Button keynote: Vidhika Bansal

Kristina Halvorson (00:09):

Vidhika Bansal is a speaker who has been with us previously. She is a delight. She’s with Intuit. And her presentation, as you will see soon, is your brain on content, applying behavioral science ethically for more impactful design. Please give a very warm welcome to Vidhika Bansal.

Vidhika Bansal (00:39):

Hello, everyone. It is so great to be here today. As much as I love pajamas, it's actually a really good reason to be in hard pants. So I'm loving seeing all of you here. Actually, this was an idea my team (woo, Intuit team!) had last night. So I'm gonna go with it. I usually like to do presentations with a little bit of, like, some fun references. Beyonce references, romcom references, or Harry Potter. But behavioral science is a serious topic, so I'm not gonna do that today, but we are gonna start with a joke. Thank you, James, for this joke. What do you call a behavioral scientist with two pet donkeys? Biased. All right, now that we have that out of the way. So again, my name is Vidhika. I work for Intuit. And I currently lead a content design team at Intuit. Previously used to lead research teams for quite a while, and believe it or not, there's a lot of overlap there between content design and research. As nerdy as this is to admit, I have been reading about behavioral science since I was a teenager because that's what I did for fun. Not the only thing I did for fun, but it is something I did for fun. So I'm really excited to talk to you about this today. We'll get right into it. So today, we're gonna talk … go on a little journey into the world of behavioral science. We're gonna start by talking about social proof. And then we'll go into anxiety busters, which is not an official term, I just wanna make that big disclaimer.

(02:03):

It’s just something that I kind of refer to. And then, finally, we'll talk about the peak-end rule, and then soon afterward, you guys will get to go on a break. All right? I want to note, too, that these are just a couple of principles of behavioral science. There's obviously a lot, and we can't boil the ocean, so we're just gonna start with these. So one more disclaimer before we get started. And that is that behavioral science interventions are not one size fits all. So there's a lot of nuance to getting things right, just like with any kind of experience design, right? Context really matters, audience really matters. So today, I'm gonna chat with you about a couple of principles that I think are really impactful as content designers you should be able to apply. And also hopefully, these ones will apply in many different contexts.

(02:50):

Now, has anyone heard of … just raise your hand if you've heard of what weird samples are? Okay, I see a couple of hands up. Awesome. So weird samples basically stand for Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. The reason I mention this is because even research, believe it or not, can be pretty biased sometimes. And so I love behavioral science, it's near and dear to my heart, but there is this caveat that a lot of the research is done with American College students, quite frankly, and that can mean that not everything is super applicable all the time. So I just want you to have that note in the back of your mind, especially if you're interested in learning more about behavioral science. Okay? So stop one: social proof. So if we're going to eat at a restaurant, right?

(03:38):

Have you ever been in a situation where … let's just pretend you don't have Yelp. You don't have Google, and you are trying to pick a place to eat, and you see a cafe that's just bustling, lots of people there, and then you see one that's totally empty. Raise your hand if you would go to the one that was totally empty. Okay, a couple of brave souls. Sounds like most of you would probably go to the one that had a lot of people. And that's basically this concept of social proof. It was popularized by Robert Cialdini. He's a psychologist. And basically, the idea is that we tend to take our cues from other people. So especially when we're trying to make decisions, and we don’t know exactly what to do, if you're in that situation, you're like, I don't know which one to go to, you're probably gonna go to the one that seems like a lot of these people made this decision.

(04:20):

They can't all be stupid, and so you'll go with it, right? Another way that social proof manifests is when you walk into a restaurant, and if you've ever seen pictures with presidents and famous people, that's another way of people just saying like, look, all these famous people come to eat here, you should too, right? Then there are always things like ratings and reviews. One way that social proof often manifests, especially in our digital world, is the numbers game. So I was getting really excited about my Seattle trip, especially the food here. And I started looking up restaurants on Yelp. So I know the text is a little small, but hopefully, you can tell that these have really good ratings.

