What is the dimension of a digital product?

In the previous blog on ‘How do you Consume a digital product?’, I shared with you the characteristic ‘C’ of a digital product. In this blog, I am going to explain what I meant by the characteristic ‘D’ i.e. ‘Dimension’.

When the word ‘product’ comes to our mind, the human brain inadvertently tries to visualise it by giving it a shape, form, colour, dimension – as our brain is used to with other physical products. For e.g. if I say Table, Chair, Car, Aeroplane, Telephone, Mobile – you can paint a picture if you have seen it, heard or, read about it previously. Try doing that when I say Facebook, Google, Whatsapp or Excel sheet.

When we want to buy, sell, transport, or use any of the physical products we generally want to know about its physical dimensions which could be the length, height, width, volume or weight. This helps in understanding a little more about its physical attributes helping us make decisions.

Unlike physical products, the digital products do not have a physical existence, and hence, there isn’t any physical attribute that could be used to characterise these digital products. That’s one of the most intriguing properties of a digital product – You cannot touch it because it only exists in an online / digital world and has no physical existence. This makes the ‘dimension’ of a digital product a unique characteristic to define it.

So, what is the dimension of a digital product?

In general, the dimension of a digital product is mostly addressed in terms of the memory it will take when put on a specific hardware, i.e. what is the RAM size needed and other specifications related to Hardware compatibilities. Unlike the Height, Length, Width, Weight, or Volume of a physical product.

Another intriguing concept is that you always need a medium, a hardware, to access the digital product, as at the end of the day a digital product is ‘lines of code’ put together. You need a desktop, or tablet or mobile phone or watch to use these digital products. Sometimes these digital products are a small but important part of a big physical product. For e.g. the software in your smart car that tells you about the seat belt warning, and the fuel indicator warning.

I will explain the next characteristic ‘E’ (How do you Earn by making a digital product?) in detail in the next blog of this series. Hope this blog was useful. If you have any question related to Digital domain, write your questions to us. We will get back to you with an answer.

Thanks for reading!!

Your Product Coach,

Onkar