Week 58 - The Behavioral Psychology Playbook for Building Better Products 🧠
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"Understanding human behavior is the cornerstone to creating products that resonate. It's not just about what your product can do; it's also about how it fits into the mental models and emotional landscapes of your users.”
Poll
💯 Framework // Concept // Mental Model
Understanding what makes users tick is every product manager's dream. Behavioral psychology reveals the subtleties of human motivation and decision-making, shedding light on why people do what they do. Equipped with this knowledge, you can build products that map to mental models and resonate on a deeper level.
In this playbook, we'll explore 14 core concepts from behavioral psychology that can elevate your product design and user experience. Learn how cognitive biases, emotional triggers, and social influences shape your customers’ actions. Then leverage these principles to create experiences people love.
Here is a previous poll I conducted
1. Motivation and Ability ⚡️
Let's start with two key building blocks of behavior - motivation and ability. The Fogg Behavior Model shows that for a behavior to occur, people need sufficient motivation, ability, and a well-timed prompt. As product managers, we can utilize tactics to influence each one.
To increase motivation, apply the principle of operant conditioning. This concept states that behaviors followed by a reward will increase, while behaviors followed by punishment will decrease. Gamification elements like points, badges, and progression bars tap into operant conditioning by providing positive reinforcement. 🏆
Variable rewards take this a step further by offering unexpected reinforcement to users. Uncertainty triggers dopamine release and keeps users engaged long-term. Consider ways to surprise and delight customers with unpredictability. 🎁
To boost ability, first, minimize friction through smart information architecture. Hick's Law shows that more choices increase decision time. Is your user flow straightforward or cluttered with too many options? Test and iterate to simplify key tasks. ✂️
Next, provide the procedural knowledge people need to complete those tasks confidently. Well-placed tooltips, prompts, and educational content ensure users can navigate your product successfully. 💡
Finally, identify potential inhibiting pressures like cost, time requirements, or fear of failure that undermine ability. Reduce their impact through free trials, progress dashboards, and inspirational messaging. 📈
Get motivation and ability right, then provide well-timed prompts to drive the target behaviors.
2. Lead With Psychology 🧠
Humans are not always rational - a fact explained by cognitive dissonance theory. When reality conflicts with beliefs, it causes discomfort. To reduce dissonance, people avoid contradictory information or downplay its significance.
Design features aligned with your users' values to prevent dissonance from arising. If you do need to convey contradictory information, acknowledge differing perspectives first to ease tension. 🤝
Inside view effect is a cognitive bias that leads us to overestimate the likelihood of events based on our own personal experiences. This tendency can be leveraged as an opportunity to better understand the perspectives of customers. By designing products that take into account the customer's personal experiences and biases, businesses can create solutions that resonate more deeply with their target audience.
Pro-innovation bias is the tendency to overestimate the potential benefits of new technologies and innovations. This inclination offers an opportunity for businesses to understand and anticipate their customers' enthusiasm for new features or products. By designing products that take this bias into account, companies can effectively guide customer expectations and perhaps introduce safeguards or additional information to balance their overly positive assumptions.⚠️
The Ostrich Effect is a cognitive bias that refers to the tendency to avoid dealing with negative information. Recognizing this bias presents an opportunity for businesses to design products that facilitate easy access to and processing of negative but useful information. By employing strategies like data tracking, notifications, and transparency, companies can communicate with customers in a way that helps them overcome this bias and make more informed decisions. 👀
Good designers avoid blaming users for irrationality. Gently guide them while accounting for predictable biases. 😇
To get into the details of behavioral psychology check out 👇
3. The Subtle Power of Associations 🌈
The principles of classical conditioning reveal how neutral stimuli can take on new meanings over time. By consistently pairing your product with something positive, an association forms.