(05:04):

But if I had to pick between these three, I see the middle one has over 6,000 reviews, right? And two of my friends have been here and apparently reviewed them, right? And so if I had to pick and I wasn't in the mood for any particular cuisine, I'd probably go to the one in the middle. And if anyone wants to go to Pink Door and hasn't been yet, I'm interested, so let me know. We can go for dinner. But yeah, so that's one way that it kind of manifests. Here's another example. Headspace is throwing lots of numbers at you to be like, hey, this many ratings, this many downloads, et cetera. Social proof is also most powerful when you're uncertain. If let's say, you're going to your favorite restaurant and you're a regular, you don't really need to know what other people eat there because you know what you want. You get the same thing every time.

(05:48):

But if you're eating an unfamiliar cuisine or going to a restaurant you've never really been to before, this is something that you might care more about. I often, because I'm indecisive, will ask the waiter: what's good here? What's popular? What do a lot of people get? And that's you just trying to get some cues from the previous restaurantgoers. One way this can manifest in product is, for instance, I work for QuickBooks. In the United States, QuickBooks is fairly well known, but in the UK, not so much. So a social proof campaign might be way more effective in a locale where not that many people know what your thing is. My thoughts about crypto aside, crypto is kind of a new space. People are still a little wary.

(06:32):

And so here you'll see that Coinbase says: over 103 million people trust us, and businesses trust us. And that's them using social proof as a nod to, “Hey, they trust us, you should too.” And this is perhaps the most important consideration for social proof to be effective: relevance. Relevance really matters. You need to make people feel like whoever you're saying, other people do this, they need to feel like they are like those other people. So, for instance, this is a popup from HubSpot where it says to join all these marketers. So if you're a marketer and you see this, you might be like, yeah, I'm a marketer. I wanna be in the know, I guess maybe I'll sign up for this. I don't love popups, but this would be more effective than just saying, join 600,000 other people, right?

(07:18):

However, if I, let's say, was a developer, I'm not a developer, but if I was a developer and I saw this message, I might be like, well, you know, I don't think this really applies to me. So there's this kind of delicate balance between making sure people feel relatable, but you could also alienate people potentially. Another example, you know, flashing some brand names so people feel like it's relatable. And this is potentially my favorite example in this entire presentation. So we're gonna talk about a taboo topic: period panties. Thinx is amazing if anyone's interested, happy to give reviews. You might be wondering, okay, well, if you wanna be really specific and relevant, what if you have multiple user groups? Thinx does a really good job of this because here they have five different, they kind of have this thing for everyone, from a light flow to heavy flow.

(08:15):

And what happens here is the interaction is such that if you hover over each, you'll see the different reviews. They also have some added credibility because they have a name and a location. This is a really good way, you don't have to use numbers. So if you wanna get personal, this is a really good way that you can kind of make people feel like, hey, we cater to many different audiences. Not gonna read all of these, but you get the gist. Here are some other ways it kind of manifests. Social proof. These are some kinds of things you might see. And this one's also important. I shouldn't have to say this, but I say this because … don't just sprinkle some social proof on it. Yes, it can help with conversions, but the idea is not to just put social proof willy-nilly.

(08:56):

So I'll give you an example. The developer was not very creative with the naming here because it says fake counter. Don't fake social proof. Make sure it's real. Again, should go without saying, but doesn't always. Another example: somebody was trying to book a flight, and it said 38 people are looking at this flight. I'll tell you how this 38 came up. If you hit inspect and actually read the rest of this tweet thread, basically, there was a random number generator between 28 and 45 so it felt real. That's called lying. Let's not do that. Okay? Alright. So for our next stop, we're gonna check into a hotel. And this is what I want my hotel room to look like. It does not, but that's okay. So I don't know about you guys, but for me, booking hotels can be a really stressful endeavor.

(09:52):

Sorry in advance for anyone here who works for Booking.com. I am not very fond of the Booking.com experience. I feel like as soon as I've gotten to this experience, right at the very top, it says 93% of places to stay are unavailable. So here I am like, oh, shit. Only 7% of places are available. Shit, I'm already in this bad situation, right? And then the other thing is that the first result is a hotel that isn't even available for my dates. And it happens to be the one we're at right now. But why show this first, right? Why not show all the hotels that are available? And then in red, it might be hard to read, but it just says only two rooms available. There's so much anxiety here.

