June 2022 - upGrad Campus

Anyone who ever even considered travelling, has heard of Airbnb and may have also used their facilities – their app in particular – multiple times. After seeing and using the app, you might’ve noticed how user friendly Airbnb is. This is because Airbnb has and continues to take user experience into account. It is the main driving force behind their app’s design. So let’s understand why Airbnb works through a psychological lens using the concepts of FLOW.

Just go with the ~FLOW~

Before we talk about Airbnb, let’s first understand what Flow means briefly. Flow and its 8 concepts were developed by positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Mihaly had always been interested in the positive aspects of human psychology. He wanted to find out which aspects of a person’s brain made life worth living and truly fulfilling. On his educational journey to fulfil his career’s purpose, Mihaly found that during a state of deep engagement with a product or activity, the Prefrontal Cortex of the brain recorded minimal activity. The Prefrontal Cortex is the part of the brain that deals with self-reflection and consciousness. Now lowered Prefrontal activity might sound potentially alarming, but I promise you it is actually a positive occurrence.

With minimal activity in the prefrontal lobe, one can surrender themselves fully to the task at hand and let go of any self-consciousness or self-criticism. This, in turn, leads to heightened levels of creativity and concentration, which results in better performance overall.

How Airbnb ~FLOWS~

Coming back to the case at hand, Airbnb’s success is because of their insane retention rate they incur through their app. And Flow plays a big role in this.

Let’s see how the 8 elements of Flow shape the user experience of the AirBnB app:

Element 1

Clarity of goals and immediate feedback~

Airbnb makes it really simple to understand what a consumer needs to do in order to achieve “their goal” i.e to live locally. The start page itself guides me to the search bar, underneath which are other fields which will help the user live their authentic fantasy – be it “Islands” “Tiny houses” or “Tree houses”, they provide a complete 360 in every kind of accommodation possible. The latest update- called the biggest change in the last decade pushes it’s users to discover the most authentic and one of a kind experiences by adding categories like “Nature parks” “Castles” and many more.

Integrating Psychology In Product Management

Element 2

A high level of concentration on a limited field~

Airbnb provides a higher state of flow by limiting or altogether eliminating distractions.

There is no unnecessary clutter on their app that would provide for useless stimuli and distract the consumer from his/her goal. The app also provides for a clean and structured hierarchy of the content they offer. An example of their content appearing in a hierarchy would be:

Search for accommodations
Explore other travel types
Finish booking a trip
Become a host (in ten easy steps)

Element 3

Balance between skills and challenge~

The difficulty of a task has to provide the right degree of challenge to a person’s ability. A very complicated recipe will leave an aspiring chef frustrated and disappointed, a very basic recipe leads to boredom of routine. So flow occurs in the range between ‘too much’ and ‘too little’.

Airbnb does this by not making their consumers fill out unnecessary details that would bore them or cause them to lose sight of their end goal. They only ask relevant details and information. Their app also provides an option of “popular filters” that comprise the popular needs of a common traveller, so one doesn’t have to go through the arduous task of reading a long checklist, only to tick two boxes.

UpGrad Campus — The different types of filters one can fill out on Airbnb

Element 4

The feeling of control~

The feeling of ‘control’ in Flow refers to the feeling of security and relaxation, which can further translate to the feeling of control over a situation and its outcomes.

When it comes to mobile apps that deal with monetary transactions, they are often followed by a feeling of caution which in turn stresses the user since they would prefer to not make any accidental payments or mistakes that would literally cost them. Airbnb could easily be one of those apps, since they not only deal with online payments, but they also deal with information and a lot of steps or processes. However, they have an extremely consumer friendly cancellation policy that allows their users to make relaxed decisions that are reversible.

Element 5

Effortlessness ~

The lack of strain on your mind allows for a harmonious experience that retains Flow.
And Airbnb achieves this effortlessness through its user interface.

Airbnb is straightforward and easy to use for even the most non native tech user. The ease with which one can use the app is extremely rewarding; it provides a sense of accomplishment for those select few who otherwise struggle to manoeuvre around new age inventions.

Element 6

An altered perception of time ~

When one is in the deep state of flow, their perception of time changes. Two hours can feel like ten minutes, or conversely, seconds can feel like hours. That is why, sometimes flow-mode is also referred to as ‘timeless’.

Users of Airbnb experience this timelessness often. Since there are a lot of activities that engage and take up one’s time, it is easy to lose track of time. In an enjoyable way, of course.

From exploring different kinds of Vacation homes- and some of these rentals are crazy- to finalising your stay- it’s easy to occupy yourself on this app. For instance, don’t these properties make you go “Omg!”?

Air Bnb Using AI and ML — Some of the crazy rentals that grasp your attention on Airbnb

Element 7

The melting together of action and consciousness ~

Since complete involvement creates a state where there is no need for worry or self consciousness, performers become one with their performance. Airbnb creates involvement by reducing self consciousness. They reinforce the user’s choice on multiple occasions by providing reassurances in the form of statements such as “good location.” “ Friendly staff” etc. These statements boost confidence in the choice the user made.

Product Management In Air Bnb — An example of how Airbnb reinforces your choices

Element 8

The autotelic quality of flow-experiences ~

The word auto means self and telos means goal. The completion of a goal set by oneself for oneself is extremely rewarding. Completion of a task boosts Dopamine in the brain which is a neurotransmitter that translates to a feeling of satisfaction and happiness. At the end of your time on the Airbnb app, the user is made to feel “rewarded” since they got a good deal and completed the task of planning a ‘local’ experience.

