How to create a product that users can’t put down?

Why do cheating news always dominate the screen?

Why do people always criticize each other because of their different regions?

Why is it so easy for us to become addicted to games ?

…

How do these behaviors arise and what drives us? In this article, we will continue the previous article and talk about internal driving force.

We divide internal motivation into three parts: interest, emotion and self-identity.

Internal drive - interest

01 How does interest arise?

Interest is a sense of anticipation for good feedback.

Before explaining this passage, let's take a look at a picture ▼

I believe everyone is familiar with this thing in the picture. Every time you open a package, can you not help but crush a few of them? This operation is almost done subconsciously, but have you ever thought about why?

In 2017, a stress-relieving device called a "fidget spinner" suddenly became popular. Its operating principle is very simple. Just turn it lightly and it will continue to spin for a long time.

The reason why this stress-relieving device suddenly became popular is actually the same reason why we can't help squeezing bubble wrap, which stems from our desire for low cost and high return. That is, with very little cost (manpower), you can receive very good feedback (continuous rotation + dazzling visual effects).

For bubble squeezers: the cost is just a gentle squeeze, and the feedback they get, in addition to the elastic touch on their palms, is the popping sound of the bubbles bursting (I believe everyone knows how many people squeeze the bubbles for the popping sound).

This also satisfies the rule of low cost and high return. Because we know that we can get good feedback if we squeeze it, we are looking forward to it and can't help but want to break it.

I don't know whether this kind of interest is low-level or not, but behaviors driven by the desire to obtain the feeling of " getting high returns quickly with low investment " are very common and can be found everywhere in life. For example, typing on the keyboard, children playing with firecrackers during the Chinese New Year, or even gambling and buying lottery tickets...

Compared to the keyboard that comes with the laptop, you must prefer the mechanical keyboard that has a more rhythmic typing feel.

02 Return - Feedback

Not only high returns, but also whether the returns are easy to perceive and the length of the return cycle have a great impact on people's motivation.

Many people working in education often face this problem: students report that the course is not effective because they cannot quickly feel the value of the course after completing the course. Take product manager training as an example. Many knowledge systems and thinking models cannot be used immediately after learning and can only be stored in the mind. Compared with theory, they are more interested in prototype design because the software can be used right after learning it, and what you learn is what you gain. This is especially evident among newcomers.

Some people have no interest in learning and reading. Because of this, they are unable to feel the value of reading and learning in a short period of time, so they give up halfway.

But in real life, many returns require long-term investment, and the better the return, the more necessary it is. This reality conflict has also created a strong desire among people to get high returns as quickly as possible with small investments, or even a gaming mentality of getting something for nothing.

We know that all people’s behaviors on the Internet are actually a reflection of their needs in real life. This kind of return is also called feedback in products.

Because we have invested costs (operating costs, time costs, monetary costs, etc.) in a product but cannot get feedback in a short period of time, we feel that it is boring and meaningless, and turn to seek things or products that can provide feedback quickly. This is why many people are addicted to games (because the instant, perceptible [exaggerated], and diverse feedback that can be obtained in games is incomparable to real life).

This feeling of investing cost and getting rewards and feedback is what we call a sense of accomplishment. The less we invest, the higher the return, the better the feeling, and the stronger our interest. The reason why fidget spinners are called stress-relieving tools is that they meet this requirement, because a large proportion of our stress comes from anxiety and worry that the effort is not proportional to the reward.

So, interest is the expectation of good feedback. If you don’t believe me, change the sentence “You have successfully aroused my interest” to “You have successfully aroused my expectations”. Doesn’t it mean the same thing?

03 So, how do products use interest to drive users to become addicted?

When interest reaches a certain level, it becomes an addiction.

If a product can continue to provide good feedback while maintaining a low participation cost, meet or even exceed users' expectations, and induce them to continue investing, then users will become addicted.

In combination with "Drive", I optimized the addiction model. From being exposed to product information, to experiencing the product, and then to becoming addicted, users go through these steps: motivation, guidance, participation, feedback, continuous investment, and addiction.