(10:39):

And I'm here to tell you we don't need to make everything anxiety-inducing, creating fear, uncertainty, and doubt, which is, by the way, what FUD stands for. It can help increase conversions, but I think we really have, we have enough fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the world, honestly, especially these last couple of years. And I would encourage you to think about ways that you can reduce fear, uncertainty, and doubt to increase conversions because it does work. It's just a different approach and a far better one, in my opinion. So what if we move from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset, right? This is from one of my favorite sites, hotel tonight. And the same thing, right? I searched my dates, and I searched Seattle, and here it's just not nearly as stressful. They're showing me things that are actually available. They're not freaking me out about what isn't available. The accessibility could use some work, but if you look at the photo on the left, you'll see that it says one room left.

(11:35):

So it is informing me that there's only one room left. If you wanna book it, book it. But it's not only one room left. It's not red. It's not scary. So there are ways to inform people without scaring them. And if you were to click on the little question mark in the last screenshot, I know this is a lot of text, so I'll summarize it for you. Basically, they're being really transparent about their algorithm. They're telling you the factors that influence how they show you hotels, including the fact that they make money off this, right? Which we kind of know, but it's nice to hear that it's like, oh wait, you're actually telling me the truth. And they've reduced decision fatigue because they even tell you we're only showing you some hotels.

(12:16):

We're not showing you the whole universe of hotels, which for someone as indecisive as me, is amazing. I'm like, thank you, thank you. So prioritize user confidence over conversion. Conversion is a one-time thing. If you build confidence, multiple conversions will come your way. Trust takes time. And it's such an easy way to kind of build trust when you don't just focus on one interaction. So this is Airbnb. Many of you will be familiar with this. I'm gonna call out a couple of the anxiety busters here. One is the free cancellation. That's a nice thing to know. Another is you won't be charged yet. When the number is as big as almost a thousand dollars, it's really nice to know that I have a little bit of breathing room, right? I'm not gonna be charged right away.

(12:58):

Same thing here at the bottom. It says: book without worry, which reduces that fear, uncertainty, and doubt. This is actually the flight that I took, and I was a little unsure, but knowing that I had a day made me feel better. I booked it. I didn't end up changing it. So yeah, it's another way you can go about that. And then finally mirror the objections and worries in people's heads. Here are a bunch of different examples of, again, what I'm calling anxiety busters. You can cancel at any time. This will only take two minutes. There are ways that you can remind people there's flexibility, set their expectations, and use them to kind of build confidence. It doesn't also have to be super obvious all the time. This is Slack, I love the content design in Slack.

(13:43):

And I love that it says: this space is just for you. It's making sure that before I type up my grocery list, I know that, okay, no one else gets to see this. And this is one of my other favorite examples. So this is from, it's actually a QuickBooks competitor, it's from Wave Accounting. Besides the beautiful illustration style, I love that they have very subtly kind of reduced, uh, they've mirrored those fears. Hey, it's not just you. Nobody likes bookkeeping, right? And that's a really cool way to, without saying, don't worry, nobody likes bookkeeping. They're kind of like letting you know that and I really like the way they went about it.

(14:22):

And then, finally, we have the peak-end rule. Raise your hand if you've heard of the peak-end rule. Okay, a couple of people in here. Awesome. So basically, what the peak-end rule says, it sounds a little crazy, but bear with me. It basically says that we have like two selves. We have a remembering self and an experiencing self, and these two selves are not the same. This is from Daniel Kahneman. Some of you may be familiar with thinking fast and slow. This is a concept that comes from his work. He basically says that how we feel in the moment is often very different from how we remember something. So we live life from moment to moment, but our experiences, our memories are usually based on two things. One is the peak of an experience, and that can be either a high point or a low point, whatever's more emotionally jarring or good.

(15:13):

And then the ending. So he says that kind of the way you remember an event is the peak and the end, kind of an average of that. That's roughly how it's calculated. So if you've ever been on a rollercoaster, you probably don't remember every single twist and turn. If at the end of the rollercoaster you're like, wow, that was amazing … by that point, you may have already forgotten that you stood in a really long line to get on the roller coaster because maybe the peak for you was that exhilaration when you were there. The ending also matters if you left the rollercoaster feeling amazing, that's great. Whereas if you left the rollercoaster and got motion sickness, you probably will not remember that experience quite as well, right? This manifests in many different ways.

