No-mind

Notes from Pomp’s interview of Brian Norgard. This is one of the best podcasts I have listened to in recent times

• People want cheat codes
• Don’t make your users think
• The most successful consumer products are dead simple to use. They put users in a state of “no-mind”
• People want to turn off their brains. Hence television worked so much. Don’t make users think too much
• Simplify your products
• Give users super power (super like vs like). All superpowers should give a positive experience and have great branding
• People only think of branding of products. They should also think of branding of features
• Super like: you really like someone
• Boost: reach more people
• Instead of introducing paywalls, observe existing behavior, extend them, and charge for them
• Let people get to the meat of the application by paying for a cheat code
• Tinder is a video game of variable rewards. Buying Tinder gold is akin to getting cheat code in a game. It allows users to see who already liked them, thereby letting them get to the meat of the product quickly
• When building consumer products you should try to incorporate gaming industry ideas/insights
• Don’t teach users how to use your product. Brian does not believe in on boarding. Users should be able to educate themselves
• Match your product with the correct attention span of the user
• All physical technologies follows a similar trend: over time, its size goes from big to medium, from medium to small, and from small to invisible
• People love podcasts because of multimodal consumption — you can listen while driving, running, walking to work, etc

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