Behavioural sciences have shown that customers have a short memory span and we should bear this in mind as we design and manage services. It’s not as evil and deceiving as it sounds – it is more about leaving the best to end. Some of the findings that are relevant to user-experience include:

• We prefer progressive improvements. We can tolerate weak starts and decent middles if what follows is a good end (the concept of Beta services). But we are cruel and judgemental when services start well and disappoint in the end.
• We prefer to resolve  unpleasant things early, getting them out of the way and taking our time with lighter/ fun things. Kind of obvious but it gives us the clear hint that if we need to ask the user to make an effort (e.g. registration) or to inform them of a limitation (e.g. availability, delivery policies)  it should be done sooner than later.
• A positive end is the part of the experience that we remember the most.

This is a great endorsement to UX designers and clients who understand that they need to dedicate as much attention to homepages as to lower level/exit pages – knowing that any page can be an entry point and that they have little control over the user’s exit points.

Using some basic Behavioural Sciences concepts to improve business is no evil plot to control the customer’s mind. It’s about sustaining the quality along the whole user-experience and surprising the user positively at the end – whenever that is.

Read more:
Want to Perfect your Company’s Service? Use Behavioral Science
Richard Chase for Harvard Business Review

For us product designers and marketers, knowing what customers want and need can be highly inspirational and often a well deserved kick in the butt. And both (inspiration and kicks in the butt) are triggers of innovation. Real insight can  help us making bolder product decisions, moving from the realm of redesigns to the one of innovations.

When I’m totally comfortable with this argument the famous phrase from Henry Ford kicks in to disarm me: ‘If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a better horse.” I usually stammer something about good moderators and the wise use of data in response. But I have lacked some punchy response to this so far.

But Mark Hurst has formulated a very nice one in Exceptions to listening to customers

I’ll quote his last couple of paragraphs:

“… nondirected customer research is applicable, and helpful, when it’s time to create a game-changing new product or service. And it doesn’t require asking customers to invent the thing.

After all, a good lab moderator won’t ask the customer what product they want … rather they’ll simply try to understand the customer’s unmet needs and pain points, so that they can (back at the company) innovate the right solution. Customers, important as they are, are not designers”.

Thanks for the argument, Mark!