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“We often think the Internet enables you to do new things . . . But people just want to do the same things they’ve always done.”
These common needs are timeless and universal. Yet talking to users to reveal these wants will likely prove ineffective because they themselves don’t know which emotions motivate them. People just don’t think in these terms. You’ll often find that people’s declared preferences—what they say they want—are far different from their revealed preferences—what they actually do.
As Erika Hall, author of Just Enough Research writes, “When the research focuses on what people actually do (watch cat videos) rather than what they wish they did (produce cinema-quality home movies) it actually expands possibilities.”9 Looking for discrepancies exposes opportunities. Why do people really send text messages? Why do they take photos? What role does watching television or sports play in their lives? As...
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Dorsey believes a clear description of users—their desires, emotions, the context with which they use the product—is paramount to building the right solution. In addition to Dorsey’s user narratives, tools like customer development,11 usability studies, and empathy maps12 are examples of methods for learning about potential users.
One method is to try asking the question “Why?” as many times as it takes to get to an emotion. Usually, this will happen by the fifth why. This is a technique adapted from the Toyota Production System, described by Taiichi Ohno as the “5 Whys Method.” Ohno wrote that it was “the basis of Toyota’s scientific approach . . . by repeating ‘why?’ five times, the nature of the problem as well as its solution becomes clear.”13
as fear of missing out,
Negative emotions frequently serve as internal triggers.
Come up with three internal triggers that could cue your user to action. Refer to the 5 Whys Method described in this chapter.
The more effort—either physical or mental—required to perform the desired action, the less likely it is to occur.
Fogg posits that there are three ingredients required to initiate any and all behaviors: (1) the user must have sufficient motivation; (2) the user must have the ability to complete the desired action; and (3) a trigger must be present to activate the behavior.
The Fogg Behavior Model is represented in the formula B = MAT, which represents that a given behavior will occur when motivation, ability, and a trigger are present at the same time and in sufficient degrees.1 If any component of this formula is missing or inadequate, the user will not cross the “Action Line” and the behavior will not occur.
motivation influenced you to ignore the call. It is possible that the call was important and within arm’s reach, but the ringer on your phone was silenced. Despite having both a strong motivation and easy access to answer the call, it was completely missed because you never heard it ring—in other words, no trigger was present.
motivation as “the energy for action.”2
“Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time . . . Identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps.”
Fogg describes six “elements of simplicity”—the factors that influence a task’s difficulty.6 These are: Time—how long it takes to complete an action. Money—the fiscal cost of taking an action. Physical effort—the amount of labor involved in taking the action. Brain cycles—the level of mental effort and focus required to take an action. Social deviance—how accepted the behavior is by others. Non-routine—according to Fogg, “How much the action matches or disrupts existing routines.”
These factors will differ by person and context; therefore, designers should ask, “What is the thing that is missing that would allow my users to proceed to the next step?” Designing with an eye toward simplifying the overall user experience reduces friction, removes obstacles, and helps push the user across Fogg’s action line. The action phase of the Hooked Model incorporates Fogg’s six elements of simplicity by asking designers to consider how their technology can facilitate the simplest actions in anticipation of reward. The easier an action, the more likely the user is to do it and to
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However, today it is nearly impossible to browse the web or use a mobile app without encountering a Facebook Login prompt (figure 8). Many companies have eliminated several steps in the registration process by enabling users to register with their sites via their existing Facebook credentials.
For starters, Google’s PageRank algorithm proved to be a much more effective way to index the web. By ranking pages based on how frequently other sites linked to them, Google improved search relevancy.
a massive time-saver. Google also beat out other search engines that had become polluted with irrelevant content and cluttered with advertising (figure
Simply put, Google reduced the amount of time and the cognitive effort required to find what the user was looking for. The
Google now offers myriad tools to make searching easier and faster—including automatic spelling correction, predictive results based on partial queries, and search results that load even as the user is typing. Google’s efforts are intended to make searching easier to keep users coming back.
The company made the camera app directly launchable from the locked screen, without requiring a password.
Compared with the number of steps needed to access photo apps on other smartphones at the time, the simple flick gesture of the native iPhone camera gives it a virtual monopoly as users’ go-to solution whenever they need to snap a quick pic (figure 12).
site Pinterest, is the infinite scroll. In
The answer is always to start with ability.