Let’s take the example of the fidget spinner we mentioned at the beginning to illustrate:

Motivation: Maybe they are attracted by the effects described in the advertisements or because their friends are playing it, so they want to try it;

Guidance: When users experience a product for the first time, they need an operating manual to guide them, right? (Of course, since the design of the fidget spinner is very simple, the guidance part can be omitted. The simpler the product's participation method is designed, the less guidance is needed);

Participation: Users use the product by just gently spinning it; Feedback: The gyroscope spins for a long time, creating dazzling visual effects;

Continuous investment: Playing with it every day will develop a habit, and users may even carve their names on it to express their emotions;

Addiction: Addiction goal achieved.

However, just knowing the addiction model is not enough. The key is how to set it up and optimize it. Next we will analyze it from each link.

04 Where does motivation come from?

The external drive we talked about in the previous article is actually about inducement. When users come to experience and register for a product, they are attracted by the fame and benefits promised in advertisements, or because their friends are using it, or they want to avoid losses (the mentality that if they don’t follow, they will miss out or lose...), basically, external drives are at work. In most cases, it is external driving forces (incentives) that create motivation before users actually come into contact with the product.

The subsequent series of processes such as guidance, participation, and feedback are all links that our product and operation personnel need to set up and optimize internally. The purpose is to continuously transform the motivation of external driving force into internal driving force to influence users, so that users can truly use the product due to internal drive, rather than external stimulation, and ultimately achieve the purpose of addiction.

Take the recently popular game " Travel Frog " for example. Many users register because people around them are posting pictures and discussing. If you don't try it, you will have less topics to talk about, and you won't be able to join in the conversation, making yourself seem out of touch. Of course, you will find ways to avoid this situation!

This kind of psychology is called loss aversion (see "Giving Away Free Prizes, Why Your User Incentives Are Useless"), which affects you unconsciously, makes you follow the trend and downloads, forming your initial motivation to experience the product.

The well-designed postcards shared by friends, the overwhelming media and big V publicity, and the spread of various derivative cultures (PS pictures, funny jokes) are the external driving forces that have led to more and more users flocking to this game.

05 Guidance - Behavioral Design

We have heard of these examples before:

• Carving a fly on a men's urinal can greatly reduce splashing because men will aim at the fly when peeing.

• In order to make students eat healthier, the school cafeteria places vegetables and low-calorie foods as close to the dining table as possible and at the same height as the students' eyes without changing the established dishes. At the same time, high-calorie foods such as French fries are placed in inconspicuous places. As a result, the proportion of students choosing healthy food has increased significantly.

The beauty of these practices is that they neither force nor pay you to do anything. They simply use people's psychological characteristics to guide you to do things in the direction they design. You have no pressure, I have no cost, and then you happily get things done the way I want. It also has a special term, called behavioral design, which refers to guidance.

In terms of products, banners, special pages, topics, recommendations (discoveries), albums (collections, highlights), popular items, what you may like, guides for new users, and customized headlines such as the Maimai homepage are all guides. Place the content or services you want users to access in a place where they can easily reach them, allowing them to experience it naturally.

The purpose of guidance is threefold:

1. Help users make decisions and think, reduce the difficulty of decision-making for users, and reduce user operating costs to a certain extent.

If we simply present content or functional services to users in our product without any guidance, users will feel confused: What should I see? What should I say? What should I click...

In addition to recommended content, all places that may require user participation, decision-making and thinking require guidance, such as search bars, word frequency predictions in input methods, etc.

2. Allow users to access the best (suitable) content (service) in the shortest possible time to create a good first impression.

The first impression of a product is very important. The purpose of pinning and recommending high-quality content to places where users can easily see it is not only to increase traffic , but also to leave the best experience for users at "first sight".

Similar to social interaction in real life, opening the APP is like saying hello to someone, making the user feel that the product has carefully prepared a lot of good content for him, just like the other party enthusiastically responding to our greeting. "Xie Jinzhong, we have prepared... for you," doesn't it make users feel more friendly?

