Psychological Moonshots

Engineering is expensive.
And the problems we deal with are simpler.
So psychological moonshots are more practical — whether to increase sales of a product or reduce churn.
Because they are cheap.

• Frames to Find Psychological Moonshots

  1. Friction/effort frame
     • One of the most important metrics for streaming services is time spent on the platform. So Netflix engineers came up with the auto-play idea. It only saved a few seconds for the users to go to the next episode. But it drastically increased watch time.
     • Now the opposite can also work depending on your product. Sometimes you can increase sales by making it harder to buy for customers.
  2. Anxiety frame
     • A construction company realizing most people were not buying condos because of the anxiety of moving. When they introduced moving services and storage facilities, sales (and average revenue per customer) exploded.
  3. Uncertainty/risk frame
     • 30-day refund guarantee, resulting in increased sales.
  4. Commitment frame
     • No credit card required for free trials. Less commitment = more conversions.
     • A gym offer where they charge you a big amount at first. And refund partially if you stick with the classes. Higher commitment = better results = more future sales.
  5. Joy/excitement frame
     • Double Tree delights customers with a warm cookie to increase customer satisfaction. Positive memorable moments can bring you exponential benefits with little cost.
  6. Achievement frame
     • Some health organizations send text messages to blood donors when their blood is used by a patient. But a person who receives that message is more likely to donate blood again.
  7. Boredom frame
     • When the skyscrapers were new in New York, people hated the long wait times in the elevators. The obvious solution was to make them faster. But it was expensive. And sometimes not even possible with the technology of that time. So somebody found the ingenious solution of putting mirrors into elevators. We all like looking at ourselves. So long wait times didn’t matter anymore.
     • Another example can be Duolingo. Learning something new is difficult. And that triggers boredom for most people. So they made language learning 90% less boring with gamification. And millions of people have started learning new languages.

• Sometimes you don’t even need to fix the problem, you can make it unimportant.

Instead of trying to solve a problem with conventional logic, you reframe the problem. - (Rory Sutherland, Alchemy)

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It’s easier to make something 10x better than to make it 10% better. - Astro Teller (CEO, X)

Ref. Frontera Blog