The fact is, increasing motivation is expensive and time consuming. Web site visitors tend to ignore instructional text; they are often multitasking and have little patience for explanations about why or how they should do something. Influencing behavior by reducing the effort required to perform an action is more effective than increasing someone’s desire to do it. Make your product so simple that users already know how to use it, and you’ve got a winner.
Important
During the company’s period of hyper-growth, the Twitter home page became radically simpler
Return to web 1.0
Twitter had discovered that no matter how much users knew about the service, driving them to open an account and start following people resulted in much higher engagement.
The appearance of scarcity affected their perception of value.
Scarcity may signal something about the product. If there are fewer of an item, the thinking goes, it might be because other people know something you don’t—namely, that the cookies in the almost-empty jar are the better choice. The jar with just two cookies left in it conveys valuable albeit irrelevant information, because the cookies are in fact identical. Yet the perception of scarcity changed their perceived value.
I want to buy or are they using the scarcity heuristic to influence my buying behavior?
This study demonstrates how perception can form a personal reality based on how a product is framed, even when there is little relationship with objective quality.
those that were given two free punches—had a staggering 82 percent higher completion rate.
Every behavior is driven by one of three Core Motivators: seeking pleasure and avoiding pain; seeking hope and avoiding fear;
seeking social acceptance while avoiding social rejection.
Heuristics are cognitive shortcuts we take to make quick decisions. Product designers can utilize many of the hundreds of heuristics to increase the likelihood of their desired action.
The study revealed that what draws us to act is not the sensation we receive from the reward itself, but the need to alleviate the craving for that reward.
To hold our attention, products must have an ongoing degree of novelty.
More recent experiments reveal that variability increases activity in the nucleus accumbens and spikes levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine, driving our hungry search for rewards.
Our brains are adapted to seek rewards that make us feel accepted, attractive, important, and included.
Facebook provides numerous examples of variable social rewards. Logging in reveals an endless stream of content friends have shared, comments from others, and running tallies of how many people have “liked” something. The uncertainty of what users will find each time they visit the site creates the intrigue needed to pull them back again. While variable content gets users to keep searching for interesting tidbits in their News Feeds, a click of the “Like” button provides a variable reward for the content’s creators. “Likes” and comments offer tribal validation for those who shared the content,
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What motivates them to invest the effort into what others may see as the burdensome task of writing technical documentation?
Stack Overflow devotees write responses in anticipation of rewards of the tribe. Each time a user submits an answer, other members have the opportunity to vote the response up or down. The best responses percolate upward, accumulating points for their authors (figure 19). When they reach certain point levels, members earn badges, which confer special status and privileges.
The need to acquire physical objects, such as food and other supplies that aid our survival, is part of our brain’s operating system. Where we once hunted for food, today we hunt for other things. In modern society, food can be bought with cash, and more recently by extension, information translates into money.
The “feed” has become a social staple of many online products. The stream of limitless information displayed in a scrolling interface makes for a compelling reward of the hunt. The Twitter timeline, for example, is filled with a mix of both mundane and relevant content. This variety creates an enticingly unpredictable user experience. On occasion a user might find a particularly interesting piece of news, while other times she won’t. To keep hunting for more information, all that is needed is a flick of the finger or scroll of a mouse. Users scroll and scroll and scroll to search for variable
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Pinterest users never know what they will find on the site. To keep them searching and scrolling, the company employs an unusual design. As the user scrolls to the bottom of the page, some images appear to be cut off. Images often appear out of view below the browser fold. However, these images offer a glimpse of what’s ahead, even if just barely visible. To relieve their curiosity, all users have to do is scroll to reveal the full picture (figure 22). As more images load on the page, the endless search for variable rewards of the hunt continues.
Wow thats very interesting
highlighted by the work of Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. Their self-determination theory espouses that people desire, among other things, to gain a sense of competency. Adding an element of mystery to this goal makes the pursuit all the more enticing.
Rewards of the self are a defining component in video games, as players seek to master the skills needed to pursue their quest. Leveling up, unlocking special powers, and other game mechanics fulfill a player’s desire for competency by showing progression and completion.
Perhaps you unconsciously decided to open it to see what messages might be waiting for you. For many, the number of unread messages represents a sort of goal to be completed.
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