the objects is what the customer calls it! • Open API because it is interoperable • Be as standard as possible and don’t be afraid of opening up your platforms to other players, developers, businesses • Public API because it needs to be accessible to outside the wall of your company • Self-Learning because it needs to learn about all that the customer is doing and personalize the experience • Multi-Tenant because it won’t only be used within the company, others developers, partners will use it too • Configurable because the rest of the world will not use it the way it was defined by you • Scalable (horizontally besides vertically) because it won’t only be your company’s traffic, it will be others’ • Secure because it’s a dangerous world out there, and if it’s public, security needs to be the first thing you develop Business API Façade 360o Customer View Personaliz’n ML Orchestration Automation
13. 13 Developing a Digital Product: What It Is and How. Step-by-Step: Business API Platform Layer Multi-Channel Customer Experience Layer IoT / 3-rd Party Apps Layer Legacy Systems Internal Systems (InHouse/3rd-party) Common Platform Services Data Platform (Big Data, DS, Data Lake, BI/DW) Business API Platform Layer • Start by designing your Business Domain that is your opportunity space o DDD (Domain Driven Design) architecture is a must • Build the Domain Model o In Customer-friendly vocabulary • Develop the API • REST for your Domain Objects • GraphQL for your Data access • If with legacy systems and/or front-ends, make sure that all the business-logic therein is moved to the façade or mediator layer of the API (this can be the most difficult job!)
14. 14 What is needed to build the API • Choose an API Gateway • Define the EndPoint(s): start with https://api.<yourcompanyname>.com • Make sure to have clear documentation • Have your security model ready to use • Authentication (find out who is calling the API: login. don’t forget SSO) • Authorization (find out if who is calling the API can actually access a specific resource or service) • Delegation (allow for someone to perform the access on behalf of someone else) • Use plural for object names collections, singular for singular instance • Have a friendly ObjectID generator. GUID is not • Decide where to cache the Object values for faster responses • In a façade/mediator model you don’t want to have to access the transactional system for every access • A NoSQL, Document-oriented database is used by most Developing a Digital Product: What It Is and How. Step-by-Step: Business API Platform Layer
15. 15 Developing a Digital Product: What It Is and How. Step-by-Step: Business API Platform Layer Legacy Systems Internal Systems (InHouse/3rd-party ) Data Platform (Big Data, DS, Data Lake, BI/DW) Business API Platform Layer What is needed to build the API • The API Layer accesses the Transactional Systems via webservice/API interfaces (REST, or RPC, GRPC) • The Transactional Systems feed data to the Document Store via Event Streaming RDB RDB DDB Event Channels Real-time Event* Streaming • RabbitMQ • Kafka • Kinesis (*) Attend Camila Campos talk: Event Driven Architecture na Creditas Wednesday, 5:20-6:05 am NoSQL Store • ElasticSearch • MongoDB • CouchDB
16. 16 Developing a Digital Product: What It Is and How. Step-by-Step: Business API Platform Layer Multi-Channel Customer Experience Layer IoT / 3-rd Party Apps Layer Legacy Systems Internal Systems (InHouse/3rd-party ) Common Platform Services Data Platform (Big Data, DS, Data Lake, BI/DW) Business API Platform Layer Common Platform Services • Authentication/Authorization • OAuth2/JWT • Okta • Communication Services • Multi-channel • Campaign Management (e.g.: Intercom) • Workflow / Orchestration • BPM system (e.g.: Camunda) • Automation • Jobs / Processing (e.g.: HelpSystems Automate) • External Data Services o Data Process and Distributing System (e.g.: NiFi) •
17. 17 Developing a Digital Product: What It Is and How. Creditas Composition Model Platform
18. 18 Developing a Digital Product: What It Is and How. Creditas Domain Model (partial)
19. 19 Developing a Digital Product: What It Is and How. Questions Contact me: roberto@creditas.com.br https://www.linked.com/in/roberto and make sure to visit us at the Creditas booth
20. 20 Roberto Mameli Head of Product Technology, Creditas Education Master in Computer Science, Milan State University MBA, San Francisco State University, CSU Career Highlights Over 20 years of Technology Experience in Silicon Valley, San Francisco Bay Area Innovative Technology Executive and transformational Product Technology leader with experience managing product technology organizations building and delivering competitive consumer products, digital customer experiences, digital platforms and enterprise-wide applications and systems. Technology Interests Innovation, Digital Transformations, Business API e PaaS, Customer Experience, Machine Learning, IoT, Augmented Reality Professional Experience Enterprise, Internet Technology Architecture - Oracle, Corp. Professional Consumer & Experience Technology - Macromedia, Inc. eCommerce - Art.com Digital Platforms (Insurance), Esurance, Inc. Fitness Marketplace – Gympass linkedin.com/in/roberto