Built for Mars

Here's a masterclass in user activation 👇 Headspace (that orange-blob-face that tells you to breathe deeply) claims that 96% of their users feel less stressed after using the app. Okay, it's cherry-picked data. But I almost believe it. Their sign-up flow brilliantly: - 🎯 Sets a goal - 🥁 Controls the environment - 🏆 Creates a perception of success - 💸 Ties that feeling to their product You might even get an Aha! Moment before starting a meditation. And, it's only really possible with some clever framing and Derren Brown style visual psychology. You can read it here: https://lnkd.in/emeVVqHx 🔗👈👈 ___ P.S., this is my 75th case study. One a month for 75 consecutive months. Haven't missed a single one. You can read them all on BFM+.

UX Case Study #74: ChatGPT 🤖 With the release of o1 Preview, we've quietly entered a new era for AI & UX abstraction. (In a bad way). https://lnkd.in/eT9AksKs Think the movie Inception, when they go down another level. 🥴 The techniques that make consumer apps feel intuitive, are being stretched and tested by unpredictable models that evolve rapidly. It's like trying to teach someone how to ride a horse, and the horse randomly turning into an F1 car overnight. — — — This study took longer than usual because I had to watch literally 10+ hours of computer scientists try and explain how these models worked. I didn't want to just echo the same AI & UX "laws" you've heard before. Instead, I've tried to explain: 👉 As the underlying technology improves, why interfaces like ChatGPT seem to get harder to use. 👉 How this might explain the strategy behind Apple Intelligence. 👉 Ultimately, which principles should you consider when building AI products, in a landscape where it's impossible to predict the next 6 months. Let me know what you think 👀. https://lnkd.in/eT9AksKs Built for Mars #ChatGPT #AIUX #UX

Here are techniques I've used on (at least) 100m users, to sell more stuff. 👇 https://lnkd.in/e-WFibez 🔗 UX is an art (crossed with a science) of thin margins. The difference between okay and epic can literally be a single line of context, a notification or a relatively mundane feature. You're cooking with the same ingredients as everyone else. Yours just tastes better. This month's UX case study is all about Audible, and how to design effective flywheels that lead to repeat purchases. Discovery → Purchase → Satisfaction (nudge). Don't settle for 'okay'. Nobody shares 'okay'.

I used Built for Mars to half the churn on Built for Mars in 8 weeks. 😂 For context, I've been "dogfooding" BFM+, recording the entire thing, and have already halved my churn. These aren't secret techniques—I literally publish them all. I'll keep going with this one KPI for another few months, and then talk about my entire process. It's going to be an epic step-by-step guide. 🙏 - Understanding the problem - Identifying a fix - Experimenting and designing - Implementation and testing I haven't experimented with pricing at all (yet), but $10 p/m is stupidly low for product teams. It could be 100x that and still have a positive ROI.

New UX Cheatsheet: Gamification 💎 If you've worked in tech for more than 4 afternoons, you'll have heard: • "We should use gamification in our app" • "Duolingo do it" • "Maybe we need to add XP, and people collect XP by completing tasks, and use XP to unlock cool badges, and then badges unlock.... and then... and then..." But honestly? Most of the time, attempts to gamify a service: • Increase churn ⚠️ • Decrease feature usage ⚠️ • Generally suck (they do, sorry) ⚠️ So, in this BFM+ Cheatsheet, I've covered some practical techniques that I've used in many products, across many industries. It's not a deep dive on the psychology of gamification, but a guide on how I've implemented it in the past. Here's what's worked for me (and my clients). ____ BFM+ members can see it here: 🔗👇 https://lnkd.in/eNSWD7RQ If you've not subscribed yet, an annual membership is less than £100 (much less than the cost of having a single UX flaw, or getting your developer to build just about anything).

This is why users are ignoring your features. 👇 They're probably being bundled together, like the drawer next to your bed. Just full of random screws, a remote control for a TV you no longer own and a book you bought in an airport 8 years ago. Take premium bank accounts for example: it's a collection of premium dating subscriptions, VPN access and weekly sausage rolls—what is this? 😂 Within 10-minutes, I’ll use Monzo Bank to explain: - 🎯 How to identify which features a user finds valuable  - ⚡️ How to deliver value quickly (reduce churn)  - 💎 How to reframe other features as being valuable https://lnkd.in/eCAUyZZP 👈👈

Guess who's back? Back again. Banking's back, tell a friend. 🫨 It'll be out next week. I'm pumped. — — — Plus, this is your reminder that the offer to get a free 6 month trial of Mobbin Pro will end, as planned, on July 1st. If you're not a BFM+ member yet, this is your last weekend to redeem it. https://lnkd.in/efyBKX5F 👈 And you really should, because it's a genuinely fantastic resource I use myself all the time. (If you get the meme, good on you. You're in for a ride). 😂

🧠 The psychology behind design A collection of 47 psychological biases, design principles and UX concepts that affect the product experience. https://lnkd.in/gRWxYKM4 By Peter Ramsey #design #ux #uxui #uxdesign

What's the trick to creating onboarding for B2B SaaS companies? 👀 I get asked this all the time. So here's a 30-second rundown of what's worked for me (and my clients at Built for Mars). — The challenges 😓 — 1. You (probably) have too many features. 2. Those features overlap different user types. Not everyone needs everything. 3. You need people to configure their account efficiently, but they don't read the onboarding prompts, and then get confused. 4. You don't have the capacity to create totally custom onboarding flows for every user type, or scenario. 5. You're still building features. - - - - - — This manifests as... 😮 — 1. You throw together some "point and show" onboarding slides, which everyone ignores because they're excited to try your product. 2. Your roadmap is 80% new features and more complexity. 3. You have to be vague (due to lack of customisation), and so your product ends up feeling like it suits nobody perfectly. 4. Smaller SaaS companies that are more niched have a better "value fit" for that cohort of users—you start to feel bloated. 5. You can't remove features, because you have paying users who like them. - - - - - — 5 good strategies 🙌 — [To be clear, there's no quick fix. Sorry.] 1. Work on creating a full-team culture of fixing issues, optimising and refining, in addition to creating new stuff. I aim for about 50/50. Sometimes this means a dedicated team / person. Jeff Bezos said: 💬 "There are tiny customer experience deficiencies, and we call them papercuts. The teams working on the big issues never get to papercuts. So you need special teams working on them." - - 2. You need to try using your own product more. When was the last time you pretended to be a new user, and actually configured one of these products? - - 3. Building a better user experience usually means removing, hiding and deprioritising features you love. It's one of the hardest bits (honestly). As an exercise, remove everything, and then add everything back in one by one. Which things are hard to justify now? - - 4. You need to learn who your user is as quickly as possible (i.e., entry survey), what they're trying to achieve and then *actually* modify the experience they see, based on your most popular cohorts. i.e., don't track data, say it's personalising their experience, and then do nothing with that data. Yeah, this is 90% of saas companies. - - 5. Read this case study on Slack's onboarding—it shows how they used a few techniques to build 'effortless'. https://lnkd.in/errS_A8f ———— Bonus: to see a feed of other people's onboarding UX tricks, go here: 👇 https://lnkd.in/eaYJPaEx

Fresh UX analysis: Slack 💬👀 https://lnkd.in/errS_A8f — There are two things I believe to be true about Slack: ✅ 1. The individual key flows feel effortless and simple. ⚠️ 2. The cumulative experience feels noisy and distracting. So this month, I’ve been hyper-focusing on those *first few minutes* of Slack. Which techniques do they use? How have they made configuring a B2B tool feel so easy? Is this why my channels are full of weird memes? If you're building a product (especially B2B), then this one's for you.