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