The Curious Case of 2 Choice Architects: LinkedIn & Instagram

Recently LinkedIn & Instagram have tweaked their choice architecture to nudge their customers to be more engaged with the app. The Objective for both the apps is make it as a user’s habit and help in improving their health, wealth and happiness. They follow a basic model of Trigger, Action, Rewards and the loop continues.

LinkedIn:

Recently I noticed a new nudge in LinkedIn Birthday Notifications. Notifications is a (trigger) which we get every morning and we get an urge to check the notification. After seeing a list of birthday notifications, we pick and choose to wish birthday (action). Many a times we wish people at the moment (if we have time) or leave for later in the day. Many of us have missed wishing and hence an opportunity to have a conversation.

LinkedIn sensed an opportunity in (action) knowing is there a way it can make this step easier & faster.

Insight: Humans are mostly lazy and like newton law of motion, humans will tend to stay in their existing state unless and until motivated by an external force – Status Quo Bias. So much of our behavior runs on autopilot that it takes a significant degree of effort to take simple actions outside of our normal routine — even when we have the best of intentions for changing our behavior.

Using this bias LinkedIn created a default option of “Happy Birthday” and in matter of seconds we can wish many people and hence an opportunity to have more conversation and more time on the platform.

This nudge worked as it alters people's behavior in a predictable way without removing choices ( i can wish birthday in different way as well). It is working for me and would be for many other people as well.

Instagram:

Recently found a tab next to home symbol on the left hand corner of the Instagram page. The tab was for reels, the recent addition to Instagram to engage people with short videos.

Instagram also understood the lazy nature of humans and added the icon in the left hand corner. (We mostly read from left to right, see from left to right, our mind has been conditioned for ages on this).

The Icon which they replaced was search/explore icon with icon for reels. The Search icon gave an opportunity to randomly peep into lives of people of their choice. Our ancestors’ nature of search & in control was fulfilled through search icon.

With “reels icon”, though a popular choice restricted this choice and people seem to have lost control and hence started longing for the search icon. Instagram realized this and accommodated the search icon next to home tab.

Instagram tried to change the choice architecture in order to seize the opportunity of the void left by Tik Tok, without solving a human problem. They mismanaged. 

 #behavior #nudge #choicearchitect