This document discusses factors that promote user acceptance of products and emphasizes a user-centric approach to design. It defines a user as a customer who selects, receives, applies, and potentially retains an offered product. A user's scope of awareness is shaped by their predispositions and is defined through presence, proof, convenience and preference. An effective offer coincides with a user's scope of awareness by prioritizing critical prerequisites for acceptance identified through their behaviors, predispositions, and points of view. Affinity relates to a user's expressed needs while attraction reflects their appetites, and effective offers balance both to achieve overall acceptance.

1. Understanding
“User-Centricity“
Cultivating Affinity & Attraction

2. Overview
The following shows, as a diagnostic aid, what factors allow or promote User-acceptance
of proposed and offered products, and where the influence of those factors is strongest.
Emphasizing those factors during production design and provision is the main idea referred
to as being “User-centric”.
“Centricity” is a matter of explicit priorities.
To understand, cultivate and intentionally harvest acceptance based on user-centricity, it is
necessary to recognize what has priority to Users and why.
User-centricity succeeds when, in the moment, a balance between a User’s need and
appetite results in acceptance of the provider’s offer.

3. What is a User
To make a “user” central to the production and provision of an offering, there first must be
a representation of the User that distinguishes it from other independent variables in the
production and provision formulas.
By definition, a deliberate production of anything will always include the resource, method,
output and objective that was used to initiate, proceed and complete the presumed item,
activity or condition desired.
As a rule, the term “User” refers to something different and separate from all of that.
A User is a customer or consumer whose primary behaviors are to select, receive, apply,
and possibly retain the “deliverable” or sharable results (i.e., the offering) of the
production.

4. Possible vs. Necessary
The characterization of those several User behaviors can be derived by identifying the basic options
logically relevant to each and all of them: what, why, when, where and how.
All four of the User characteristics can have options included as potential prerequisites for a
provider’s logical expectation that the product will be accepted by the customer or consumer.
The question is whether the potential prerequisite is critical to acceptance or not.
Unless alternative offerings are scarce, this criticality is usually more demonstrable in cases of
omissions preventing acceptance, rather than by inclusions causing acceptance.
“User” Behaviors
select receive apply retain
Potential
PreRequisites
What ** ** *
Why *** ***
When ***
Where * **
How **
©2015 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research

5. The Who Cares Test
“Centricity” refers to actually making any “critical” prerequisite a higher priority of
production and provision, compared to other kinds of priorities.
If the probability (expectation) is high that something will be a decisive prerequisite to
acceptance, then the design aspect of the production and provision will emphasize
elements of production and provision that support the higher priority (i.e., “production
value”) of that prerequisite. The priority makes the prerequisites terms of acceptance.
Example: potentially, “when” and “why” can be most decisive in the case of a given User.
Design can treat them as critical prerequisites in order to maximize the probability of the
offering’s acceptance.
Other factors, although less important, can also be handled as prerequisites to assure that
the customer or consumer’s scope of awareness is not under-addressed.
The producer wants the scope of the offer to coincide well with the user’s scope of
awareness.

6. User Awareness
The User’s scope of awareness is defined from four points of view: Presence, Proof,
Convenience and Preference.
Each point of view is a way that the individual User
recognizes the “importance” of the offer’s idea
and of the offer’s promise of benefit.
Put most simply, an offer that fails in any of the
four points of view is less likely to be accepted.
Marketing affects overall awareness, and awareness affects overall acceptance of the
producer’s offer.
presence
proof
convenience
preference
©2015 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research

7. Predisposed Awareness
Users have predispositions originating as seen here. These predispositions are involved in
trade-off decisions during the evaluation of offers:
A predisposition affects multiple points of view. For example, in the model shown next,
the Presence and Proof points of view (POVs) share some predispositions: both are affected
by social and private attitudes. Changes in those attitudes can affect one or both POVs.
Predisposition
types
Influence on evaluation Predisposition
types
Influence on evaluation
Social Significance in Group context Private Significance in Personal context
Endorsement Accepts external recommendation VS. Identity Seeks internal correspondence
Excitement Option to pursue aspiration Security Requirement to protect current status
Culture Community principles Role Individual purpose
©2015 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research

8. PREFERENCE
PRESENCE
PROOF
CONVENIENCE User
Centricity
Does it
conform to
the way I
want to be?
Does this
enable my
priorities
Is the
proposed impact
credible to me?
Is the offer
visible and
actionable right
now?
• Social
• Private
• Culture
• Role
• Excitement
• Security
• Endorsement
• Identity
©2015MalcolmRyder/ArchestraResearch

9. User-centricity
Diagnostics
©2015MalcolmRyder/ArchestraResearch

10. CONCEPT
OFFER
presence
proof
convenience
preference
attraction
APPETITE
OVERALL ACCEPTANCE
©2015 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
affinity
NEED
Affinity and attraction are interrelated, but their respective influence
on acceptance of an offer involves different combinations of terms.

11. CONCEPT
OFFER
presence
proof
convenience
preference
AFFINITY
selectors
CRITERIA
Under circumstances of expressed need, a user relates to an offer of
interest with sensitivity to whether the offer is appropriate. ©2015 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
affinity
NEED

12. ATTRACTION
selectors
CRITERIA
CONCEPT
OFFER
presence
proof
convenience
preference
©2015 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
Under circumstances mainly featuring appetite, the acceptability of
an offer reflects whether it is in the user’s “comfort zone”.
attraction
APPETITE

13. engaging
demonstrable
compatible
aspirational
attraction
purpose
utility
availability
scenarios
interest
relevance
requirements
profiles
goals
affinity
NEED TIMING APPETITE
RECOGNITION
©2015 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
An offer may or may not be repeatable, but the user makes a decision
based on whether (and how) it is acceptable at the moment.

14. ©2015 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
www.archestra.com
mryder@archestra.com