Design an effective "user behavior and feedback effect" Cycle

[Core tips] Our product is full of feedback loops. Behavioral Research also shows that the feedback loop plays an important role in people's decision-making. The original author, Loren Baxter, is the designer of ReadyForZero.

No matter what kind of product you are designing, there will always be a loop like "user behavior and feedback effect. In many cases, a good and effective "feedback loop" is an important factor that determines whether a product can succeed. In this article, let's take a look at how a well-crafted feedback loop affects user behavior.

　What is a feedback loop?

The feedback loop consists of the following links:

One person initiates an action

This action produces one or more effects.

Some of the important effects will be fed back to the behavior initiator in some way.

The behavior initiator continues to generate new behaviors based on received feedback, and the pattern repeats in such a loop.

　　

 

The "feedback loop" is everywhere in our real life. It can reveal whether people have made the right choices. A person who eats bad things will feel sick and uncomfortable, and will reject the behavior in the future; while a person who eats good things will feel happy and sweet. If you treat others well and the other party gives feedback in the same way, you will feel very happy. If a person damages your body, the body is prone to problems-our brain seems to have such a rewards and punishments mechanism.

In addition to these natural feedback loops, there are countless examples of "artificial. We take the test and get the expected score based on our knowledge. We will guide and adjust our next learning. We will update our status on our social networking websites, get others' "likes" or comments, get a sense of presence and identity, and generate a desire to continue to publish content.

Then let's explore the feedback loop in the product.

　Explore basic feedback cycles in products

First, we need to identify the feedback loop in the product to see what regularity the "behavior-feedback" loop involves users.

　　

 

Many social apps have a set of basic feedback loops: users publish content, other users view the content, click "like", and then feed back the content to the publisher, generating motivation for continuous Publishing.

　　

 

Other types of feedback loops are not so intuitive. Taking Yelp as an example, a hotel provides catering services, and better services can usually bring better reviews. After dining, customers come to Yelp to comment, these comments will be evaluated by other users (such as "useful", "interesting", and "cool" buttons ). Some users who have posted a sufficient number of comments will also enjoy certain "privileges", such as attending a party or becoming "Yelp elite ". These feedback loops are well designed to effectively enable users to stick to their websites and continuously publish content, which is valuable to Yelp, merchants, and users themselves.

　　

 

Find this kind of "user behavior and feedback effect" cycle in your product and list it. They may involve a wide range, including information communication between the digital world and the real world, online and offline interpersonal interactions, and a long time span. Carefully observe the links in which user behaviors are generated and information transmission is triggered, and the links between users or between users and the website itself for direct and indirect communication are fertile ground for generating feedback loops.

　Enhancement and Improvement

Find out the most important feedback loop that is most closely related to the core value of the product in your list, and try to enhance or improve it from the following points:

Speed

Scalability

Target Context

Correlation with motivation

1. Speed

It's too slow!

Problem: the slower the feedback effect is, the lower the influence on users' next behavior decisions.

That is, the so-called "timeliness" problem. For example, it may take several years for a user to see the final profit and loss results after making an investment in a financial product. This is a typical slow feedback.

　　

 

Solution: output the feedback effect as soon as possible to shorten the cycle. On the one hand, you can try to improve the output efficiency of the feedback effect. On the other hand, you can try to use a simulated method when the wait time cannot be reduced, the feedback effect is provided for reference before the user makes actual behaviors. As long as the simulated feedback effect is justified, rather than fabricated out of thin air, it will have a certain effect. For example, the Investment Behavior mentioned above, in this step after the user selects an investment object and before the user executes the investment decision, the simulation results can be provided based on factors such as their investment quotas and actual market rules, so that users can have a general understanding of what will happen after the investment to assist them in decision-making.

ReadyForZero is a good example. They provide tools to help people manage and pay off their debts. In this step shown in the figure, we can see that the tool can calculate the debt repayment details for the next few years based on the payment plan selected by the user, this includes the total amount, saved time, and amount of money, so that users can be informed before making decisions and choose the most appropriate solution for themselves with peace of mind.

