The Science Behind Better Experience Design

What if I were to tell you that we can rig how consumers remember brand experiences; inducing positive memories and completely overriding negative ones?

Peak-End Rule

The peak-end rule is a psychological heuristic, or mental shortcut, that impacts how people remember past events.

For brands, it’s paramount  to consider all of the cognitive biases that affect the customer decision process.

In understanding this, we can maximise our ability to establish deeper, richer connections with our consumers with less effort.

The science

The peak-end rule suggests that our brains simply cannot remember every detail of every day, we are limited in what information we can store.

Our brain shortcuts this process by condensing our experiences into a series of snapshots, consisting of the intense positive or negative moments (the “peaks”) and the final moments of an experience (the “end”).

Conceived by professors Kahneman & Tversky in 1999, several studies, conducted over an array of diverse circumstances, support the theory’s validity.

PEAK-END AT WORK

Creating peaks:

Television commercials that create positive feelings are rated more highly by viewers if there are peaks of intensity and end on a positive note, rather than a commercial that was consistently pleasant all the way through.

Holidays that ended on a bad flight home are remembered less favourably, despite everything on the holiday going well.

The perils of an unhappy ending:

A 2008 study demonstrated that college students who received a desirable gift, followed by a less desirable gift, were less happy than college students who only received the one desirable gift, despite receiving an extra gift.

Likewise, children were more pleased after receiving a chocolate treat alone, rather than a chocolate treat followed by a mildly enjoyable piece of gum.

DISCLOSURE: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning when you click the links and make a purchase, we receive a commission.

Negative experiences are redeemable:

It’s no wonder women subject themselves to the pain of childbirth all over again, willingly, when their harrowing experiences end on such a rewarding high of a child.

A study proved that even a colonoscopy that had an extra 20 seconds, which were merely uncomfortable, not painful, added on to the end was rated better than those who did not receive the extra 20 seconds, despite being in discomfort for longer.

As a less gross example, patrons who received an otherwise negative dining experience, but were given a free dessert at the end, rated their experience considerably more favourably than those who did not.

“Manufacture the emotional peak purposefully, to create it by design.”

Adam Toporek, CX thought leader and author

ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE 

Onboarding in software is a key opportunity to consider Peak-end. Modern apps like Slack focus on frictionless journeys which leave users feeling good about the experience.

In summary

Cognitive biases arbitrate entire segments of our memories so all that is left is how we felt during the peak and the end of the experience.

So how can we use this to our advantage?

Don’t be passive in allowing a consumer to meander through interactions with your platforms, be active; curate intentional designs devised to be affecting.

Brands need to design experiences for their consumers that will create an indelible impact. They will always remember the peaks and the end, so be exciting, surprising, and go out with a bang.

About the author

Anna Ryan is a strategist at Athlon working within research and insights. Her work helps create brand and product experiences that transform global brands and scale-ups.

For more information on Athlon contact Ranzie Anthony 

The Art of Meaningful UX Design

Marketers, Consumer Product developers & Sales Communities would agree that getting your customers’ captive attention and being able to influence their behavior, or decision making is probably the hardest thing to achieve in today’s world. Experts in Content Marketing or Sales Communication have highlighted the importance of ‘engaging your customers effectively’ to move them along a ‘conversion funnel’.

But how does this ‘engagement’ actually happen? What contributes to a perceptible and desired change in customer behavior? What does it take to get customers talking about your product with delight? We all know that changing behavior is not trivial. Changing consumer behavior requires getting them to take actions they don’t usually take, or are not expected to make unless they modify the basis of how they act. When a customer tries a new product or service that really doesn’t amount to ‘changed behavior’ only because a consumer may routinely try different products. That small aberration in ‘behavior’ could easily be reversed, or could evolve into a new behavior where the customer is not loyal to any brand.

Consumers Hate Change

“People hate change. They love consistency,” notes Chris Nodder in his book Evil by Design. “The posh name for this is ‘status quo bias’: the tendency to like things to stay relatively the same, and to perceive any change from the current situation as a loss. ‘Loss aversion’ leads people to overestimate potential losses from a change and underestimate the potential gains. They also tend to overvalue their current situation (the endowment effect).”

This is where Strategic Customer Experience can play a big role. Strategic Customer Experience combines knowledge from various disciplines such as Consumer Psychology, Cognitive Science, Data Analytics, Ergonomics etc to come up with the most optimized way to influence the customer choices for a given situation. Also in the recent years there have been a few postulations about ‘Experiential Models’ that result into sustained engagement and habit formation. But the most important means to achieve a real behavior change remains ‘positive emotion’ or ‘delight’ that can turn a customer into a promoter of a product by recommending it or talking about it to others.

