Creating Product Experiences that cater to habits vs expecting complete user behavior changes
Yesterday, I was trying a new recipe and bought all the ingredients, but when I started cooking, I realized I was missing one key item — garlic. 🧄
I searched everywhere for it, but found oranges stored in the basket of garlic.
How did I overlook something so essential? 🤦
As I thought about it, I remembered that the last few times I made a dish with garlic, I already had it stocked in my pantry.
So this time, because I was so used to having garlic on hand, my brain just glossed over actually purchasing it.
It was a minor inconvenience, but it struck me how the smallest gap between my behavior pattern and an app or product’s assumptions can lead to bottlenecks and frustrations.
This made me think about a conversation I had with a product manager at a major software company.
She was complaining about how many new users they were losing in the first few weeks after signing up.
😢 No matter how intuitive they tried to make the onboarding, a significant chunk of people still churned out rapidly.
Her theory?
➡️ They weren’t fully accounting for the ingrained behavior patterns that new users were bringing with them from other tools.
➡️ Something as simple as where a common button was located created too much friction. 🤯
Just like my recipe oversight, they were likely missing key “ingredients” that matched how users wanted to navigate their software based on prior experiences.
The answer?
📊 Dig deeper into those patterns and #userbehavior through deeper user research, data analysis, interviews and #sessionreplays.
⬇️ Identify potential drop-off points before they happen.
Only then can you create experiences that cater to #habits vs expecting complete behavior changes. Read more about the ideal approach to Behavioral Analytics here.
A little empathy can go a long way in reducing frustration. Or in my case, a timely trip to the grocery store! 😃
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