We are affected by various aspects every day, and many laws that affect human behavior have been summarized, and will help us design better products, or make certain product designs fail. This article explains the seven rules of user behavior that affect design.
At the beginning of the design of many products, there will be a default basic setting, and most users will not take the initiative to adjust them, which makes these default setting parameters affect the user’s behavior and habits, and it will make the user’s behavior. Better, or worse.
A push message may cost users more money, and changes in the surrounding environment may also affect users’ purchasing propensity in the store. We are affected by various aspects every day, and many laws that affect human behavior have been summarized, and will help us design better products, or make certain product designs fail.
1. Hunger Marketing
When resources are limited or scarce, and the demand is high, people are willing to pay more to buy. Because our underlying fear of losing something drives us to take it, even at an extra cost. And some studies have found that people’s consumption behavior caused by fear is about twice as much as the consumption behavior caused by pleasure.
In this test, the experimenter will record the user’s purchase of canned soup. Usually, the user will buy 2 to 3 cans at a time, but when the experimenter starts to limit the number of the user’s purchase, the number of soup purchased by the user increases to 5 to 3. 10 fills, the purchase quantity has doubled by 2 to 3 times.
The sense of scarcity created by a situation of short supply can make people want more.
Also, here’s an even better case, the NMD line of shoes from Adidas. When Adidas was in recession, they were preparing to release a new shoe called the NMD series. In addition to the cool design of the shoes themselves, they would strictly control the total number of products when they were released. If I remember correctly, only 10,000 pairs of this shoe were sold worldwide, and if you wanted to own one, you had to get it within 24 hours at the time, otherwise it would be hard to get it later.
2. Environmental impact behavior
The five human senses, sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, have different effects on human behavior, and even have different priorities. Sensory Priming is worthy of this impact. There was an experiment done by someone in the UK who wanted to know if concerts from different countries were played in wine shops would not have an impact on wine sales.
In fact, it was found after the experiment that French wines were more likely to outsell German wines when French music was played, and vice versa. In the follow-up follow-up survey, it was found that only 2% of users mentioned the impact of music in the follow-up survey. The influence of the environment has different levels of influence on different senses, and the influences are both dominant and recessive.
Similar thing happened to me.
I was at Sephora in Amsterdam and saw a new line of skincare and fragrances, the entire collection was designed from Japanese culture. They tried to make these products to decorate a Japanese-style room, enhancing the overall style and multi-sensory experience. Music, scent, atmosphere, light, everything is presented in high harmony. I ended up buying all the products in this series…
3. De-symbolization
Symbols may make certain concepts more clearly recognized. Of course, it’s cool to spend money when you have plenty of money, but it’s a pain in the ass to keep spending money and make you clearly aware that your funds are decreasing. Some studies have shown that pain-related areas of the brain are constantly responding when playing games that keep losing money, such as gambling.
At the same time, there are some experiments that reflect a more interesting situation. If the currency symbol (such as $) or the word of currency (such as US dollar) in the commodity price is removed, the average spending of users will increase by 12%. Largely because prices have been more digitized, users’ concept of “spending money” in their minds has been weakened.
The same is true for credit card payments, virtual currencies and mobile payments. As long as the user does not clearly perceive that the money is decreasing, or the price to be paid does not appear in the moment, the pain and stress felt are not obvious.
This phenomenon is closely related to the next cognitive law that follows.
4. Aversion to loss
Loss aversion refers to the fact that people are more concerned and sensitive to losses, and are more inclined to avoid losses of the same amount than to gain a certain amount. “I’m more concerned with avoiding losing $5 than picking up $5.”
There is a difference between loss aversion and risk aversion. Loss aversion relies heavily on previous experience, and users will predict something. Loss aversion is a psychological effect. In some researches and experiments, if it can be quantified, users are psychologically concerned about losses twice as much as gains.
Essentially, what we hate is loss, whether it’s money or something. In Italy, every driver with a driver’s license has a base point of 20 points, and every time a traffic rule is violated (for example: running a red light is worth 6 points), points will be deducted. This strategy can constrain drivers to follow the rules as much as possible. This method is used in many countries in the world and is very useful.
It is worth noting that there are countries in the world that play the exact opposite way. In some countries, the benchmark score is 0 points, and you will gain a point for each violation of the rules, but under this kind of rules, the proportion of users who violate traffic rules is significantly higher. Some studies have pointed out that in these countries, many drivers will privately compare each other with whoever breaks the law scores more. Although this kind of score-increasing gameplay also involves penalties, it psychologically seems to encourage users to violate traffic rules.
5. Social identity
In many fitness applications, I found a very common problem. Designers and developers believe that it is the exercise itself that users cannot complete the exercise according to the plan. They believe that if adding music has a stimulating effect, or adding new and unique exercise effects can allow users to complete the exercise, Or if you feel that users are shy, exercising in a place with no one can solve the problem. None of this is the point, it’s about commitment and social proof.
The training program is not the focus, the frequency and time are easy to say, the focus is on commitment and social identity. If you carefully observe or experience it yourself, you will find that when people exercise with their fitness coach or friends, the success rate and completion rate are higher. According to research, this method can increase the completion rate of exercise by 90%. Therefore, the best way for a fitness app to let users complete the exercise is to build a community, let users make friends, complete exercise programs with friends, and strengthen social identity.
6. Default settings
Users are very fond of using default settings and paths, whether it’s designing after buying a new phone, or the path they walk when visiting IKEA. Thinking is something that needs to be achieved through hard work. When faced with a choice, we instinctively choose the solution with the least resistance, the default option.
By default, when the products we use and the objects themselves change, so do our behaviors. For example: When the capacity of the shopping cart in the supermarket is doubled, the average shopping volume of users will increase by 40%. Since the 1930s, the basic portion of food in cooking books has increased a little every 10 years, and many people’s cooking portion has naturally increased accordingly.
However, the history of the shopping cart itself is also interesting.
7. Intermediate option tendencies
When we are faced with various choices from high to low, most people will tend to choose the more middle option. This tendency is known as the Goldilocks effect.
In a McDonald’s study, users were asked to choose from a range of beverage sizes, and no matter how the size itself changed, 80% of users would choose the center size because we mentally subconsciously assume that the middle option is Benchmarks and typical options, we always tend to choose the ones that don’t require a lot of thought, and the same goes for buying the most-reviewed products and stores online (social proof).
△ “Medium Cup, Large Cup, Extra Large Cup”