Customer Delight creates a ‘talking point’. The power of word of mouth (and ‘word of mouse’!) is getting stronger. However, people only talk about brilliant stuff and weak stuff – they don’t tend to talk about ‘ok stuff’! The challenge therefore is to do things that gets people talking (positively!) and that’s what ‘customer delight’ is all about!

How Consumer Delight Takes Place

There are few distinct patterns in how this ‘delight’ takes place in customers’ minds. But they primarily arise out of a situation, a particular point in their overall customer journey (e.g. purchase, upgrade or evaluation etc.) when they are in an emotionally vulnerable position.

For example, imagine this scenario. A customer needs to cancel a flight booking, but it will incur a steep penalty since there is no cancellation window left. This induces anxiety. However, there is an unexpected resolution. The airline company informs the customer that the refund amount has been transferred to a wallet, and can be used for a booking in the future. As a result, the customer is relieved and raves about their experience on social media.

Nir Eyal, author of the book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, hypothesizes that a product should be designed to facilitate a user’s need, but ultimately alleviate a symptom of a problem they have. Doing so will cause a product to be habit-forming. Habits can be good for users, and in turn good for business, because they:

·         Create higher customer lifetime value

·         Offer greater pricing flexibility

·         Supercharge growth

·         Increase loyalty

BJ Fogg, director, research and design at Stanford University where he founded the Persuasive Technology Lab, has a model showing the three elements required for any effective behavior change: Motivation, Triggers and Ability.

An integrated customer experience process within a successful customer focused organization should do all three well. Firstly, it should know when the customers are at an emotional high or low point (both could be substantial) and what behaviors do they exhibit that betray a problem or a root cause. Secondly, a sound design process takes in all the data and lays out an experience designed to provide effective triggers - ‘Call to Actions’ that communicate an outcome that would be ‘acceptable’ and ‘beneficial’ to them. Sometimes this process could be staggered. The real benefit due to the action that was taken may realize a bit late but none the less it acts as a reward and the expectation of the reward sustains the ‘engagement’. A reward that might get customers interested to invest more.

How Design Can ‘Hook’ Consumers

Eyal’s diagram for an approach called ‘Hook’, is an experience that connects the customer’s problem to a solution that intends to change a specific behavior.

But there are important differences in their approach. Fogg’s behavioral model applies equally well to actions you want to motivate, but also actions you want to avoid encouraging. Eyal focuses on just one of these four quadrants—those actions that you want to turn into habits, and habits to addiction. Ubiquitous access to the web, mobile devices encroaching our personal spaces and transferring greater amounts of personal data at faster speeds than ever before, has created a more addictive world.

Addictions are always dangerous, and they harm the user. However, habits are different. We have good habits and we have bad habits. I believe that we’re on the precipice of an age where designers can help their users create healthy habits through the technologies they use. - Nir Eyal

This is where the ‘Delight’ that results into a ‘Positive Emotion’ becomes important. Positive emotion can either reinforce or deter users from a specific behavior that results in a mutually beneficial consequence. Most ‘Customer Experience’ design efforts focus on providing an intuitive ability to perform a task well to the target customers. However, this approach takes a narrow view of the client’s real world that comprises of many adjacent emotions, attitudes, behaviors, values and belief systems.

Providing delight in a Customer Journey requires understanding multiple dimensions of the context and scenario in designing an experience that generates positive emotions at different points. Jared Spool in his article Pleasure, Flow, and Meaning - 3 Approaches to Designing for Delight, covers this in some details. Overall two principal methods differ based on how an organization plans to create a ‘space’ in the minds of its customers who are constantly enticed by the competitors with similar or better propositions:

Intentional Delight through Micro-interaction Design

Removing an obvious or known pain in the customers’ journey or making a complex task seemingly easier, are some ways to provide ‘intentional Delight’. Some companies who do it well also keep in mind that the ‘prize’ has to be ‘big’ for the intended return or outcome to be significant. Let’s look at an example. MailChimp, is an ideal balance of usefulness and delight. It fulfills a fairly technical niche, Managing Mass Mailer Campaigns, one so practical it could theoretically survive with a barebones interface. What makes MailChimp thrive is its smooth functionality wrapped in cheeky humor and visually friendly design. MailChimp transforms a dry task into an inviting experience.

Combining fun cartoons with tongue-in-cheek messages like “This is your moment of glory,” MailChimp softens the nervousness of sending your first email campaign. The actions and reactions of the interface feel less like an email marketing app and more like an empathetic instructor that understands you.