(15:53):

If you've ever voted, at the end, they give you a sticker. Even though you might have waited in a line for a long time, that little sticker at the end kind of makes you feel better about the whole thing. Pretend this was an experience, right? These are two different experiences. They're practically identical, with the exception of the experience on the right has a pretty big dip. It might have encountered an error, something that was kind of jarring, even though aside from that, everything is the same, just having that peak, a really low peak can make the experience overall bad. And remember, too, that people recall negative experiences more vividly than positive ones. So important to try and eliminate the frustration and bad friction points in your experience.

(16:42):

And I say bad friction because there is such a thing as good friction, but that's a whole different talk. So look for where actions are especially critical. Usability really matters here. Here's an example. This is a little bit of a throwback to anyone who was in my “Say my name” presentation at Confab last year. Where this person's trying to sign up for a COVID test, and their last name is not accepted. That's going to be a pretty negative peak. Not to mention it's also potentially the ending because they might abandon at that point because they can't get in. So that's just an overall bad experience. So really try to reduce those negative peaks and then create positive peaks. That's another thing that you can do. I know delight is a triggering word for many of us, but there are opportunities to create delight. That's the kind of stuff that sticks in your head.

(17:32):

So, here is an example. So I was trying to use the internet on my phone as we do. And it wasn't working because I had my mobile data off. And one of the really cool things here is that when you click on the mobile data is off, this could be kind of a frustrating experience, right? But they've taken this negative thing, and they've, again, I know triggering word, but they have kind of made it delightful because you get to play this little game. As you can tell from my score, I didn't do very well, but it was fun, right? It was a fun little game. It was a cute little animation. I enjoyed it, and I didn't feel frustrated in the moment. I was actually like, oh, this is a cool little Easter egg discovery.

(18:12):

So there are opportunities to turn what could be negative moments into positive moments. And finally, this is potentially the most important thing I can tell you today. Don't neglect endings. Pretty much every UX team I've ever worked on has had an onboarding team and a first-time-use experience team. Onboarding first impressions matter. Super important. It's one of my passion topics, actually. But that's not to say that you should not care about the ending because, again, the ending is what is often going to stick in someone's mind. We don't want to let our users down in the final moments of their interactions with us. So here's an example once again from HotelTonight because, as you can tell, I'm really obsessed with the brand. So this is a checkout experience, right? And right before you check out, they have this thing where it says, need to know.

(19:04):

And in very plain language, they list the exact things that you need to know before, like what you're signing up for. And what's really cool about this is that they're setting expectations in really clear terms. It's not quite the ending per se because obviously after that you're gonna go to the hotel, but if they didn't set these expectations and you thought maybe the room was gonna be big enough for more than two people, then you're gonna have a really bad experience, right? So they're setting those expectations. I also love the way they used informed consent here, where they actually add some friction so that you have to stop and do something like acknowledge that you've seen this and read this, which I think is really, really cool. Alright, another experience that I recently went through.

(19:45):

So again, check out is one potential ending. This was actually post-purchase. Recently I moved, and I had to buy a couch. I've never bought a couch sight unseen before. This was new for me, but I decided to take a risk. And after I bought it, I don't think I got this email immediately after, it was a little bit after while I was waiting for the couch to be shipped. And I got this email. Again, the text is kind of small, but it says, we understand buying furniture online can be scary. And we thank you for trusting and supporting us. And I know it sounds really cheesy, but I just dropped a couple grand on a couch, and I was like, this is painful. But then I got this email, and it didn't make it free, but it did make it feel better, right?

(20:23):

I was a little bit more excited. I just had this positive interaction with this brand. And I think that's often a missed opportunity. I think that we tend to treat purchase as the last step, and we forget that there are other things that we can do. And it's not lost on me that a lot of times, as content designers, we don't always work in all parts of the experience, right? So this is something a marketer or someone else is doing, but this is an opportunity for cross-functional collaboration, right? And you can kind of get a better sense of that service design. What are all of those different parts of the experience? So yeah, one of my favorites, a new favorite example. And then finally, unsubscribes are a hot-button topic.

