Do you want to change your behavior or the behaviors of people are you? Do you want your customers to change their behaviors and shift their interest from competitors to your offer? Do you wish to change your habits, but failed to do so? You want to achieve the above goals with simplicity then this post is for you.
Dude’s Law states that if you do not have a good reason for the project, it does not matter how well you do it. It is the value of why/how. I include projects that aim at changing our behaviors. However, this is not enough, as we need to introduce the when question. Timing is crucial. This is where The Fogg’s Behavior Model comes into action. It introduces the time element. The ability in this model refers to the easiness with which we perform a task. No matter how motivated we are, it is useless if we are unable to do the task. No trigger shall do the trick if it falls below the threshold curve in the Fogg’s Model.
What comes into play here is the Effort Net Score. This score signals the effort needed by a customer or person to do a task. Customers are increasingly being spoiled and their disposable times are limited. They seek easiness of the procedures or instructions to follow. Some people, only thrive if they have challenges to face, but most people seek easiness and simplicity. But like a fire would not ignite without a trigger (igniting element) so are humans They shall only act if what offers they have or jobs to do they must fall above their threshold value AND must have the trigger to burn their fire of willingness to do the job or accept even an offer.
Motivation does not proceed in a straight line; rather it has a wave-like movement. The wave has its peaks and troughs. The timing of incentives must act when a person is in the responsive zone- that is the area above the threshold curve.
As simple as this fact is, surprisingly many people even in business fail to notice it. For example, you are watching a recorded soccer match. You are expecting your team to score from a rapid counter-attack. Suddenly, a software adds pops up. What this intruding add serve? Most likely, angrily you shall click the x button and close it. The ad interrupted your excitement. Your easy to do effort helped you to close the add. Your interest in it may be different at different times, but right now you have no motivation for such ads. Still, ads keep bombarding us with material that shall never ignite our motivation because simply they fall below the threshold curve. Going back to Dude’s Law the value of the add as expressed by why/how and combined with the timing factor all resulted in the add moving us to act. On the contrary, it acted as a repellent ad.
I suggest for easiness to draw The Value Golden Circle. It is the Golden Circle with the what question replaced by the when question. This is another view of the Fogg’s Behavior Model.
Simplicity must have or create value. A sharp comment by CityVP Manjit revealed this simple fact beautifully. In a comment, he wrote on my post “Creativity Is Simplicity” he elaborated “When we are simplistic thinkers we feed into cheap consumption and we regress because simplistic notions create powerless simplicity. The power of simplicity derives from simplicity thinking because then we know the difference between the gold in our life choices and the ore. We work harder to refine and get to life quality, the power of simplicity is not easy because thinking is not easy”.
Simplicity that is void of value isn’t simplicity at all. It is void. Changing behaviors requires creative simplicity that adds value in a timely manner so that change of behavior may be successful.
Over time I have convinced myself that simplicity comes before creativity. It may seem like a paradox, yet simplicity is one of the hardest things to achieve. A simple solution is never the result of little effort. It is usually just the opposite and requires intelligence, intuition and creativity.
Solving a problem, dedicating oneself to an art form, developing a new product must not then be an opportunity to show off stacked skills as if it were a market stall. True competence is expressed using only the tool suitable for the situation, or a reasoned combination. To do this it is necessary to know well the techniques and possible approaches.
Before launching into cumbersome ideas and procedures, we need to think about the way that leads us to simplicity, such as: have we clearly understood what we are about to approach and what result do we want to achieve? Asking preliminary questions helps achieve original results. Before thinking about creativity, I think we need to focus on simplicity.