Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Using behavioral science to improve your product | Kristen Berman (Irrational Labs)

145 snips

Oct 2, 2022

Kristen Berman, CEO of Irrational Labs, discusses how behavioral science transforms product design for companies like Google and TikTok. She introduces her 3B Framework, explaining how it identifies biases that hinder user engagement. Kristen elaborates on the importance of effective onboarding for customer retention and highlights innovative strategies to combat misinformation on platforms like TikTok. The conversation also touches on the ethical implications of behavioral nudges and the psychology behind user behavior, offering actionable insights for product development.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Behavioral Design

Irrational Labs helps companies improve products with behavioral science.
They study user psychology and design ways to change behavior and boost engagement.

ANECDOTE

Budgeting Inefficiency

A fintech app's most requested feature, budgeting, had no impact on user spending after a large experiment.
Budgeting is often ineffective because it requires too much effort from users.

ADVICE

Simplify for Success

Simplify complex tasks like budgeting by using defaults or simple rules of thumb.
Instead of relying on users' motivation, redesign their environment to encourage desired behaviors.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Influence

The Psychology of Persuasion

Robert Cialdini

In this highly acclaimed book, Dr. Robert B. Cialdini explains the psychology behind why people say yes and how to apply these insights ethically. The book outlines six universal principles of influence: Reciprocation, Commitment and Consistency, Social Proof, Liking, Authority, and Scarcity. The new and expanded edition includes a seventh principle, Unity, along with new research, insights, and examples. Cialdini uses memorable stories and relatable examples to make the subject accessible and easy to understand, helping readers become more skilled persuaders and defend themselves against unethical influence attempts.

Predictably Irrational

The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

Dan Ariely

In this revised and expanded edition of the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller, Dan Ariely uses a series of illuminating experiments to show how expectations, emotions, social norms, and other invisible forces skew our reasoning abilities. Ariely explains how we consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate, and how these behaviors are neither random nor senseless but systematic and predictable. The book covers various aspects of decision-making, from the power of placebos to the effects of social and financial norms, and offers insights into how to make better decisions by understanding these irrational patterns.

The Darwin Economy

Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good

Robert H. Frank

In 'The Darwin Economy,' Robert H. Frank challenges the traditional libertarian view of economics by arguing that Charles Darwin's principles of natural selection provide a more accurate model for understanding economic competition. Frank contends that the 'invisible hand' of Adam Smith often fails in cases where the value of goods is relative rather than absolute, leading to collective action problems and market failures. He proposes policy changes, such as consumption taxes and 'sin taxes,' to address these issues and promote a more equitable distribution of wealth. The book highlights examples of 'positional consumption' and how individual self-interest can harm the community as a whole, drawing parallels with biological phenomena like runaway sexual selection[2][4][5].