The humor and mascot are all part of the surface layer of delight. But when we dive deeper, we see that the conversational feedback and effortless task flow helps MailChimp connect with users on a more intangible level. The product instructs, entertains, and facilitates. As a result, even the most novice email marketer feels like a pro—and that’s a truly unforgettable experience.

Bottom line: never underestimate the “little things”. Micro-interactions are just not clever ways to keep the customer in good humor. They are ‘contained product moments’. Micro-interactions model can be categorized into triggers, rules, feedback, loops & modes. Triggers could be manual or system generated. Nest shows you the temperature when you approach the device; Instapaper app offers you a rotation lock if you accidentally rotate your device.

The good example of Rules is setting smart defaults with something you already know about the user. Waze suggests driving routes based on user behavior. Feedback is what helps users learn the Rules. The Temple Run game suggests ways to avoid falling and getting eaten up by the chasing beast.

Loops & modes provide a dimension (time, space etc.) of things over time. Spotify fades text for songs that have been added a long time ago.

Deeper Delight Through Meaning Making

The phrase ‘meaningful experience’ has been widely used within the digital industry, however it is often only mentioned in relation to usability and artificial delight. Nathan Shedroff, one of the pioneers of experience design, describes it as “one that reaches beyond the person’s functional, emotional and identity needs. It answers the key question of ‘Does this fit into my world?’ or conversely ‘Can this be my world?’ And if businesses focus on the meaning, and work from the centre out, the questions about price, performance, triggers and design decisions would sort out themselves”. The deeper you anchor your brand into the user’s life, the more sustainable relationship you will have and this is where the future of marketing or commercial success lies.

Products and services that build deeper connections with customers are the result of a design process infused with emotion.

The problem is that linear, or more specifically process oriented cultures like ours, the product development is viewed from a ‘prioritization’ model, where we start at the bottom and work our way up. Emotion is prioritized last, even though we may know it matters most.

Emotion is added as a superficial layer, or worse, the emotional element gets pushed to a later release to provide a branding make over. This approach makes delivering deeper level engagement hard because it separates the ‘emotional needs’ from the functional benefits of the product and therefore fails to create any ‘meaning’.

If you want to delight your customers, the real challenge is to be empathetic—put yourself in their shoes—and pay tremendous attention to the details at every step of the consumer’s journey. From the introductory communications, to the website, in the discovery/trial experience and on through the packaging, the purchase flow, and the post-sale interaction, messaging tone and voice, your view must be holistic. The insight, coming out of a deep empathy, leads you to discover the purpose, the ‘Why’ rather than ‘What’ in a product development ideation.

In his book, The Invisible Computer, Donald A. Norman notes: “I don’t want to use a computer. I don’t want to do word processing. I want to write a letter, or find out what the weather will be, or pay a bill, or play a game. I don’t want to use a computer, I want to accomplish something. I want to do something meaningful to me.”

To understand this better, we could look at some existing examples around us. And comparing two products from a similar domain makes it even more pronounced. A simple home page comparison of two car ride providers looks distinctly different. It leaves no doubt in our mind why touching emotions and creating ‘meaning’ makes such a big difference.

In the first example below, the content just functionally states about chauffeur driven transport, the service or offering.

The latter however almost self explains how it connects with its customers instantly. The content focuses on communicating the real reason why customers look for a ride. It successfully conveys that an Uber ride relieves them of driving anxiety and lets them focus on what they plan to accomplish in the day. It puts the pain of driving before an important business meeting right at the center of the experience strategy.

So then how exactly do we frame this in our design process that evokes positive emotion or delight? The first step towards this is to really know who your customers or users are, and what really matters to them, what pain they are facing and most importantly what is the purpose in their lives that a product can fit in. This exercise alone produces deep insights and provide us a way to reframe the product offering or a proposed solution differently and allow us to identify the ‘emotional needs’ a customer needs to fulfill and how the ‘solution’ would fit in it the best way possible. What helps us drive towards an iterative definition of the ‘problem’ comes from these insights and a deep and full understanding of what people ‘say’, ‘do’ and ‘feel’. Asking questions and observation of behavior go hand in hand.

After customer immersion or context studies are completed for an identified customer segment for a specific value proposition. The data is used to model the customer’s context and clearly articulate the problem that needs a ‘solution’. This ideally should happen during the early exploration-conceptualization phase of the development process. A design tool called an ‘Empathy Map’ [image above] is used here that help designers and product owners identify unarticulated emotional nuances around a problem area. This discovery is then expressed in a clear problem statement that forms the basis of solution ideation process.

