The Secret Ingredient of Actionable Behaviour
Product design can be incomparably aesthetic but if it does not drive your audience to take actions, how long will it be able to sustain itself?
One of the crucial lessons I’ve learnt is — Effort is inversely proportional to performing desired action. In other words, users believe in taking action but they despise putting much effort into thinking about it.
Therefore, even though the cake (your design) looks scrumptious but lacks its icing (your secret ingredient); it won’t influence taste buds (your audience) as it should.
The Almighty Secret Ingredient
Imagine if you could guide decision making based on a more limited subset of the available information. Thus, revealing the secret ingredient:
Heuristics — the cognitive shortcuts we take to make decisions and form opinions.
Product designers can utilise several heuristics to increase probability of users’ desired actions.
Brain Biases that Follow
As humans, our behaviours are affected by countless factors that often create bias. Even though we are unaware of their influence on us, heuristics can predict our actions.
1. The Scarcity Effect
Almost whenever Apple introduces a new iPhone, its stocks get sold out soon after the launch. This makes even more people want to buy it because it generates a scarce concept and brands the new iPhone as a luxury item (not that it isn’t :D).
“People attach more value to things that are few.”
The same people may have restricted irrelevant information about the new model but the fear of missing out changed its perceived value.
2. The Framing Effect
Few years ago, a brand launched 2 blueberry yogurt variants. The first variant only had 10% fat whereas the second was 90% fat free. As it turned out, the 90% fat free variant gained more popularity. Little did the customers realise that both yogurts were exactly the same. The only difference was in their packaging context.
“People make decisions based on whether the options are presented with positive or negative connotations.”
Perception can form a personal reality based on how a product is framed.
3. The Anchoring Effect
Once I visited a store that offered pack of three T-shirts at a discounted price of ₹999. After surveying other options, I found another package of five similar T-shirts at a non-discounted price of ₹1245. My quick math unravelled that T-shirts not on sale were actually cheaper per unit than the ones on sale.
“People often anchor to one judgment when making a conclusion.”
Anchoring is effective when you want to make a price seem more fair or cheaper as compared to the anchor. However, it should be used when you want to control your user’s expectations as to how to give, pay or receive.
4. The Endowed Progress Effect
H&M (Sweden based multinational clothing company) has a membership program. It allows you to gain points with each purchase and at the end of every 200 points, you receive a bonus voucher. When newly subscribed, you’re granted with 100 welcome points. This practice demonstrated a staggering increase in sales from shoppers that were H&M members.
“People feel motivated when they believe they are nearing a goal.”
This heuristic is used by a lot of digital products as profile completion, onboarding steps, game badges etc.
Conclusion
Psychology believes that there are hundreds of cognitive biases we’re still unaware of but practice multiple times a day.
The four mentioned above are only a little chunk of the big picture.
Product designers should be able to comprehend and leverage these heuristics to boost motivation and engagement.
Where have you seen such biases in product design?
