Don't experiment on your own revenue with broken game mechanics. Get our guide "Core Drives in the Wild" to learn how to apply real behavioral science to your product: professorgame.com/WildCD
Kristen Berman, behavioral scientist and CEO and co-founder of Irrational Labs, argues that personalization is overrated in product design, and she brings the experiment to back it up. She walks through a published onboarding test with Headspace where asking new users a few questions and then recommending the same Basics course to everyone doubled course enrollments, outperforming both the personalized recommendation and the version with no questions at all. She is just as direct about the limit: enrollments doubled, yet people did not meditate more, because the rest of the product never reinforced that first commitment. Listeners come away with a barriers-and-benefits lens for any signup flow and a clear order of operations: get the fundamentals of human decision making right first, then layer personalization on top.
Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia.
Don't experiment on your own revenue with broken game mechanics. Get our guide "Core Drives in the Wild" to learn how to apply real behavioral science to your product: professorgame.com/WildCD
Kristen Berman is a prominent behavioral scientist and the CEO and co-founder of Irrational Labs, a leading behavioral design firm in Silicon Valley. Irrational Labs partners with top companies such as Intuit, LinkedIn, Airbnb, Meta, and Microsoft to drive behavior change for the greater good. Kristen's expertise in behavioral economics began as a founding member of the behavioral economics group at Google, where she worked with over 25 teams to launch innovative interventions, and she went on to co-found Duke University's financial decision making lab, Common Cents. She also publishes Product Teardowns, a Substack where she takes apart a popular app in about five minutes to show how a behavioral scientist thinks about design, pricing, incentives, and loyalty.