3. Stimulate more user demands.

When users enter the product, they actually have many potential needs, but if we do not guide and stimulate them, these potential needs will never become their motivation to use the product.

The pictures below are several screenshots from the anonymous section of Maimai. Someone posted her marriage certificate in the anonymous section, thanking the anonymous section for helping her find true love. In addition to sending their blessings, people who commented also left messages asking for their other half, so who says that Maimai users don’t have the need to make friends based on occupations and company labels?

In crisis public relations , a method often used is public opinion guidance, which involves throwing out some topics and perspectives to guide the audience to think in the direction they want. In this case, if someone in the first few comments section anonymously asks for friends, wouldn’t the people who see it later also follow suit ? At least I just flipped through two pages and found a lot of comments looking for friends.

Taking advantage of this incident, can Maimai consider launching a social section for workplace, marriage and dating?

In fact, as long as the guidance is reasonable, the demand can be triggered.

Of course, good product design does not require deliberate guidance. Because deliberate guidance often increases the cost for users, whether it is decision-making or operation, such as the novice guides of many products. If your product design is reasonable enough and the most commonly used functions are easier to find, do you really need so many operational guides?

06 Participation

There are two areas that need attention during the participation process:

1. Lower participation costs: We have talked a lot about reducing participation costs in the guidance section and the previous article, so I will not go into details here.

2. Novel ways of participation: Novel and unique ways of participation can stimulate users' interest. For example, Tantan uses sliding to indicate likes and dislikes. This sliding participation method simply replaces the original click operation, but it has become a unique selling point of the product. Of course, this feature did arouse enough interest in the early days.

We can sort out the ways of participation on mobile terminals: click, slide, long press, shake, scan, facial recognition, kiss...

You can use your imagination. Let me give you a few examples of practical applications:

When using Didi Taxi , besides clicking the button to call a taxi, can we perform other operations? For example, you can shake your phone to call a taxi.

WuMi once had an H5 activity. Users could post H5 to their Moments to test how many people have a secret crush on them. Those who clicked on it would kiss the designated area (lips) to express their secret crush, and a kiss mark would appear on the H5 background. Users could see in real time how many kisses they had collected, which was quite interesting.

Following this idea, we might as well abandon the traditional old-fashioned click operation and make some changes in the way of participating in activities and products.

07 Feedback

The feedback link is crucial. Providing good feedback can bring strong motivation to users. So how to do it? Optimization can be done in three directions: providing faster, more, and better feedback.

1. Faster feedback:

1. The shorter the waiting time for feedback, the greater the pleasure it brings to users.

No one would want to hack and slash at a monster in a game for a long time before it responds, right? For users, the time spent waiting for feedback is also a cost. Feedback that is too slow is equivalent to increasing costs in disguise.

2. How easy it is for the user to perceive the feedback.

Make feedback more obvious. For example, the message prompt is designed as a shaking bell. Previously, Maimai’s message dynamics were folded inside the panel and were not easy to see, but now they are directly displayed at the top of the homepage, making them easier for users to see.

3. Give users more direct feedback.

For example, if you post an article on Renrenshishipinmeng.com, you will be notified by email and text message after it is reviewed and approved. This is much more direct than the message reminder on the website, and users can see it faster.

(ii) More feedback:

1. In the early days of the platform, when there were few users, providing false data became a means of incentivizing early users, such as the number of online users on the live broadcast platform .

2. Make feedback easy to obtain.

Add feedback determination methods (e.g., add a "finished reading" feedback indicator: when the user turns to the bottom of the article and touches the bottom hot zone, it is considered as a feedback, and the default is "finished reading");

Increase the number of feedback judgments (for example, randomly increase the number of readings each time a webpage is refreshed);

3. Reduce the operational cost of feedback.

For example, the location of the like button on a mobile terminal is more likely to get likes if it is placed on the right side of the screen than on the left side.

4. Recommend content or services to relevant users.

The more accurate the match, the more motivated the user will be to participate in the feedback, and the more feedback will be provided to the provider.

