Moments of Wow, An Excerpt from The Innovation Stack.

Teaching anything requires the attention of the student. But how many things do we really pay attention to? If neuroscientists are to be believed, we ignore most of what we actually perceive, so how can you get someone to pay attention to your new product or new idea? Ideally, you would delight your customers with an experience that is so extraordinary that they notice. This was the reason that I kept the Square reader so small that it was slightly difficult to use. The small size was important in getting people’s attention since they had never seen something that small read a credit card. But another thing was also happening, something that might make you uncomfortable if you learned what it was. Actually, making you slightly uncomfortable was my goal.

Our reader was, and still is, so small that it requires a bit of practice before people learn to swipe correctly. It is small enough to grab your attention, and then it is slightly difficult to use, so you pay even more attention. But at the same time you are paying attention to our reader, you are learning the name of our company and probably talking with your own customer about how much it costs and how easy it is to sign up.

This is formally known as the processing difficulty effect:* people tend to remember things better if they go through a struggle to learn them. I had unintentionally stumbled on a way to get even more attention on our products. We taught millions of people to teach millions of other people about Square.

Do you remember how uncomfortable it felt to take your first ride share? I clearly remember standing on a sidewalk as a gleaming black Dodge Charger pulled up. When it came to being a passenger in a car, at that time I had only two models in my mind. One was the taxi ride, where I sat in the back and tried not to touch anything or let the driver see me memorizing his license number. My other model was riding with a friend, in which case I would sit in the front seat and talk the whole trip. Then this black Charger pulled up and I had to pick the front door or the back door. Well, it was clearly not a taxi, so climbing in the back felt rude; but I didn’t know the driver, so riding up front seemed presumptuous. I rode up front and felt totally uncomfortable, and probably so did the driver. Uber and Lyft were new and I hadn’t yet been trained.

But that moment of discomfort was important, for it got my attention. I thought about how convenient it was to hail a ride from my phone, how I liked the fact that the driver and I both earned ratings, and how I loved getting out of the car without fumbling for cash after the cabbie said the credit card machine was broken. Uber had just trained me. Later it trained me to sit in the back. Eventually, it trained me to ride with Lyft. I now have three models in my brain for being a passenger: taxi, friend, and ride share. Discomfort in my first ride share was good, because Uber had to teach me a new way to travel, and I learned it.

* E. J. O’Brien and J. L. Myers (1985). “When comprehension difficulty improves memory for text.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 11(1): 12–21.

Excerpted from The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time.

Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time

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