In the design process, the element of emotion needs to be addressed in a careful and systematic way. The steps below could be one way of successfully capturing emotion and working with it to a proposition of ‘delight’:

1.   Identify ‘Own’able moments: Detail analysis of the customer journey reveals several points when the customer is at an emotionally vulnerable point. He could be frustrated or anxious, elated or feeling in control. These moments need to be understood deeply. The overall design of the proposed experience should address these and create a ‘meaningful’ language around them.

2.   Convey the response to the emotions in appropriate place and time: An experience that responds to the customers emotionally can do it in three ways:

·         Visceral: Appearance, Visual language, Tone or Voice

·         Behavioral: How it works, behaves, or responds

·         Reflective: How it is interpreted or understood

3.   Deliver Meaning as an Outcome: ‘Meaning’ in this context is a purpose fulfilled or an aspiration actualized. It is not a literal interaction metaphor. So it is better that we design for it and not with it. Meaning is more powerful than emotions and it transcends value.

The process of ‘Meaning Making’ through creating delight driven design intervention is tedious, iterative and should be based on continuous experimentation. But even if you are not in a position to do long gestation before the all important ‘product launch’, think of staggering it as several ‘learning launches’ or early Alpha with a limited group of potential users. And work with the learning to move forward. Most organizations lose patience right at this spot for various reasons. But the key point is to sustain thru the learning cycles and improve. To really arrive in a ‘place’ where the outcome of the design process elevates the product positioning in a way that makes it click with the users emotionally and at the same time opens doors to significantly higher engagement or behavior change, requires thorough awareness, commitment and passion.

This article originally appeared on Toptal.

Introduction to AARRR metrics for UX professionals

The idea of AARRR metrics or pirate metrics is widely known in the startup industry and came from Dave Mcclure. The AARRR process can be applied to any product. With this process, you will study the product from five aspects (AARRR) and determine what to concentrate on to get the best outcomes by putting less amount of effort.

What AARRR is?

1. Acquisition

2. Activation

3. Retention

4. Revenue

5. Referral

You can use AARRR to check how your product is performing in each stage.

Acquisition - How customers find the product?

The Acquisition means how user or customer reach to the product. How are you planning to get new users? It is mainly the field of marketing like:- SEO/SEM, Email marketing, Social media marketing, Paid advertisements, Direct marketing etc. If you focus on Acquisition, you are putting an effort to get the right users to find your product.

To measure the Acquisition performance, you can reach to analytical tools like Google Analytics to see how many users you are getting through PPC, Organic, Email, Referral, etc.

The data you are analyzing enables you to have an idea about the major issues you might have with the product.  Researching and comparing this data and your business modal with our competitors will be beneficial.

Activation – How users use your product?

Activation is about getting the visitors to do some actions on your product and use the product. For example, if you selling SAAS solutions then the activation step will be signing up to your platform or subscribing to the newsletter to get updates about your product.  

UX has the tools to boost the activation process. If you focus on activation, you need to look at the following:

§  How was the user's 1^st experience on your product, You can carry out interview/usability tests to confirm the issues users are facing during the activation process,

§  Are they using the product? Are they fulfilling the business goals?

Retention – do you have repetitive users?

Retention is a step to measure users who keep coming back to use your product, or they just visited once and then leave forever?

If you want to retain users, then you need to focus to transform your 1^st-time users into repetitive customers. Make sure users spend more time on your platform and making it a habit to use your product. If a lot of people are dropping off your product after they have started using it then evidently something might be incorrect either your product or the message. You need to analyze why users are dropping off. Keep improving the product to retain existing customers. Many product companies don’t understand that retaining an existing customer is much cheaper than obtaining new customers.

In the words of Bill Gates: "Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning".

Revenue – Are you generating enough revenue?

In AAARR revenue is about making the maximum revenue from your product. That means we have already implemented AAR (Acquisition, activation, and retention) and we have visitors coming in and you are converting them to returning customers. Customers are signing up for your offerings and your product has started generating revenue.  Now you want to generate more revenue by finding new ways to monetize your product.

So what can be the best ways to increase revenue?

By optimizing conversion rate, sales funnel, improving your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and reducing your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). You can also find new ways to monetize the product. For example, Facebook and Instagram started out as pure social media and non-monetary platforms, They adopted the advertising business and become successful.

Referral – Is your customer advocating your product?

 Does your user recommend your products to others? Do they find your product more usable than your competitor? Does your user discuss your product on social media? 