~Final Learnings to take away from this study~

Flow is related to the engagement part of product management. It alone can not provide for an extremely wholesome experience, but its presence does elevate user experience and add on to an already good product, making a “good” experience “excellent”.

You might not judge a book by its cover, but you definitely watch movies based on your recommendation list. In today’s blog, we’re going to unravel the secret to Netflix’s “bingeability” and why you end up staying awake till 3 in the morning to binge-watch a show you would otherwise never be interested in.

The science behind Netflix “Recommendations”

It’s no secret that Netflix uses Machine Learning and complex algorithms to deliver the best recommendations amongst its competitors.

For those of you still new to the tech scene – an algorithm is a set of database instructions that tell the software or application what to do. Imagine the computer is Dora the Explorer. She needs a map to go about doing new things and adventures. The algorithm serves as a Maps app, the one responsible for charting out the best possible route for Dora to achieve her goals.

In order for Machine Learning to actually be facilitated, the machine needs to obviously learn something. What is that “something”? It’s the data collected from our views, searches and clicks. Every time we watch a movie, search for a title or even click on a movie but not necessarily watch it, our action informs the machine about our possible interests and preferences. The algorithm being extremely sensitive, picks this data and rewrites and adjusts itself, every time we watch Netflix and give it an insight into our tastes.

So what all Data does the algorithm use to remain so accurate?

According to Todd Yellin, VP Product at Netflix, the engine takes into account information such as, what people watch, what was it that they watched before and what did they watch after, what they watched a year ago, what all they watched recently and what time of the day did they watch these things.

Netflix can’t just recommend the bestselling movies or the most cinematically advanced films to its viewers. Netflix suggestions have to be based on a viewer’s personality. Instead of just dumping their entire catalogue on a viewer’s home page, they curate lists using different algorithms present in their rankings, search bar, ratings, similarity and more.

An amalgamation of all this information is the driving force behind Netflix’s successful recommendations. It is programmed to accustom itself to the most minor changes you bring to the table. And have you ever noticed how perceptive the suggestions are? You can may have watched one episode of a whole new genre – let’s say an anime or k-drama – but the next thing you know your entire feed slowly starts to change, with suggestions such as “Other K-drama’s you may like”, “Because you watched xyz anime” “The best of East-asia”. And obviously fueled by our own binge-watching beast, we end up watching an entire genre over the course of a month.

We’ve spoken a lot about the above mentioned algorithm and how presently it tracks our viewing history. However this algorithm wasn’t born ready. And the groups you got grouped into didn’t appear out of thin air. This is the work of actual human beings, brought in to label and group movies into hyper-specific genres like “Visually striking witty comedies” “Classic feel good opposites attract romcoms” or our personal favourite, “Cynical Comedies Featuring a Strong Female Lead”.

Each of these categories is what you get grouped into by the algorithm. And it’s never just one category. Every one of us gets grouped into multiple categories, which then dictate our taste and decide what will appear on our individual home screens.

So without these hyper-specific categories made ready, the algorithm will not be able to complete its main job- analysing data and grouping people into categories.

But that’s not all what Netflix does to rope us into the binge watching cycle.

Netflix figured out that on an average, they had a golden time of 90 seconds. Only 90 seconds. In this one-and-a-half minute, their viewer would make a judgement as to whether or not they were going to watch the movie that caught their attention.

In order for their viewers to evaluate and better understand the content of a film under 90 seconds, Netflix decided to use engaging Movie posters. Neuroscientists have proven that an image can be processed and judged by a human in under 13 milliseconds. Compared to text, which takes a lot longer, an image does speak a thousand words.

The movie posters they put out originally were given to them by the studios at the time, and they were the generic movie posters that would be displayed in cinemas and on billboards. Now while these posters worked for their respective print mediums, Netflix caught on to the fact that it dampened the attractiveness of the movie on their platform for their viewers. Knowing that they had only 90 seconds to appeal to their audience they came up with a series of experiments in order to boost engagement.

They performed a series of A/B tests and explore-exploit tests, through which they tested whether the movie poster shown to the viewer would have an effect on their judgement of the movie itself.

They designed a test that displayed multiple sets of images for each title, where the original movie poster provided by the studio acts as the control in this test. Their results, overall, unanimously proved that the audience/ test subjects reacted more strongly when faced with a complex set of emotions on the posters.

A good example of this test would be Strangers Things, the hit netflix drama series. Notice how many different ways the poster is shown to all the different accounts.

In order to decide which user will be shown which poster, Netflix tracks what the user has been watching again and groups that user into certain categories (again). So consider a movie like “The Intern”. If User X happens to watch more of Anne Hathaway movies as compared to Robert De Niro, they are more likely to click on a movie poster with her face.

The same goes for genres as well. If User Y watches a lot of horror movies, they will react more strongly to a poster that depicts the horror elements of that movie.

So there you have it – the reason behind all your late night binge watching sessions. It’s a combination of machine learning, human intervention and personalised artwork that have resulted in Netflix’s 1 billion dollar algorithm for recommendations. This award winning strategy, however, is just the beginning to Netflix’s ploy to boost engagement. Don’t get too curious though, since that probably means we’ll just have to pull through more all nighters.

Month: June 2022

WHY AIRBNB WORKS : INTEGRATING PSYCHOLOGY IN PRODUCT MANAGEMENT.

How Netflix uses Machine Learning to keep you up till 3 AM.