When I travelled from Guwahati to Tawang by road, it was an exhausting 3 days tour. However, the 2 days I spent in Tawang are one of the most memorable moments of my life. The same is the case with the usage of digital products. Users remember an experience with how they felt at its peak and its end, not the average of the experience throughout the customer journey. This is called a Peak End Rule.
The following are 3 ways a Product Manager and UX Designer can utilize this psychological concept to improve the usability of the product:
#1 Give careful consideration to the most intense points and final moments of the user journey
- Zomato Payment Experience: For the saved cards, Zomato bypasses the CVV filling step for the user, allowing users to have a quicker checkout near the end of their purchase journey.
- Amazon Order Confirmation: After successful payment, Amazon provides a confirmation along with a scratch card to make the customer come again for shopping in future. The scratch card acts as a surprising cashback element for users.
- Badges at Nike Training Club: After finishing the exercise session on the app, Nike provides relevant badges to the users to keep them motivated towards their goals.
#2 Design a delight for the user at the journey points where the product is the most helpful and valuable
- Zomato Offer Application: Zomato provides a delightful animated experience on the application of an offer, thus, highlighting the savings a user receives.
- Netflix Episode End: When a user finishes an episode, Netflix provides an option to start the next episode or continue watching the credits. This provides the users with a quick navigation to the next episode, an intervention at a valuable point of the user journey.
- Netflix Returning User: Netflix identifies the videos which a user had stopped watching in between and recommends them to continue from the same time stamp in their next visit. This helps in reducing the cognitive load of recalling what to watch and from where to watch.
#3 Be mindful that users tend to remember negative instances more vividly than the positive ones
It needs to be taken care that the negative experiences are handled well in the product. We should provide clear and concise error messages to the users. It should be conveyed that it is our mistake and not the mistake made by the user. The users should be provided appropriate exit navigations and help content to get out of the error scenario without dropping from the product.
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Resources to learn how to improve usability using psychology principles
- Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug (Paperback)
- Seductive Interaction Design by Stephen Anderson (Kindle | Paperback)
- Laws of UX by Jon Yablonski (Kindle | Audiobook | Paperback)