Little Cuckoo - Arasu Then

                                                                                                                                                www.cxl.com

Continuation of the Weekly Review session Article For CXL Institute

From Arasu Then

CXL presents one of the best online course studies of digital psychology.  Any individual signup for this course through CXL would broaden their knowledge of human behaviors over the web interactions and one can learn how not to be trapped too.  If you are a senior employee from an organization reading this article right now, you would be learning how to implement strategies through digital psychology techniques to sell your products and services.  In this article, I would like to review what I have learned last week from Mr. Brian through CXL Institute about the emotional design strategies, but before that I would like to write a short note about basic understanding of persuasive systems. 

Psychology and media – Persuasive Systems

Persuasive systems in different domains have been used to support people in changing their behaviors. These systems motivate desirable behaviour in users by providing relevant information, tracking user progress, and giving them feedback. This study investigates the persuasive features of a web-based information system that supports the enforcement of user commitments. A structural equation modelling approach and analysis of open text responses are used to identify the factors that affect the intention to continue to use the system, to gather users’ perspectives on how the system helps them to stick to their goals and the improvements that could be made. Data collected from the system's users is tested against the proposed research model. The results show that 30% of users’ continuance intention is explained by the implemented persuasive software feature categories (computer-human dialogue support, primary task support, perceived credibility, and social support) and perceived competence. Of these categories, primary task support has the strongest effect on perceived competence and continuance intention. The results also reveal how the system helps users to be consistent in their goals and the lack of specialized social support features. The study concludes with a discussion and recommendations for future research.

Understanding Emotional Design Strategies:   One should understand the emotional design strategies in order to survive the best in the social media.  One should know where you can be triggered by emotions and if you know how to strategize the emotional design then you can win the web presence and can increase customer base.

Brian classic example of Netflix emotional trigger would give you more understanding of emotional design strategies. For better understanding open the Netflix webpage.

Emotional design strategies:  Netflix is classic example to learn emotional design strategies.  Signing up for Netflix would give clear understanding of emotional behavior of a person.  Someone comes to the main landing page, and then they're taken through a process that's designed to get them to make a selection, and then do an upsell.  Check out the main landing page - what's up in the future content gives a little bit of play on curiosity, a bit of a trigger, an incentive type of a dopamine trigger that would get someone engaged., but there's not really too much else to that and there is something more to this value prop.  Emotional design strategies of Netflix would easily trigger the emotion of people if you see “watch anywhere, cancel anytime”.  They're implying that you can watch it anywhere, but they're also implying that if you didn't have it, couldn't watch it anywhere.  You would be limited.  It's playing on limits, as well as more opportunity. A bit of a powerlessness versus more powerful, or at least having more options. Going from that state of not having as much selection, to having a ton of selection and then cancel anytime.  Again, that's taking a situation, where many of us have been trapped, and probably feel resentful, into subscription packages and many countries, you might have exploitative mobile phone packages and different services like that trap a person and how do they do that?  Well, the marketing department says, "Yeah, no problem."Come join us, great deal." And then you join, and now you get notified, oh, you signed a contract.  You didn't read the fine print?  Well, by the way, you're trapped for the next year, and if you cancel, we're going to destroy your creditor something like that.  So they say cancel anytime.  So they're playing on that sense of powerlessness, and that fear of being trapped, and the motivation from loss-aversion . And you can sort of move along.  So next we have join for a month for free.  So this is an incentive.  Now, let's go down and look.  No commitment, cancel online at anytime. So here again, that powerlessness they're playing with and loss-aversion.

It feels like how when you're negotiating with the mafia, they might be nice to you, but then they let you know that they're packing heat.  A  lot of this page is written like that, with these implied bad situations that they're helping you out of, and it's just loaded with them.  Watch anywhere because you were limited before.  Read one at the bottom. If you decide Netflix isn't for you, no problem. No commitment. Cancel online anytime.  They just keep reinforcing and reinforcing and reinforcing, and then they also reinforce it with visuals saying the exact same thing, but through visual language. So next, if we continue, choose your plan.  Again, a bit of a freedom message.  You're in control. You make the decisions.  Of course, they architect the decisions so it's not exactly...Choose your plan within our choice architecture.  Any of our three plans and you won't be charged until after your free month ends. So clearly, they're dealing with a situation, where they must have done a lot of research and found out that people really feel like they could be trapped into a situation, because this is all about getting away from bad situations, getting away from being trapped, having options, and having freedom. I'll go on .  Look at their pricing packages. So now we look at, again, choose a plan that's right for you .Downgrade or upgrade at any time.  Again, more freedom, more choice.  You're in complete control here.  This is not about trapping people.  They're obviously pushing this package here to the right.  Then with loyalty, they have things like watch on your laptop, and loss-aversion, cancel anytime, first month free.  They just keep spending their time focused on the same common themes and topics. Let's look at this point where we're at, step two.  Create your account.  Use your email and create a password to watch Netflix on any device, at any time.  Again, incentives.  They're playing a little bit on loyalty again, trying to get people to lock in, and a sense of ownership there. 

So sign up to start your free month. Just two more steps and you're done. So that's also a little bit of a notifier about how much work is left as part of friction removal. We hate paperwork too. Trying to charm you in a little bit.  Call you to create your account, which will definitely start holding you in as you create an account, invest more time and effort into the software and more loss-aversion. Please do not email me. So they've done presumed opt-in, and they're asking to opt-out, but at least empowering you to be able to do that and finally, set up your payment. Cancel before this date to not be charged.  As a reminder, we'll email you three days before.  No commitment, cancel anytime.  So again, these are clearly very powerful themes that they're dealing with that I'm suremust have come from a fair amount of research, because this is all about getting out of trapped situations and having options and being an empowered customer. So then we of course go through the full process. If you did not opt in after all of that, they're using some sort of session system ,and when you come back, they say welcome back.  See what's next. Finish sign up.  So they're doing a call to action.  We just looked at Netflix from the perspective of very broad, emotional motivators. This is a good technique for understanding the broader emotions that drive behavior. It's not the type of technique you're going to want to use to drill in to the specifics like logical tactics or strategies that are being employed, but just understanding overall the basic drivers, and the things that will push a person forward, but also possibly stop them dead in their tracks.

I hope this complete emotional design strategy from Netflix would have opened ones’ brain with broader vision towards our behavior over web and this would help many organizations can strategize similar way of approach to increase their customer base too.

Article By

Arasu Then  Little Cuckoo