3. Better feedback:

What kind of feedback is good feedback?

1. High-quality feedback

① Feedback that is relevant to me, what I need, and meets my expectations.

Recommend content to users with high relevance. The higher the relevance, the higher the quality of the feedback. The more accurate Toutiao's algorithm is, the more the content that users pull down to refresh will suit their tastes. This is also the reason why Toutiao is addictive: users can get a steady stream of content they want to see with very low investment (no need to think, just scroll down).

②Feedback effect that is more easily perceived.

Just like in games, exaggerated special effects are easier to perceive. The more obvious the feedback effect, the greater the incentive effect.

Visualize feedback effects, such as the +1 that appears when you like a click, or the blood splatter that appears when you hit a monster in the game. The buffer progress bar works on the same principle. When users click on the page, the loading progress is fed back and presented as an animation of the progress bar.

Put feedback results in front of users, inform them in advance what they can get from participating, and increase their expectations. This is actually quite common in advertising, telling the audience what they can get by using my product. Of course, this is also commonly used in article writing. Put a description of what problems can be solved after reading the article at the beginning to attract readers to read on.

③Feedback with higher value.

Monetary benefits of greater value or feedback that brings a greater sense of honor. (For example, the likes on Maimai. Since Maimai is a real-name system, the sense of honor brought by likes on different company positions is also different. The likes given by the operations specialist and the likes given by the CTO are more motivating.)

2. Feedback beyond expectations

①Diverse feedback.

Setting different feedbacks for different user input costs can increase users' motivation to explore and try. For example, in "Travel Frog", players can receive various postcards sent back by the frog's son by investing different amounts of effort in feeding the frog. This also leads to players constantly trying to get more new postcards.

②Unique feedback.

For example, the pull-to-refresh style animation, which is significantly different from other styles, is more likely to exceed user expectations.

A few years ago, the pull-down refresh style of the APP was like this▼

Later, it began to turn into various animations. The more you pull down, the more the animation changes▼

Now WeChat has made another innovation, directly replacing the pull-down animation with a pull-down entrance▼

③Add randomness to feedback

The uncertainty brought by randomness can bring users a higher sense of expectation (interest), which in turn increases the value of feedback in users' psychological expectations. But the condition is that users need to know in advance what feedback they may get.

Although users know that the rewards are random, they believe that they have a chance of getting good feedback. This mentality is the same as raffles, gambling, and lottery tickets. It makes you have high expectations before participating and generates a strong interest. But if someone tells you in advance that this game is not truly random, you can't win the jackpot, you can only win the smallest prize by chance. Did you lose interest immediately after hearing such news? The reason why today's netizens are unwilling to participate in the roulette wheel lottery is because the atmosphere has been destroyed and everyone has already tacitly accepted in their minds that it is fake.

Another point that attracts players to "Travel Frog" is the use of randomness in feedback: it is unpredictable when the frog son will leave, when he will come home, and what kind of postcard he will bring you. However, you have seen someone else get a rare postcard online, so you still have expectations for your frog son: what good things will he bring back to me?

Application of unexpected feedback in jokes

The reason why jokes are funny is precisely because they meet this requirement: feedback that exceeds expectations. Although there are countless jokes, they can be roughly divided into five categories: "brain teasers, homophonic ambiguity, unexpected twists, serious nonsense, and memes." Either they use language to pave the way for you to think in a certain direction, or they use your old cognition to make the final result different from what you thought, achieving unexpected and beyond-expectation effects, and ultimately making you smile.

08 Continue to invest

Users continue to invest time, money, and energy in products. The more they invest, the less likely they are to give up. On the one hand, this is due to loss aversion. Changing products means that all previous investments will become losses.

On the other hand, due to the endowment effect, after using some products for a long time, users may even develop feelings for them and feel that the things they own, have invested energy in, and have participated in are more valuable. This is the endowment effect. For example, in the example of the fidget spinner mentioned at the beginning, if the user engraves some personalized decorations on it (such as his own name), then his feelings for it will deepen. The same is true for "Travel Frog". The more time and energy users invest in their frog son, the more they will miss it.