　　

 

The push mechanism of mobile apps is also a representative form of fast feedback. When you publish a message on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, the publisher's mobile phone will soon receive a push prompt, which is a powerful feedback loop. You must try to use the push mechanism in an appropriate way in a suitable product.

On the contrary, in some cases, slow feedback loops are really needed by some types of products. For such products, it is very important to reduce users' perception of feedback effects. Let's look at an example in the offline world: Credit card. These small cards help banks earn huge profits by slowing down a painful feedback loop-consumers pull their hard-earned money from the wallet, make repeated choices, and then get what they want, you have to go to the bank to get a dozen more. Credit card effectively delays negative feedback, allowing you to enjoy a high level of consumption. You are anxious only when you receive bills each month. Even in this anxious phase, you can still choose to further delay negative feedback and only pay off the minimum limit, and the bank can also earn more interest because of your self-comfort.

2. scalability

In comparison?

Problem: ambiguous feedback effects that cannot be quantified cannot be used as the basis for decision-making.

For example, the question of "taking nutrition" is a well-known ambiguity in the feedback effect. How do people know they eat well? If you tell them that what you just eat is unhealthy, how unhealthy is it? If the feedback effect can be presented in a quantifiable way associated with the reality, it will be much easier to understand and provide a practical guidance for people's dietary behaviors. The nutrition label is born for this purpose. Through it, people can learn what kind of good things can be consumed by eating an apple, what kind of problems will be caused by eating a piece of bacon, and so on.

　　

 

Solution: Like dietary nutrition labels, we also need to provide feedback to users in quantifiable ways. Try some visual and comparable presentation methods, because the human brain is better at comparing attributes such as the size and location of tangible objects.

Klout presents the Social Influence of users through the "Klout score" in its own products. It fully reflects the importance of "quantifiable" and "Visualization" for information transmission.

　　

 

This method is quite interesting, but it must be admitted that it is based on a series of relatively limited "social indicators ", for example, the number of flowers received, the number of likes, the number of comments, or the number of forwarded items. For concepts like "social influence", these indicators cannot be trustworthy enough, the final feedback results are difficult to accurately reflect the actual situation.

Let's look back at the previous ReadyForZero case. If you only tell users that they need to pay 0.15 million US dollars in total, it is no different from telling them that "you need to pay a lot of money", because such a sum is clear, however, it is difficult to give people a personal and easy-to-perceive concept. You can also tell users how much they need to pay off each day, so that users can compare the amount with their daily consumption, such as coffee or lunch, this gives you a clearer understanding of the information and facilitates further selection of repayment plans.

3. Target Context

What does it mean?

Problem: The expression of the feedback content lacks the target context and the information lacks the sense of direction.

Saving additional expenses makes people feel good, but it makes sense to understand the total amount of goals that can be saved. "My goal is to save money for my vacation. At present, I have saved 500 yuan, reaching 1/3 of the total target amount ." This form of information not only expresses the current state, but also specifies the specific objectives of the behavior, as well as the relationship between the current state and the target, which is more in line with People's Daily thinking framework. For another example, "you have spent 1200 yuan this week." compared with "you spent 1200 yuan this week, the weekly budget is 700 yuan, and the current overspending is 500 yuan, although the data is the same, the meaning of the latter is clearly clearer and has a sense of direction, which is more instructive for the user's subsequent behavior decision-making.

　　

 

Solution: Put the information in the context of the overall target, so that the user can understand his/her behavior and how far the current status is from the final target.

Setting a clear target is like setting an anchor for users to assess the position of the current status in the overall process at any time. As long as there is still a distance between the target and the target, the user will have a subjective initiative to move forward.