(21:08):

There are a bajillion bad ones that I could show you, but I decided not to show you a bad one because so many of them are incredibly unethical. But this one is from Grammarly. I had tried them out and then honestly didn't love it, so I unsubscribed and they didn't stop me. They didn't make me jump through hoops to unsubscribe. It was really easy to unsubscribe. After I unsubscribed, they gave me the option to tell them why I was doing that, which I think is totally fine. You can ask people why they're unsubscribing, just don't make it a requirement. Then afterward, this was the last screen that I saw. I thought it was so cute, and that sounds silly, but you know, we look forward to improving and to winning you back as a customer.

(21:46):

Thank you. They're ending this interaction on this note of gratitude. Because it might be the end of my relationship with them today, but that doesn't mean it's the end of my relationship with them forever. And with messaging like this versus shaming me or guilting me or anything that a lot of unsubscribes tend to do, this actually made me feel pretty positive. I was like, you know what? I might check them out in the future, which I think is really, really cool. So leave them with a feeling that makes them wanna come back. Alright, I just gave you a lot of information. I'm once again gonna speed through a recap. Social proof: try to figure out where social proof might be effective. Again, try to find areas where there might be uncertainty, and where people might need some help making decisions.

(22:30):

Figure out who your target audience associates with. And they're not always gonna fall into just one bucket, right? Right now, we're all Buttoneers, we're also people that are visiting Seattle. We're in multiple groups at any given time. So you can try to figure out for your social proof, which group makes the most sense to kind of relate to, and then gather honest data that will be compelling and credible, whether that's in the form of numbers or testimonials, reviews, or things like that. For anxiety busters, again, determine where users might be hesitating. PII is a big one, and that stands for personally identifiable information. Anytime you're asking people to give you something, so if you're asking them to give you their address or their phone number or credit card, right?

(23:15):

That's always a little bit anxiety-inducing. And those are really good spots to actually, I mean, I like to sometimes make a list of what are the potential fears someone might have here? What are the potential uncertainties? What are the things that we can clarify? And then prioritize, figure out among those, which is most important. And then try to include some anxiety busters in there and mirror their language as you do so. And then finally, for peak-end rule, find moments of high user pain and prioritize reducing it. That's kind of our job as content designers and UXers in general. So this is not new, but just a new lens on why it's so incredibly important to make sure, if there's a really critical task in your flow, you are making sure that it doesn't have usability issues, that it's clear to understand, et cetera, create emotional high points.

(24:02):

I think as content designers, we have this amazing medium, right? We have words. If I say something nice to you, I'm just saying some words, and that makes you feel a certain way. Likewise, if I say something not so nice, it's gonna make you feel bad, right? So we have so much power to affect people's emotions with our words. So find ways that we can decrease the bad emotions and increase the good ones. And then care about the endings because they matter almost just as much as the beginnings. So there are a bajillion other things I could talk to you about behavioral science. Like today, we're just scratching the surface. Here are a bunch of other things that I think can apply to content designers, and if you're interested, let's chat later.

(24:44):

It could be really fun to talk about. But I also wanna make the caveat, as I mentioned at the beginning, you want to make sure you're using these powers for good. There's this New York Times article that came out five years ago, where it's like Uber used psychological tricks. And basically, they were doing this thing where as soon as a driver would try to log out, they were using their knowledge about people and human behavior to try and reel them back in and say, oh, are you sure you don't want to do just one more ride? Nudges can be really effective, but you have to really ask yourself the question of: who is this benefiting? We're all here because, you know, we probably work for a business that's trying to make money, and it's okay to want to make money, but you also want to make sure that you're not harming the people that are on the other end of this.

(25:33):

So if you're interested, read this article and there are others like it. So again, with great power comes great responsibility. There's a lot of implications to consider anytime you're using your knowledge of people. You want to make sure you're using it for them, not against them, right? Think about if what you did was published in a press release, would you feel good about it? Hopefully, the answer should be yes. How would you feel if you or someone you loved was on the receiving end of a behavioral intervention? You really want to think carefully about how you're using that power. So use yours well. Thank you so much for having me today. I really appreciate it.

