Behavior changes from expecting future rewards

Hey folks,

Here are the top 10 things I found worth sharing and your UX tip of the week:

UX tip of the week

Show (or clearly describe) future rewards when asking for behavior change.

• In Robert Sapolsky's book, 'The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst,' research suggests that dopamine is mainly linked to expecting rewards, not just receiving them.

• Display future rewards when prompting action. Examples:

  • If you're a real estate company collecting contact info, show a 'Sold' sign.

  • For retirement plan sales, depict a tropical island vacation.

  • Selling festival tickets? Display the live concert experience.

  • Proposing a solution? Show business targets exceeded in a chart.

• Gradually reveal future rewards at each step in the customer journey. Example for selling online courses:

  • Homepage: Showcase a professional learning environment.

  • Product list: Display a sign of course completion.

  • Product detail page: Show happy students with certificates.

  • Checkout page: Depict an applauding audience at a TED talk.

Top 10 things worth sharing this week

1. "Shared beliefs and the artifacts that symbolize them are a key component to effective collaboration." If you want to improve how you combine different research methods and data, start with Mixed Methods by Sam Ladner.
   
   

2. Dscout made a useful checklist for usability tests that you can use before, during, and after the test.
   
   

3. “Usability would be the most direct test of Jobs To Be Done success, but some additional measures could include usage, engagement, perception, and emotions.” Microsoft UXR shared lessons from leveraging the JTBD framework.
   
   

4. Chromeography is a Tumblr collection of old-fashioned letters made from industrial materials.
   
   

5. On goals vs. objectives: “Goals are the outcomes you intend to achieve, whereas objectives are the specific actions and measurable steps that you need to take to achieve a goal.”
   
   

6. If you're new to making a design system in Figma, try Figmaster for practical exercises. Or if you want to learn more before you start, check out the book ‘Building Design Systems’ or class ‘Creating Design Systems.’
   
   

7. Use one of these 5 prioritization methods shared by NNG to decide what to work on first. RICE and Kano methods are especially good.
   
   

8. If you have an idea for a Chrome Extension, you can create your own even if you don’t know how to code using GPT-4.
   
   

9. UX Director Laura Klein talked about avoiding costly rework by designing the smallest thing possible on the Insights Unlocked Podcast. You can learn more in her book Build Better Products.
   
   

10. Built for Mars collected 47 psychological biases and design principles in a nice microsite. UX Hints shared a handy one-pager with 6 popular cognitive biases in UX.

Thanks for reading!

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Sincerely,
Gerren