"Keep Them Coming Back: 23 Habit-Making Insights for Product-Minded Founders" - Understanding the Importance of Human Psychology in Product Design

Kazuki

Hatched by Kazuki

Jul 26, 2023

4 min read

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"Keep Them Coming Back: 23 Habit-Making Insights for Product-Minded Founders" - Understanding the Importance of Human Psychology in Product Design

In the world of startups and product development, it's easy to get caught up in the technical aspects of building a product. We focus on the features, the functionality, and the performance, forgetting that what truly matters is how the user feels when using it. Users want to feel a connection, to be entertained, and to belong somewhere. It's crucial to ask ourselves if our product motivates and rewards people enough to keep coming back.

When startups fail, it's often because nobody cares about them. It's important to have clarity on the "Wow" moment that makes someone say, "Wow," and tell their friends about it. This emotional experience is what makes a product stand out and creates a sense of belonging. Without that clarity, success becomes a matter of luck.

To create a habit-making product, it's essential to understand how it makes people feel. Products that evoke positive emotions and make users feel good about themselves are more likely to succeed. It's helpful for founders to put themselves in the user's shoes and experience their own product firsthand. By doing so, they can better understand how it affects users' emotions and adjust accordingly.

Instead of focusing on what users want or need, founders should obsess over how they feel. Products that indulge in playful exploration, create moments of pleasant surprise, and provide a sense of control and flow are more likely to keep users engaged. The goal is to create a product that people use at the frequency and timing desired by the founders.

Design plays a significant role in creating habits. The story behind the design is just as important as the design itself. By underpromising in the story and overdelivering in the experience, founders can give customers a new superpower and make them feel that the product is important in their lives. Understanding customers' pain points and offering a way to solve them can also create a sense of importance and value.

Forming a habit in a consumer's mind creates a competitive advantage. When a habit is formed, people don't even consider whether the competition is making a better product. The first-to-mind product becomes the default choice. However, engagement cannot be bought; it has to be designed into the product. It has to satisfy a user need and provide real lasting value.

To design for habit formation, it's crucial to make the key behavior as easy as possible to do. The easier something is, the more likely people are to do it. By tapping into the psychology of variable rewards, founders can create a sense of anticipation and keep users coming back for more. The more data, content, followers, and reputation a product accumulates, the stickier it becomes.

Motivation, ability, and prompt are the three elements that come together to trigger a behavior. If any of these elements are missing, the behavior will not occur. The ability chain, which includes stretching finances, physical and mental effort, making time, and adjusting routines, can increase motivation. Defining a unique form of proof of work can jumpstart a new game and create a sense of progression.

Understanding human psychology is crucial for creating habit-forming products. The best founders are great studies of humanity and psychologists. They understand the emotional value and status that comes from ownership of virtual goods. By aligning product performance metrics with the true user experience, founders can create products that truly resonate with their target audience.

Research shows that human behavior is 93 percent predictable. People tend to follow simple patterns and have a strong tendency to return to locations they visited before. This predictability holds true across demographics and regardless of time and distance. By understanding these patterns, founders can design products that fit seamlessly into users' lives.

In conclusion, creating habit-making products requires an understanding of human psychology and the ability to evoke positive emotions. Founders should focus on how their product makes users feel, rather than solely on its features and functionality. By designing for habit formation, simplifying key behaviors, and aligning with users' needs and desires, founders can create products that keep users coming back.

Three actionable advice:

  • 1. Put yourself in the user's shoes and experience your own product firsthand. Pay attention to how it makes you feel and adjust accordingly.
  • 2. Obsess over how users feel, rather than what they want or need. Design for emotions, playfulness, and moments of pleasant surprise.
  • 3. Align product performance metrics with the true user experience. Understand the emotional value and status that comes from using your product, and design accordingly.

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