Motivation - guidance - participation - feedback - continuous investment . Optimizing all of the above will create a very good experience for users. As long as the behavior is repeated and connected with the reward, the user's behavior pattern - habit - can be cultivated, and eventually addiction can be achieved.

1. How to optimize "Travel Frog" through the model?

Guidance and participation: The gameplay of this game is simple, and the guidance process and participation costs are low.

Feedback: The time when Frog Son returns from his trip and the postcards he sends back satisfy the randomness and diversity of the feedback, but the quantity of feedback is not guaranteed, because the number of postcards is limited after all. The more players come in, the greater the probability that the postcards will become homogenized.

As someone has said before, opening postcards of scenic spots in China and even around the world is a good approach. In addition, without increasing the complexity of the game, thinking from the perspective of diversity of feedback forms, in addition to sending back postcards, can Frog Son send back a video? Can the frog son grow up gradually as he is fed?

2. How to optimize real-life products?

This model is not only applicable to Internet products, but also to real-world products. Taking toy spinning tops as an example, almost all traditional spinning tops on the market currently require a pull rod to start.

The cost of participation is: Pull the bar

Feedback received: Frustration when pulling the pull bar + gyroscope flying out + spinning

(Here we only discuss the operation cost of starting the gyroscope and the timely feedback it brings. Each additional operation step will bring new operation costs to the player.)

If we use the method we mentioned above to optimize, what can we do without adding new operating costs?

1. Add more feedback: for example, add light effects and music (such as animation theme songs) when the gyroscope is spinning;

2. Add diversity to feedback: Since it is activated by friction, different degrees of friction can correspond to different music or light effects: the longer the player twists the spring, the longer the gyroscope will spin after it is released, the brighter the light effect, the louder the sound, and even different theme songs can be matched.

3. Add randomness to feedback: If you follow the above method, different degrees of friction correspond to different music, but after a long time, players will gradually lose the motivation to try after they know what degree of friction corresponds to what music, so you might as well set the music to random, increase the number of music, and let players try more.

Internal drive – emotion

The methods of using emotions to drive users can be roughly divided into two categories:

01 Establish emotional connection

Emotional connections can influence people's behavior to a certain extent. You would be more willing to help someone you know than someone who is more in need, right?

This is the case with development games such as "Travel Frog", which establishes a mother-son emotional connection between you and your frog son from the very beginning. Similar to this is the previously popular " Love and Producer ", which also establishes an emotional connection between a male and female lover in the game.

If it’s not a role-playing game, how do you establish an emotional connection?

Personalized operation. If you want to establish an emotional connection, you must first be like a "person". Only on this basis can you have emotions and users can establish an emotional connection with you. This applies to brands , public accounts , and customer service accounts, such as Durex ’s Xiaodudu and Guokr.com ’s AI

Taking the operation of a public account as an example, we should set up a "character" with a distinct personality and values. The public account's welcome message, automatic replies, top and bottom follows, article content and titles , comments on hot topics that interest the audience, and content that interacts with users are all places where we output our personality, attitude, and values, making it easier for them to identify what kind of people we are and to establish an emotional connection with us.

For those who operate customer service WeChat, your Moments should not be filled with advertisements for company products. Include more daily life content (such as selfies) and occasionally some advertisements. This way, people will not think you are a robot and block you. The same is true for micro-business.

02 Emotional resonance

The purpose of creating resonance is to narrow the distance with the audience and allow the audience to immerse themselves in the story at all times. Its essence is convergence: we will look for people or things that have the same experiences, encounters, labels or values ​​as us, get closer to them, and be more easily emotionally aroused by them.

For example, the LXL and JNL incidents that were quite popular before, as well as the earlier WBQ and MR, the reason why these incidents spread so widely, in addition to the audience's curiosity, more importantly, is that there are too many people who share the same labels with the protagonists of the incidents. It is those who have had the same experiences and labels in marriage and love who drive the spread of events.