Repeatedly use the same colors, imagery, metaphors, and fonts in marketing materials to tie your brand to specific emotions. Align with social causes your audience already supports. 🤝
Eventually, your product itself will conjure up these positive feelings in a visceral way. Companies like Apple and Nike have mastered emotional branding through classical conditioning. 💖
4. The Pull of Other People 👥
Humans don’t act in isolation. The preferences, actions, and opinions of others shape our behaviors as well.
The spotlight effect, for example, describes how we overestimate how much attention others pay to us. In reality, people focus more on themselves than others’ behavior. Features that increase privacy and control can counteract this effect. 🔒
Social proof is another enormously influential phenomenon. We look to what others do to guide our own actions, assuming the wisdom of the crowd. That’s why ratings, reviews, testimonials, and best seller badges are effective. 👍
Decoy effect, scarcity bias, FOMO - the list goes on. As social creatures, the behavior of those around us acts like a magnet aligning our own. 🧲
Source: https://sketchplanations.com/the-effect-effect
5. The Fast and Frugal Mind ⚡️
To simplify complex decisions, our minds take shortcuts. Heuristics are mental rules of thumb that speed up assessment and judgment.
As an example, the recognition heuristic leads us to assume that recognized things are better than unfamiliar ones. That’s why establishing brand authority and awareness is crucial. 📢
The affect heuristic describes how we gauge options based on gut reactions and emotions rather than a systematic weighing of pros and cons. Enhance visceral appeal with bold visuals and language. 💥
We also tend to heavily weigh the information that comes to mind quickly, known as the availability heuristic. Top-of-mind beats are nuanced every time. 🧠
Savvy product managers leverage these quirks of human judgment. Make your product easy to process and evaluate by catering to heuristics. Lean into intuition, emotion, and cognitive ease. ⚡️
Source: https://mind.help/topic/heuristics/
6. Habit-Forming Products 🔁
If motivation is the spark that initiates behavior, then cues and triggers keep it going. Tiny nudges urge people to take action again and again, creating habits over time.
That’s why variable rewards matter. The unexpectedness of a bonus, badge, or delight creates a craving for future variability. Unpredictable reinforcement hooks users. 🎣
On top of variable rewards, well-timed cues initiate the habit loop. A notification when it's time to take medicine. An alarm reminding you to go to the gym. The Facebook app delivers a dopamine hit. ⏰
These cues can spark a behavior that then gets rewarded, leading to more frequent cues. Design prompts that spark habit loops and your product will stick. 🔁
7. Decision Overload 😵
While cues and patterns can create habits, too much complexity overwhelms users. This phenomenon is explained by Hick's Law. The time it takes to make a decision increases as options multiply.
Choice overload leads people to freeze up and call it quits. That’s why you should strategically limit alternatives - whether it’s filters on a search page or meal offerings on a menu. ❌
The paradox of choice highlights why less is more. Too many paths forward create confusion, self-blame, and dissatisfaction.
Carefully curate and simplify choices to avoid choice overload. People think they want endless options, but fewer well-chosen alternatives lead to better outcomes. 👌
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Key Takeaways 💡
The human mind is a beautifully complex place. But irrationality, emotions, and social influences leave patterns we can study. Use these 14 concepts from behavioral psychology to your product's advantage:
Keep users engaged through positive reinforcement and variable rewards. Techniques like gamification tap into operant conditioning. 🎮
Boost ability by minimizing friction and providing procedural knowledge. Ensure people know how to use your product successfully. 💪
Watch for cognitive biases like the inside view effect and ostrich effect. Design nudges that gently counteract irrational tendencies. 🦥
Increase motivation and retention through cues and triggers that spark habit loops. Time prompts carefully. ⏱️
Simplify decisions by limiting choices. Too many options cause overload. Prioritize quality over quantity. 🤏
Make evaluation easy by catering to heuristics. Leverage emotion, recognition, availability, and more. 👍
Form bonds through conditioning. Pair your product with positive feelings like Nintendo's fun or Whole Foods' ethics. 💕
You now have an expanded behavioral toolkit. Build products that map to mental models, resonate emotionally, and help users make better choices. Human-centered design wins every time. 🏆
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