Using psychology for consumer apps
[Personal opinion piece]
In early 1900s, Evan Pavlov — a Russian physiologist and Nobel laureate, while researching on dog’s digestive system had successfully made it salivate on a bell’s ring; an experiment popularly known as “ classical conditioning “.
Explaining very simply, classical conditioning conditions a subject to exhibit a specific behavior (salivation) by combining a neutral stimulus (bell’s ring) with unconditioned or natural stimulus (food). Pavlov’s experiment was simple. It was natural for his dog to salivate on the sight of food. He clubbed this sight with a sound and after multiple repetitions, the dog was salivating just by hearing the bell ring.
This experiment built an association between a sound and food where previously existed none.
Pavlov’s experiment proved that dog’s brain can be tweaked to exhibit a particular behavior. What about human brains?
B.F. Skinner often referred as the father of operant conditioning, empirically approached the study of learning in complex organisms including both animals and humans. While classical conditioning brings out a behavior, operant conditioning can control that behavior through reinforcement or punishment. In other words, if a behavior needs to be increased, it simply needs to be rewarded.
Popularly known for “Skinner Box” he carried behavior experiments in strictly controlled environment of providing stimuli. Classical conditioning combined with operant conditioning laid cornerstones for behaviorism, the principles of which still dominate in marketing, advertising, gaming, gambling, design and more.
What about consumer apps?
Here’s my case study:
By March 2018, Google Play Store had exceeded 3 million apps, 2 million across Apple store and thousands across Windows, Amazon and Blackberry World. These millions of apps from just one OS are segregated to fit under few categories and that means — a tough fight for eye-balls.
But what happens when an app is owned by a dominant player or authority?
In April 2016, the Government of India (GoI) introduced Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for instant real time money transfer.
UPI came with many advantages, and the biggest was one enabling people to have virtual addresses linked with their bank accounts. Secondly, integration of this platform across multiple mobile applications is easy. Google Play Store witnessed the blooming of UPI based apps after BHIM was launched by GoI. Tez was launched by Google and existing players of payment applications like PhonePe and PayTm also added this feature.
Before the introduction of UPI, basic transactions took place of the nature where relatively big amounts of money were transferred using IMPS or NEFT with the precondition that the receiver’s bank details are stored at sender’s beneficiary list. The process of on-boarding a new beneficiary is not only long but the money transfer also involves either a small charge or some time to process.
UPI eradicated this pain. All one needed to transfer money was another person’s virtual address. No need to SMS one’s bank details, wait for the receiver’s details to add in the beneficiary list, no extra charges for payments or delays.
BHIM was introduced in Dec 2016 as a pure UPI based app and by April 2018 it witnessed 1 trillion transactions. Tez which was released 9 months after BHIM in September 2017 accounted for 52% of the UPI transactions in 3 short months of releasing.
What was Google doing differently?
BHIM conditioned people to transact on UPI through associating with an app. Tez rewarded them for doing so.
Each time a Tez user on-boarded a friend or family to the app, both persons were awarded with 51 INR. Further, transacting above a certain limit earned them scratch cards. Users anticipate winning scratch cards and even though one cannot win cashback for every transaction, it keeps them to continue using the app.
Tez is designed like slot machines where payments are the levers and users pull them in hopes of winning cashbacks. Google’s Tez app, built on the same UPI platform, applied reinforcement where BHIM did not.
Now, how could I have validated my thoughts?
I asked my peer-group to fill up my simple survey form and from the 30 responses I managed to receive from my friends and colleagues, 13 people preferred Tez over BHIM or their bank’s UPI or WhatsApp. 5 Tez users responded with reasons synonymous to cashback rewards.
And now I wonder…
Pre-extremely smart phones, the apps came with a single simple purpose — dialling a number, sending a message, listening to music, clicking pictures and so on. With evolution of devices, internet speed, prolonged battery life, crisper camera and addictive apps we are glued to tiny screens way more than what we did a decade back. Ironically and hilariously enough the same technologies that conditioned us to use it more are attempting to condition us back to “un-glue” ourselves.
It’s no secret that our choices are influenced by constant bombardment of psychologically contrived messages fed to us by our senses. The fight for an average 720 by 1280 screen-size is getting tougher. What other principles can be used to grab our attention, pick our interest, condition our desire and make us act? And when we do find the answers who takes the call of drawing a healthy line?
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
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