By Oleh Martynenko
Some apps or websites are well thought out in terms of design, but they have one problem: they are emotionally boring. They can trigger both desire and resistance in users at the same time. If we add positive emotions to user experience, we may both increase the desire to act and reduce resistance. We shift users’ focus towards fun, which is created based on targeted actions. Here are some tips on how to do it.
Create an Information Gap
When it becomes clear that some information is missing or hidden, curiosity arises. And it encourages action. For example, you may only show interesting information about the user’s results and how they compare to other users when the person completed all of the tasks within your (fitness) app. If the user wants to get the insights, s/he will perform, or finish the started action.
Create Deliberate Restrictions
A creative restriction in a challenge format can inspire action or completion.
For example, if people do not want to specify information about themselves, you can offer a task:
“Tell us about yourself using at least 100, maximum 150 characters.”
Or, if you have a large registration form and people fall off halfway, you can offer a challenge:
“People fill out all the data in an average of 1 min 34 sec. Can you do it faster? “
Present a Goal as a Collection of Subgoals
Here the principle of striving for completeness comes into play. It is also known as the Zeigarnik effect — We remember unfinished tasks better and attach more importance to them. A remarkable fact: the closer to the completion of the “collection”, the greater the desire to complete it (goal gradient effect).
For example: In a healthcare application, you could show all the daily needs (healthy diet, enough physical activity, etc.) to fulfill the main goal (to get rid of the factors that accelerate aging) with a progress bar.
To make it even more interesting for users to move forward in the progress bar, you could also show them how many other users have currently reached the same progress level, and how many have completed all the tasks. This is the data contrast effect.
Give Users the Ability to Create Social Commitments
Create a way for users to make promises to other people for planned actions – also known as Social responsibility. Let’s figure out how it works.
If the promise is fulfilled, the user gets the desired result (completed action) or even an additional bonus. In case of non-fulfillment — the user receives some kind of loss (reputation, material, etc.).
For example: in educational projects, these can be agreements on pair lessons (training). Suppose a user has agreed with another person to train conversational French together the next day. In that case, the training will occur more likely in comparison with an independent study regime.
Users who make a promise to other users will not want to embarrass themselves by not keeping their promise. The unwillingness to suffer reputational losses can be a strong motivator.
Add an Image of Another Person
A face simulates the presence of another person or the emotional coloring characteristic of the other person.
For example, if you add the face of the project manager, to the ticket assigned to the performer, this can add a sense of direct (live) appeal which is more difficult to refuse.
Use Humor
Positive emotions can help cope with tasks, such as solving problems creatively, making important decisions, remembering something, and helping others. In one study, a group of people who were reading jokes performed better on a logical thinking task than a group of people who weren’t reading jokes.
If you want users of your website to complete a difficult task, stimulating them with a dose of humor is a good idea to make performing the task easier. It may be just a funny comment on the task, or it may be the whole tone of the company’s voice. The only important thing is not to cross the boundaries of ethics.
Make an Unusual Presentation of Boring Data
Let’s say you have an emotionally boring product, such as a mail app, and you want to stand out from your competitors. In that case, you need to play with the basic actions of receiving and sending emails.
Here, an unusual presentation of the number of incoming and outgoing messages could help make the product more interesting. For example, you could create unusual comparisons for specific ranges of the number of emails sent, received, and read:
“Hey Peter, you have sent 46 emails today. By the way, a carrier pigeon can pick up and carry away up to 40 letters in an envelope over a short distance. You are cooler than a pigeon 😉”. Or: “Hey Peter, you have sent 46 emails today. On average, people send up to 4 emails per day. You claim the championship 💪”.
Following this style, you can create several variations of messages for different ranges of emails sent. Through that, you make your product more interesting to use for your users.
I found this principle in Stephen Anderson’s book “Seductive Interaction Design: Creating Playful, Fun, and Effective User Experiences”. He cited a similar case of how the social network for travelers, Dopplr, creates interesting reports for users.
Create a Challenge for Users
Creating challenges is another way to make boring products or actions more interesting or to motivate a person to take action. For example, instead of the simple call to action “Sign up”, you can use a call in an additional comment next to it: “People do this in an average of 8 seconds. Can you do it faster?”, while showing a timer next to it.
Or you can create a challenge with discovery framing in an application that monitors the number of steps walked: “Can you walk 200,000 steps in a week? If successful, discover how many users completed this challenge.”
Bottom Line
Persuasion is not always enough to motivate users to do something. This rational part doesn’t work so well. It’s worth playing with different approaches and adding a little bit of fun, curiosity, and challenge, to your website or app. Through that, people are not only more likely to interact with your product but also to talk about it.
This article was edited by Carina Müller
