Chances are you’ve experienced the following: You’re with a small group of friends at a nice restaurant. Everyone is enjoying the food and conversation when someone decides to take out his phone — not for an urgent call, but to check email, Instagram, and Facebook.
Maybe you’ve witnessed this behavior and found it unsettling. So what do you do? Do you sit idly by, thinking disparaging thoughts? Or do you call out the offender?
Nir’s Note: In this essay, Ryan Stuczynski and I discuss the relationship between habits and user satisfaction. Ryan was the Director of Analytics at Fab and today leads growth for theSkimm. Follow Ryan on Twitter or Medium.
Here’s the Gist:
People have limited bandwidth when it comes to mobile app usage and habits matter for long-term engagement.
Usage frequency helps explain whether a company is successfully creating user habits.
Companies able to create more frequent usage habits enjoy higher user satisfaction as measured by Net Promoter Scores.
In the company’s first quarter earnings call, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg told Wall Street investors, “almost 63% of people who use Facebook in a month, will use it in a given day.” He continued, “another stat that I think is actually quite interesting is we track how many people use Facebook not just every day … but what percent of people used it 6 days out of 7 days of the week. And that number, for the first time in the last quarter, passed 50%. So, that’s pretty crazy, if you think about it … (more…)
Nir’s Note:This guest post comes from Brendan Kane who has built technology for MTV, Paramount, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, and the NHL. In this article, Brendan describes how he reprogramed the way he views the world using little more than his iPhone and iPad to find happiness.
We all have the power to change our lives and find happiness. I know this because I found ways to reprogram my inner circuitry and change my perspective of the world to ultimately find happiness. A few simple steps inserted into my daily routine dramatically improved my life and helped me feel more happy, joy, and fulfillment. Surprisingly, many of my new rituals were made possible using the technology I carry with me every day. (more…)
Nir’s Note: In this guest post, user experience designer Aaron Wilson, discusses a deep flaw of our digital devices and makes an audacious prediction about the future of consumer technology. Follow Aaron on Twitter @aarowilso.
No one wants to make a mistake like the one Clifford Stoll made in 1996. In the February issue of Newsweek Magazine, his now infamous article carried the headline, “The Internet? Bah!”
An “online database,” Stoll wrote, will never replace your daily newspaper. To futurists like Nicholas Negroponte who predicted that one day we’d buy books and newspapers “straight over the Internet,” Stoll responded flippantly, “Uh, sure.”
Clifford Stoll is not a stupid man. He has a Ph.D. in astronomy, was a system administrator at Berkeley Lab, and is considered by some to be the father of digital forensics.
Stoll has a wild Einsteinian head of grey hair that bounces as he jumps around a room. His voice has the inflection and excitement of a cartoon character and he hardly stays on topic for more than a few minutes. As he waves wildly in conversation you might catch a glimpse of the notes scribbled on his hands.
Attempting to predict the future, as Stoll did, is always a terrible idea. If you’re right, you won’t be completely right. And if you’re wrong, it will be blindingly obvious in retrospect. However, at the risk of “pulling a Stoll,” I feel compelled to share some visions of the future of consumer technology, in order to hopefully expand our thoughts on what we mean when we talk about technology.
Nir’s Note: In this last in a series of guest posts on the topic of technology habits, Jason Shah shares practical tips he used to regain control over his devices and break bad habits. Jason is a Product Manager at Yammer and blogs about user experience and technology at blog.jasonshah.org. You can follow him on Twitter @jasonyogeshshah.
“Not long ago, in a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in Texas, a 17-year-old boy was weathering withdrawal at its worst. His body shuddered with convulsions. He hurled tables and chairs around the hospital.
Had he been hooked on heroin? Cocaine? Jim Beam? Joe Camel?
No, his psychologist said. The teenager had withdrawn cold turkey from the Internet.” (more…)
Whether designing customer behaviors or your own habits, you’ll benefit from understanding the research I share from user experience design, behavioral economics, and neuroscience.
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