Kristina Halvorson (26:24):

I can just listen to you talk all day. Gonna get back up there.

Vidhika (26:28):

So, sweet.

Kristina (26:29):

No, you.

Vidhika (26:30):

I’m gonna sit here.

Kristina (26:31):

Okay, that's fine. How'd that go? It was good. I understand this is your first time using a clicker.

Vidhika (26:37):

It is, it is. I was very nervous, but turns out it's really easy. You just press a button, <laugh>, and everything else happens.

Kristina (26:42):

Yeah, I have found that's not always the case, but <laugh>, you're great. You're a natural. I wanna encourage folks to ask questions and just remind you that you can start your question with capital Q and please do include the pronunciation of your name. I have a question for you. I know that this is a topic that you are super passionate about and that is very close to your heart. Do you wanna talk a little bit more about why that is?

Vidhika (27:09):

Yeah, sure. I think I've just always been … it's kind of a cheesy thing to say, but I know in the UX world, it happens all the time, right? Where we really care about what makes people tick? Like what, how do people make decisions? I think part of why I'm so passionate about it is because I think there are so many uses for good, right? Like, if any of you are familiar with the experiments around 401k savings. Just changing the default around whether or not people are automatically opted in can help people save money, right? Same thing with organ donation. It's something people don't think about, but if you reduce that friction and kind of make it the default, there's a lot of really good things that come with behavioral science. And so I just think it's fascinating that we have all of this knowledge at our fingertips and that we can make people's lives better with it. So that's part of why. And I'm just a really curious person, so I love getting into the inner workings of how people are thinking about things.

Kristina (28:06):

Yeah. Do you have sort of a visceral reaction when you very clearly see a dark pattern or even a missed opportunity?

Vidhika (28:14):

Oh my god, yes. <laugh>. I did a whole talk about it, actually, but yes. I think that's why this is sort of a double edged sword. I think that it's just as easy to use all this amazing knowledge for bad reasons. And so, as I mentioned, I talk a lot about the unsubscribes because I just think that's something that every one of us in this room has been through an experience like that. Where I'm just trying to get out of this. Please just let me do it. Don't beg. One of my least favorite examples or favorite bad examples is for Verizon. I don't know if they've changed it since, but in order to cancel, you can't just do it online, you have to call them between certain hours. And I also think of it from an equity standpoint where, not everyone can. I have a fairly flexible job, and I might be able to make a call at 3:00 PM, but not everyone can call during those hours. And so you're now increasing that inequity over and over again. 

Kristina Halvorson (29:17):

So I was like, why aren't people asking questions? And I refreshed my screen, and there are about 30 of them. So let's get started.

Vidhika (29:24):

<laugh>,

Kristina (29:25):

Uh, Louie Mayer asks, working in security, we want to tell our users what they need to do urgently. So there's a bias toward anxiety-inducing data. Any tips on how to deliver actionable info without causing too much anxiety?

Vidhika (29:39):

Yeah, that's a great question. And there are some, I should also make the caveat, you know, there are some fields in which you might need to create a little bit of anxiety. So, you don't wanna over-quell people's fears if there are fair reasons for them to be afraid. So, for instance, anytime you're dealing with finances, security is a great example. Healthcare. If someone's about to have surgery, you don't wanna be like, don't worry. If there are complications, you need to tell them, right? What those are. So yeah, that's a great question. I would say that probably the best way is to be really choosy about your words, which is something that we're good at. Because if they need to know and you do need them to change something.

(30:23):

One is you could use the power of defaults, which I know I didn't talk about much today. But if it's something where, a lot of software will have enable automatic updates. So if you can avoid them having to see those anxiety-inducing messages by allowing them to opt into that off the bat, that's one approach. And if you do have those messages, word them in such a way that they are … I know it's hard for me to give a specific without seeing the example, but yeah. Word them in such a way that they cause less anxiety.

Kristina (30:53):

Right. Great answer. Um, Sandra Faucet, can you explain or share data off the top of your head about the overall bad experience? Should I just move on to the next question?

Vidhika (31:06):

About the overall bad experience? Yeah. I'm not sure I understand.

