Insights on human behavior and genius products

I've been working as a product guy for over 3 years now, and I realized pretty soon on how important it is to understand human behavior to great products. Massive money, success for products comes when a product is built on human behavioral insights that humans themselves don't speak of.

I'm sharing with you my top 5 insights that I've learned over the years, which will make understand why you use the tech products that you do and will give you a better understanding of behavior of people around you:

Human Behavior and Product Insights

1. Great products are not about how many features you have in the product, it is in fact about how little features you have in the product that do the same task. Users hate cognitive load. Easier said than done.

2. Any user won't take an 'action' on your product till there is a 'cue' in his head to use it, and a 'reward' that he will get. A genius product can create a cue and reward that never existed(like snapchat first did), and a good product can make the action easier so that the cue and reward loop happens in the brain more often(for instance, the auto play feature on facebook/youtube)

(Common insight from two of my favorite books: 'Hooked' by Nir Eyal and 'The Power of Habit' by Charles Duhigg)

User/human behavior insights

3. A huge percentage of the employees in companies are living in regret. Everybody in companies wants to startup, be a writer/actor, leave their programming jobs, travel the world. Drunk parties, extra open tabs of employees on their laptops are amazing places to notice this. One realises why people like Gary Vaynerchuck and why so many motivational videos do so well. Keeps creating false hope amongst people. Also realised people generally hate failing.

4. The more senior people get in their professions, the poorer listeners they become. People generally hate being wrong in a discussion. Doctors, politicians, debaters make the worst listeners.

5. Storytellers and witty people have a huge edge. Interviews, PPTs, meetings, dates - works everywhere.

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