The best way to find growth is through referrals. Why would you spend a large amount of money on marketing of your product when referrals can help with organic spreading for less or no investment.

To really run referrals you need to have an efficient process. Like: Dropbox introduced a referral program on early-stage was one of the main driver of growth. Dropbox grew 3900% with the simple referral program.

 

Summarizing, the AARRR metrics is the simplest and most efficient way to look at improving your business and measuring growth. As a UX designer, you should follow AARRR metrics and keep improving the user experience based on the results.

FAQs:

What is the AARRR Pirate Metrics Framework?

The AARRR Pirate Metrics Framework, often referred to as the AARRR framework or AARRR model, is a five-step process used to analyze and optimize the customer journey. The framework helps startups and businesses understand how users interact with their product or service and identify key areas for improvement. By breaking down the customer lifecycle into distinct stages, the AARRR funnel allows for targeted strategies to enhance each phase.

What is AARRR used for? AARRR is used to systematically track and improve the different stages of the customer journey, starting with how customers are acquired.

What is the difference between AARRR and HEART? The AARRR model focuses on customer lifecycle stages, whereas the HEART framework, developed by Google, focuses on user experience and usability metrics (Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task success).

Which of the following are levels of pirate metrics? The levels of pirate metrics are Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue.

What is the pirate funnel used for? The pirate funnel is used for mapping out and optimizing the entire customer journey, from initial acquisition to generating revenue.

What is the AARRR model of customer engagement? The AARRR model of customer engagement is a structured approach to enhancing user interaction and satisfaction through the stages of Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue.

About Author

Praveen Sharma 
HI am a UI/UX Designer, Having 13 years of experience in Web Development, UX/UI Design. Working with HCL Technologies as a Technical Lead UI. 

Email 

How Whatsapp uses the Fogg Model to fight against fake news

Few months back there was an update in Whatsapp which has some key new & surprising features like ‘Limiting the number of people selection while forwarding’ and ‘showing tag of “Fw” in forwarded messages’ etc. These were basically focused on reducing the spread of rumors and fake news. Some of us might have also felt an irritating experience due to these in festival season while sending wish messages to our friends and relatives, but there is no doubt that these updates have helped in meeting the core goals in fighting against the Fake news spread. 

Being UX Designer & Researcher, one question should always come to your mind that how this solution is helpful? On which basis this has been thought and implemented. Well, let’s try to decode this. Sending a message to some friends/relative/groups in one go is also a behavior and If that message contains any news or facts which are Fake and can help in spreading rumors then this behavior needs to be controlled.  

When it comes to behaviors and changing habits, a great Behavior Scientist & Author B.J. Fogg has the answer. Fogg was the first scientist to articulate the concept of "captology", or the study of how computers can be used to persuade people to change their attitudes or behaviors. Fogg has presented the Fogg Behavior Grid, which describes the 15 ways to change the behavior. 

Fogg Behavior Grid

To reduce the bahvior of spreading Fake News and Rumors using Whatsapp can be achived using ‘Gray Path Behaviors’. Lets look in to this. 

Gray Path Behavior

If you want someone to reduce a behavior for the long term, you are seeking a Gray Path Behavior.

Examples include:

• Health: Eat less often at restaurants.
• Environment: Use less water when showering from now on.
• Commerce: Stock up on fewer products to reduce waste.

In a typical case, the behavior being reduced is not desirable, but stopping the behavior completely may not be practical or possible. That’s when Gray Path is the appropriate target behavior. To achieve a Gray Path Behavior, all successful interventions work by altering at least one element from the Fogg Behavior Model:

• Remove the trigger that leads to the undesirable behavior
• Reduce ability to perform the behavior (make it harder to do)
• Replace motivation for doing the behavior with de-motivators:  pain, fear, or social rejection

Gray Path Behavior Model in Whatsapp

Whatsapp has tried to make forwarding of messages to multiple recipients harder by giving a limit of recipients to 5. This is the ‘Reducing the Ability’ which leads to reducing the probability of behavior to be successful. Also, tag of ‘Fw’ in the message reduces the credibility of facts and news. It may also impact negatively in making personality of Sender in Recipient’s eyes, resulting decreasing in motivation as well. 

Fogg Behavior Model is a great tool in making & breaking behaviors & habits. Having said that it should be tactfully & carefully used. 

References: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._J._Fogg  http://www.behaviorwizard.org/wp/behavior-grid/  http://www.behaviorwizard.org/wp/all-previews-list/graypath-behaviors-preview/ 

Author

Abhishek Jain

Design Lead UX Researcher