Kristina (31:10):

I'm not sure I, Sandra, I would love it if you would expand on that question in Slack and then maybe…

Vidhika (31:17):

Okay. Yes. I'll take it.

Kristina (31:18):

Angela and Karen Seacrest ask … I guess I'd love to learn more, more, more about behavioral science and how it can work. Do you have any book recommendations?

Vidhika (31:31):

Hmm, that's a good one. Predictably Irrational is one that I would recommend because it's kind of … so Thinking, Fast and Slow is considered sort of the Bible, so to speak of behavioral science in some ways. But Predictably Irrational is the one that I read as a youngster. Youngster, wow. Who says youngster anymore? Anyway…

Kristina (31:51):

Stuff that flies out of your mouth on stage, you just never know. 

Vidhika (31:54):

It’s because I have the clicker. Power. Predictably Irrational is a book by Dan Ariely and it's a really good one, especially if you're interested in behavioral finance, which I think is a fascinating field. That's one that I would start with. It's a little less dense than Thinking, Fast and Slow. Other recommendations. The Decision Lab is a website that has really good information. Um, uh, Dan Ariely’s kind of consulting firm. They also post a lot of really good articles. And then behavioral scientists.org is also really good.

Kristina (32:28):

Great. Who captured that? Oh, you're all capturing that. Okay. Good work. Oh, this is a great question from Bridget Riley. How can you do research into negative experiences when the emotional stakes aren't part of the experimentation environment?

Vidhika (32:43):

I think this is where talking to people is really useful. It's kind of hard to do an experiment for something like that. But one of the things that I actually liked, when I was coaching a research team, I think sometimes we ask people about just how did you do this? Especially in UX, right? We ask people about how was this experience, this, that, and the other? I really like asking questions like: tell me about a part of this experience that was especially stressful for you. Almost getting some feedback about things that may not be in your interview guide, but that the person wouldn't have had a chance to share about otherwise. But you're getting a little bit of that insight. And also customer care calls, that's a really big one.

Kristina (33:27):

Right? Yeah. Yeah. Support is always just like a treasure trove of use cases.

Vidhika (33:32):

A hundred percent.

Kristina (33:33):

And I find that when you sit down with them, every single one of them will tell you the top four calls that they get, it'll all be the same thing. Yep. Usually, you know what, it's usually content. I'm just saying we can fix that.

Vidhika (33:44):

We can, we can. That's right.

Kristina (33:46):

Brittany Dunkins asks, have you worked on or encountered experiences where social proof was inappropriate for the tone, subject, et cetera, and did contribute to anxiety?

Vidhika (33:58):

That's an interesting question. Mm-hmm. I don't have an example off the top of my head. Uh, I do think if it's something, again, like this is where the ethics piece comes in. Like if it's like, you know, X number of other people smoke, right? Like that's not something that you would want to encourage necessarily. I don't know about anxiety. That's a really interesting crossover. I'll have to think about that more, Brittany.

Kristina (34:25):

Great. Brenna Busante asks: any tips for convincing leadership of the ROI of trust versus conversion?

Vidhika (34:37):

Yes. Uh, this is a big one. Yeah. Um, I think one of the ways that I have tried to convince people in the past that's been somewhat successful has been thinking about average order value versus customer lifetime value. So especially if you can find some data to support what the average order value is versus how much you could make off of a customer over the course of their lifetime with your brand, or their lifetime rather with your brand. I think that's one really powerful way. If you can frame it as, hey, you might make $50 this one interaction, but if this customer never comes back, that's tons of lost revenue, right? Whereas if maybe you don't upsell to them right now, maybe they only spend 20 bucks, but if they come back and continue spending money with us, we're overall gonna make way more money. They're gonna tell their friends about it. So I think word of mouth and reminding people that people are social and so that positive review and feedback that you might have will help people kind of go forth.

Kristina (35:36):

That's the basic argument that UX professionals have been making since, I feel like, the dawn of time. If you make people happy, come back and satisfy them, and they trust you, turns out they'll buy from you again. I just don't understand why we're still having this conversation. Okay, great. On that note, I think we're gonna wrap up. Thank you so much for being here.