Nike + energy wristband and many similar products are typical cases of establishing a feedback loop around user behavior and goals. This type of product can track users' physical behaviors, compare the current data with the target, report information to the user, and share the information online. For mobile apps, watches, and wristbands, progress bars are usually used on the interfaces of these products to display statuses and targets.

　　

 

4. Correlation with motivation

I don't care.

Problem: feedback that is not closely related to users' real motives does not affect users' subsequent behavior decisions.

The "game-based" feedback loop does have a certain degree of influence, but for many types of products, feedback forms such as points and badges are not closely related to the product itself and user motivation, their incentives will not last forever. In many cases, users do not care about points. They really care about health, happiness, relationship between friends and friends, and wealth. Think about which of the following items you want to get: 30 Foursquare points, 30 likes on Facebook, 30 extra minutes per day, and 30 USD. Although the answer varies from person to person, I bet the first one is definitely not as good as the last two.

　　

 

Solution: Find out what users really care about, think about their behavioral motives and goals, and provide appropriate feedback forms to motivate them to achieve their goals. For some types of products, social "Rewards", such as comments and likes, can be effectively associated with the motivation of interpersonal communication; good-looking and comfortable things are generally more suitable for "healthy" behavior, while money is widely applied.

ReadyForZero combines some important feedback methods to facilitate users' payment activities. First, they use the progress bar to clearly show users the role of the selected payment scheme in promoting the completion of the debt repayment target, the visual presentation method effectively associates the information content with the user's desire to "accomplish the goal. In addition, users can also learn how much interest and time the payment scheme can help them save. These two aspects of information play a very strong role in making behavior decisions for the "debt repayment" goal.

　　

 

Of course, it is not easy to fully and accurately grasp users' behavioral motives. There are many theoretical theories in this regard. One of them is worth learning and reference: "Self-Determination Theory )". This theory holds that a person makes his/her own choice for individual actions after being fully aware of his/her individual needs and environmental information. In this framework, the motivation of a person's behavior is generated internally rather than externally.

In addition to these theories, the R & D methods we are familiar with at ordinary times are even more reliable weapons for us to understand user needs and motivation.

　　Two points to remember

In addition to the above four key points, we still need to remember two things in the design work.

1. Consider the actual results

When you identify an important feedback loop in your product and make improvements through the above four points, remember to consider the performance of the design scheme in the actual product; it is meaningless to test the improvement of the effect through quantitative methods.

　　

 

"Data Analysis" is also a feedback loop for designers themselves: You have designed or improved some information feedback modes in the product, and then verified your own solutions through quantitative statistical analysis, provide guidance on the subsequent work. Select several key indicators to track their performance in several key context case scenarios. In addition, the frequency of the report should also be determined based on the actual situation of your product.

2. Product Ethics

Evaluate the "moral" elements included in each decision throughout the design process. Improve the feedback loop to drive users to make the desired behavior decisions-this is more or less a task involving social responsibility for you and your team. Are you creating an application product to help people improve their health, a tool to improve their work efficiency, or a slot machine?

Zynga's business model is centered around a series of extremely effective feedback cycles, and some of the business values produced by these cyclical models are often criticized by moral factors. For example, they use progress bars, target settings, identity levels, social incentives, and other methods to effectively create happy farms as profitable products, but some negative voices also follow, many people think that Zynga is making profits by consuming users' time, money, and creativity. The foundation of their business model is to manipulate people's emotions and behavioral motives.

　　

 

Such problems are indeed controversial. Especially for game products, it is not easy to accurately locate the concepts such as "value" and "fun, it is beyond the scope of the topic discussed in this article. In short, as a designer, we should make rational use of design principles to create products that can make the world better.

　　Summary

Design can affect people's behavior decision-making. The well-designed "user behavior and feedback effect" cycle has a considerable promotion effect. Focus on the speed, scalability, target context, and motivation relevance of the Information Feedback model to help users better understand and achieve their own behavioral goals, using quantitative analysis methods to consider the impact of feedback loops on user behavior, you may find that you are improving product experience to improve people's quality of life.

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