Why am I on Instagram or Watching YouTube all day?
By: Ajeetha Triplicane
Tags: Marketing, Consumer, Psychology, Technology, Product Management

The simple answer is, you are habituated to using it.

The elaborate answer is exceedingly interesting!

Stuck to my phone by Ajeetha

Habit creating products develop the bottom line of a company. Businesses who are trying to build products that are a better version of an existing app are not quite successful, the reason being, people lean back to an already existing app as they are used to it. In accounting it is called the LIFO- Last in first out, meaning the latest habits you learn are the first to go out. New behaviours have a short life that users usually revert back to their old ways pretty soon! This is also backed by a shred of impressive evidence, Two- thirds of alcoholics who go to rehabilitation pick up a bottle of alcohol within a year. Research also shows nearly everyone who loses weight by dieting puts on all those pounds back within two years. Hence the saying, old habits die hard!

You may ask why this happens? Your brain is an amazing machine that creates neural pathways when you’ve been doing an activity for over years, like remembering the route to your apartment or brushing your teeth every morning. It’s very instinctive and there is no pressure to remember these things as your brain has constructed pathways over time. It’s almost like a default setting. Isn’t that amazing?!

The more frequent a behaviour is repeated the stronger a habit becomes. It’s also one of the reasons why most of us just google to answer any question instead of taking some time out to think, go through the memories stored in our brain to answer it. We just GOOGLE! That there, is a habit creating a product.

Some of us want to have a digital scrapbook of our lives and not miss out on anything happening around the world, that’s why we use Instagram. Some of us are interested to see how Bitcoin is performing or live in fear of losing money and hence we keep checking apps like Coinbase.

CREATING A PRODUCT? ASK THESE QUESTIONS:

What problem am I trying to solve for the users with the products I’m creating?

How do the users currently solve that problem and why does it need a solution?

How frequently do you expect the users to engage with your product once they are habituated?

What user behaviours do you want to make into a habit?

It’s also important to know that if a product is just being created without answering the above questions and just improving the design of an already existing product, most likely they won’t sustain in the market. It’s about understanding what problem you want to solve for your users and these conversations should be the crux/ nucleus /heart of your product.

HOW TO TRIGGER YOUR PRODUCT INTO EXISTENCE?

A trigger is an external stimulus that prompts a user to be exposed to the product and its features. It is very similar to an oyster pearl. A pearl is formed by disturbance, by grit, sand particle or dust. External triggers give instructions or a nudge to the users by showing them the information to act on (Call to action). Like paid advertising, word of mouth, viral videos or also by push notifications only when enabled by a user. An external trigger is something similar to an alarm clock to which one wakes up.

An internal trigger however is something that is tied to an emotion or a pre-existing feeling to do something without any compulsion… the feeling of uploading a picture on Instagram because you feel good today.

Negative feelings can form a strong internal trigger, feelings like, I feel bored let me watch YouTube videos, I feel lonely let me text or video call my friends. The fear of missing something “FOMO”, as we call it is also an astounding internal trigger. When a product is able to find these needs and fill the gap; external prompts/triggers are no longer required. The usage of products almost becomes second nature as a bond of association is established between the user and the product.

HOW TO BUILD YOUR PEARL?

Jack Dorsey once said, he employs user narratives in building twitter and square. It’s unusual what storytelling does, it’s a crucial skill I believe should be used in every field of work as it helps one to shift from a product or feature building mindset to understanding user pain points and easing them. The reason why storytelling is powerful is because of the simplicity and emotion with which everyone in your business, right from the helping staff to a CEO can understand it.

HOW TO BUILD ON TRIGGERS? — An EXAMPLE

Empathy maps in design thinking are one such great tool to build a product.

My favourite would be the Toyotas 5-why method as it drills to the core of the pain /problem - With every “WHY” both the question and answer become so clear.

Example: Let’s say I am building the first-ever rickshaw service in London similar to Ola auto. This is how I’d go about my 5-WHY’s guiding the user narrative:

1) Why would Lilly travel in an Auto?

Ans: Because she wants to spend less time waiting for a cab.

2) Why would she spend less time?

Ans: Because she is travelling short distances & wants her journey to be hassle-free.

3) Why would she want it to be hassle-free?

Ans: Because in a city like London, many cabs drop her at the lane entrance instead of the doorstep.

4) Why would she not want to be dropped at the lane entrance?

Ans: She feels it’s an inconvenient travel experience for a short-distance trip.

5) Why would she feel inconvenient?

Ans: She fears she might be late for her meeting because of all the extra walking.

Asking these 5- why’s directs a product to reach the user's pain point or internal trigger, in this case, it is fear of not being on time.

And just like that, I have a product I’d build for users who’d want to have a faster short-distance trip and enable them to reach every doorstep they wish to set their foot on.

Source: Combined my ideas with snippets inspired by Hooked