Internal drive - self-identity

Self-identity can be divided into two parts: self-affirmation and self-recognition.

01 Self-affirmation

Self-affirmation is the recognition of oneself. The endowment effect in economics also comes from self-affirmation. Because I think I am good, I think everything I have is good too.

1. Endowment Effect

After people own something, they tend to think that what they own is more valuable than the same thing owned by others. And once he owns an item, his evaluation of the value of the item will be greatly increased compared to before he owned it. This also explains why "frog mothers" compete with each other to see whose frog son is more successful.

The endowment effect increases the psychological loss that users have to bear. It works together with the loss aversion psychology to influence users to a certain extent, causing them to maintain inertia and continue to use the product. Sometimes it even prompts users to spontaneously maintain the image of the product.

For example:

Every time a conflict breaks out between China and its neighboring countries, everyone will passionately boycott the neighboring countries' products. However, when there is no conflict, it is still these people who complain about their own government country on the Internet.

The same is true for regional blackmail. People from different regions usually engage in "fierce debates" online to protect the image of their own region.

Similar phenomena include zodiac signs and Chinese zodiac signs, which are also due to the influence of the endowment effect and the maintenance of the label image to which they belong.

Because of this mentality, content that is "related to me" is more likely to attract attention, which also makes the collection of user attribute-related data crucial for the platform.

2. The sense of mission that comes from helping others

Helping others and gaining their affirmation can strengthen self-identity, which is what we call a sense of mission.

This explains why we sometimes forward articles that we don’t really need to our Moments or WeChat groups , because there are people there who need them. We desire to gain recognition from others and strengthen ourselves in this way.

For example, in games, the common practice of using a sense of mission to drive players is: ① recognition - ② given goals - ③ description of the effects of helping others.

For example: Young man, you are the child chosen by God (recognition). If you defeat the big devil (given goal), you can rescue the princess trapped in the castle (describing the effect of helping others)...

Many current support activities also take advantage of our altruistic mentality, although they are still selfish in nature.

02 Self-Completion

Self-completion means that we will take a series of actions to strive to become the person we want to be, and even prove that we are such a person in various ways, such as forwarding articles that we don’t understand, and posting to our friends circle pretending that we are in New York.

Our forwarding behavior, in addition to helping others to gain self-affirmation as mentioned above, also has the purpose of self-expression and shaping personal image. It involves self-impression management. Oftentimes, when we forward something, it is driven by the following purpose:

1. I hope (or subconsciously hope) to express my hobbies, interests and values ​​to the audience;

2. I hope to express my views, understanding and position through the forwarded content.

For example, when we forward content that debunks rumors, we do so to a large extent in the hope of curbing the spread of rumors, but in fact we also hold the mentality of becoming the source of correct information in the circle of friends and gaining a sense of superiority by spreading correct information.

Our behavior of following others also stems from this mentality of self-completion. Subconsciously, everyone is self-centered, and no one is willing to become a fan of someone else. The reason why they follow you and become your fans is due to information asymmetry. Fans are in a weak position and it is an unequal social relationship. They pay attention to you, then identify with you, then trust you, then become your fans, but becoming a fan is not the ultimate state.

Fans will work hard to eliminate this inequality, shorten the gap between themselves and opinion leaders, and make a high-ranking opinion leader someone within reach. Interact with you, understand you, even learn from you and imitate you. Finally, we aim to achieve a more equal social relationship - becoming friends.

Conclusion

External drive is a stimulant, while internal drive is a perpetual motion machine. What’s more, stimulants also have side effects. If a product cannot convert external driving force into internal driving force, or does not have sufficient internal driving force to support it, then it is only a matter of time before users leave you and turn their attention to other products.

Postcards will eventually run out of use. If new feedback cannot be continuously provided, the frog’s life cycle will come to an end once the hype wears off. Maybe I'd rather get a dog, that would give me more feedback.

The author of this article @谢金钟 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services Advertising platform Longyou Century