🎯 Students · First-time founders · FEES value compass
A product that is only functional stays a commodity.
The Four Dimensions of Value
The object that made people feel something
I started as an industrial designer who thought design was about making things look good. Then a phone I designed ended up in Iron Man movie, and I wasn’t proud of the model number.
The pride that lasted came from somewhere else — from people telling me the object made them feel they had taste. It took me years to understand why that mattered more than the award.
Value has four dimensions
Every product, service and touch point can be scored across four dimensions of value. In the book I call it FEES.
Functional value — what it does. Does it solve the problem? This is the floor, and it is necessary. It is also the least defensible, because anything functional can be copied.
Experiential value — how it feels to use. The unboxing, the first three seconds, the onboarding, the moments of truth. Apple built a ritual out of a cardboard box. That ritual is the tactile and visual experience you enjoy before you can explain it.
Emotional value — what it makes you feel. Confidence, pride, relief, delight. The Iron Man phone did not succeed because of a Hollywood cameo. It succeeded because it delivered an emotional experience that made the owner feel tasteful and sophisticated.
Social and spiritual value — what it says about who you are, and what it connects you to. Identity, tribe, belonging. Purpose, meaning, transformation. Patagonia sells activism. Lululemon sells a tribe. Mary Kay sold a layer of purpose that outlasted any single product.
How to score it
The FEES Assessment Scorecard rates every touch point 1 to 5 — core product, packaging, unboxing, onboarding, customer service, community, brand narrative.
- 1 — absent or negative
- 2 — present but weak
- 3 — present and acceptable
- 4 — present and strong
- 5 — present and distinctive, hard to copy
Add the four scores and the total tells you something brutal and useful. Sixteen or above: world-class, with pricing power and loyalty. Eight to eleven: average, and vulnerable to competition. Under eight: competing on price alone.
Why this matters more now than ever
AI can optimise functional value. It can make an experience consistent across a thousand customers. What it cannot sense is the moment someone unwraps what you made, or wears your brand, or joins your community, and quietly decides whether it felt real.
That judgement is human. It comes from empathy — the deliberate practice of understanding what people need, want and feel, especially when they cannot articulate it themselves. When AI handles the mechanics of creation, the person who masters attention creates what no algorithm can replicate.
Beyond functional and pricing
Here is the question I keep coming back to: how can you create more value in your offering — beyond functional and pricing, with deeper human insights? Ask it of your own work and the four dimensions open up fast. A feeling can carry value that a feature cannot. A tribe holds people a discount cannot reach. A sense of purpose outlasts a product cycle.
Each one is built on purpose, by someone who took the time to understand how their customers feel — especially when they cannot articulate it themselves. That is the shift FEES is designed to make visible: your scores show you where you are today, and the inspiration is deciding where you want to be — then building for it, one touch point at a time. If you would like to practise FEES properly, the userOS pilot test waiting list is open now — an AI Coach trained on these frameworks plus four iSWAT agents, so you can map FEES across your own touch points and learn the four dimensions by building your first business.
Where to start
Pick the object you love most — your phone, your coffee cup, your headphones — and score it across the four. Where is it a five? Where is it a one?
The full FEES Assessment Scorecard will be a free download when our new site opens in October. Leave your name and we will tell you the moment it is live. And the userOS pilot test waiting list is open now if you would like to practise FEES properly with an AI Coach.
How can you create more value in your offering — beyond functional and pricing, with deeper human insights?
Related reading: AI upskilling for non-technical professionals.
