Why We're Failing To Create A Lasting Impact On Users
Trishala Pillai
0-to-1 Product at Walmart. Board Member at AnitaB.org. Content Producer.
Previously on The 100-Year Product...
In my last post, I wrote about the importance of building a memorable product that people love within the context of their life, as opposed to within a product's context of use. Let's build on that.
In today's hyper-competitive marketplace, information, and attention economy, it is not enough to stand out and forge long-term relationships with users by being innovative in the context of a user's life today. Users are always going to be distracted by the next shiny thing that comes their way (full disclosure, for me, that shiny thing is currently Meta's Threads).
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We have to think critically about creating a lasting impact on our users' minds and hearts (both closely intertwined) with a memorable experience that transcends time, i.e., defines their past, and shapes their present and who they become. I've addressed memorability several times in this series so far, but I haven't yet directly addressed what's at the core of memorability; the complexities of memory itself.
Memory Research Can Explain More Than You'd Imagine
"While memory helps us recall things we’ve encountered or thought of before, studies of memorability ask: Why do we remember what we remember? Why do we forget what we forget?” - Brian Resnick, Vox
The word "memorable," by definition, means worth remembering, yet how often do we, as members of product teams, take the time to understand what is worthy of being remembered, why, and how we process and remember things in order to influence it?
How often do we go beyond reading books/articles on human cognition to closely partnering with professionals with deep expertise/academic training in psychology and, most importantly, giving them a real stake/say/influence in product strategy, prioritization, and decision-making? While I do not have a definitive number, I can confidently assume that the answer is not enough.
Attempting to build 100-Year products demands us to commit to understanding the human mind and applying insights from it to product development. At times, this can feel like straying away from a focused effort with findings that don't appear relevant at the surface. Once synthesized and applied, however, product teams and the products they build come out stronger and better (hopefully, you'll see what I mean by this once you reach the end of this post).
Once the data from my survey was adjusted for the period(s) selected against survey respondents' current life period, I found a clear, consistent trend; 100-Year products meant the most to people in the period they are currently in (for millennials, this meant adulthood) and the period preceding it (for millennials, this meant their teen years).
A cognitive bias called the recency effect, could explain the survey finding above, leading us to remember things that came last more clearly than those that came first . The steep drop in our toddler years could be explained by the fact that most of us have minimal to no recollection of our experiences before ages 6 to 8 as our brains have not yet developed the capacity to retain our memories so our earliest memories fade (a mystery that is commonly referred to as childhood amnesia).
Most recollections from our early childhood and toddler years are a sum of what we have been told by our parents (and as the article above suggests, those early memories are powerful in defining our sense of self). I remember my parents sharing stories of me as a toddler trying to share (or force feed rather) my milk bottle with an Egyptian mummy in a museum or distributing all my snacks (before having some myself) to strangers in our tour group while on vacation in my early childhood. These stories reaffirmed my sense of identity and self-perception as a sensitive and compassionate being.
The visible bump from early childhood to adulthood across all responses mirrors the reminiscence bump , identified by memory researchers, which shows that our strongest memories come from things that happened to us between the ages of 10 and 30 due to changes in the brain’s sensitivity to certain types of information and the series of emotionally-intense moments we experience in those years that are imprinted in our minds. Think graduating high school, prom, your first relationship, your first job, paycheck or home, etc.
If you are a Pixar fan like me, this is what Inside Out popularized and referred to as "core memories" (essentially episodic memories, which are recollections of specific past events in our lives). As endearing as it was, Pixar (needless to say) oversimplified how our memory work. In reality, memory is messy, and memories are prone to be distorted each time you recall them.
Revisiting memories in new contexts, environments, or emotional states can change your perception of a formative experience and how you feel entirely (cleverly shown in Inside Out when "Sadness" picks up one of Riley's happy core memories and suddenly views it as a sad one). False memories are planted in our minds frequently and we often forget recollections entirely. Many of these mysterious phenomena are still actively being studied by researchers worldwide.
What Does This Mean For Product Teams?
Delving into how our memory works in the context of my study revealed a key insight that our memories are often formed, registered, and recalled through the lens of life stages, with each life stage posing its own opportunities and challenges to assess.
Product teams often identify and target a narrow age group for their target users. This age group typically spans 6 years (e.g., 18-25), which is roughly 8.2% of an individual’s life using the average global life expectancy in 2022. How do we maximize a product’s lifetime value and memorability if it only fits the narrow needs and context of 8.2% of our lives?
100-Year Products are rooted in long-term meaning and value. Subsequently, it is essential to follow and understand periods of a user’s life, especially the current life stage (around which we're building today's product experience) and the one that directly follows it (dictating how we build for tomorrow), so that 100-Year Products can age meaningfully and gracefully with users.
Consider what users might think, do, and feel in these period(s) of their life and how their (evolving) psychographics and behavioral intent may influence their interaction with and expectation from a product over time. For your target user, what might some of their core memories be? Think about whether (or not) there are opportunities for your product to feature prominently in formative experiences. Differentiate between simple moments/events in their daily lives versus formative experiences in periods of their life.
TLDR Case Study: Meta
A company grappling with the effects of not taking periods of life into account is none other than Meta. Alex Heath, Editor at Verge, shared that “the aging issue is real; increasingly fewer teens (once Meta’s core market) are choosing Facebook as they grow older. For the first time, they could lose out on an entire generation" .
Internal slides from a presentation at Meta reveal a workstream and attempt to course correct through understanding the evolving needs of teens and their life stages. Product teams often over-index on today and present value without paying enough attention to tomorrow, which comes rapidly and at a cost.
In Meta's case, while Twitter and Musk may be among the reasons for the (timely) launch of Threads, Meta's official statement suggests an aspiration for longevity and evolution with their users as well; "threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow. ”
If there is one takeaway from this week's read, I hope it is that all of the above poses interesting, pertinent questions to practitioners on product teams, allowing us to approach problems from different angles and through the lens of a high-stake but often neglected discipline in product management (psychology).
I hope it also evolves our understanding of what it means to build a memorable product in the context of a user's life, a life that is constantly evolving and moving from one phase to another phase. By taking a longitudinal approach to understand our users as they go through distinct life stages, we can increase the likelihood of building a sticky product that they value in their current phase of life and remember fondly in the previous phase.