Jason Hreha: Where behavioral science meets product strategy

Jason Hreha is a product leader at Walmart, where he works across the company to run smart experiments and infuse the retail giant with effective digital design. Jason has an academic background in psychology and neuroscience - and has learned through experience what actually works when you’re building products for humans. Listen in and learn how a behavioral scientist sees the world of product design.

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Intro: [00:00:00] From Silicon Valley, the heart of startup land, it's Getting2Alpha, the show about creating innovative, compelling experiences that people love. And now here's your host, game designer, entrepreneur, and startup coach, Amy Jo Kim. 

Amy: Jason Hreha is a product leader at Walmart, where he works across the company to run smart experiments and infuse the retail giant with effective behavioral design.

Like me, Jason has an academic background in psychology and neuroscience, and he's learned through experience what actually works and what doesn't when you're building products for humans. 

Jason: I think this is just fundamentally a part of human nature, especially if you're, you're a founder and you're working on this product every day, or like you're the lead product person for a product and you're thinking about it every day.

It's really boring actually to think about let's make the address book sink really sleek and simple and, um, and it's not quite there [00:01:00] yet. Let's spend another two sprints on it. Or like, you know, Oh, man, this emoji finder. Yeah, it's good enough. Let's just move on to the next thing. No, no, no, don't move on to the next thing.

Your core feature set, which is let's say maybe three or four features for Uber. It's like inputting your address, like where you want to go. It's like clearly inputting where you currently are, either through a pin or through kind of typing it in and then choosing like what type of car you want and like maybe updating your payment information.

Like those are the core things. If those things are not good and don't work. Perfectly every time, or if the map is just unreliable, like the map of where the car is, let's say like half the time, it looks like the car is like static. And then suddenly it jumps over here, perfect those things before you do anything else, because those are the core elements that are going to drive the whole system, and if you don't really make those things perfect.

Before moving on to new things, you're just shooting yourself in the foot. 

Amy: Listen in and learn how a behavioral scientist thinks about and sees the world of product design.[00:02:00] 

Jason: So I have a weird name. It's Jason Hreha, spelled H R E H A. Uh, so I currently work at Walmart. Uh, I, uh, co lead kind of a behavioral science group that we have. Uh, it's an applied behavioral science group. We work across the entire organization on in store projects, HR projects, and on digital projects.

Amy: Fantastic. What a great challenge. 

Jason: It's great. Yeah. 

Amy: So can you give us just a little glimpse into your daily life, like a story or anecdote of something that you're involved in, the kind of decisions you make kind of meetings you're in? 

Jason: Well, I, the cool thing about this job is actually, there is really no typical day because we're internal consultants and we work on so many different projects across the company every week, every day is pretty darn different.

So you know, I have many weeks. I'll spend about half the month over in Bentonville, Arkansas, working with different teams, either H. R. Teams or teams and other groups of company. I do a lot of work with the Sam's Club groups over at Sam's Club. I also do a lot of work with people in global e commerce on different projects.

So every day is kind of a cool grab [00:03:00] bag of different things. But normally, you know, kind of a get up. I try and in the mornings have just like kind of unbroken work sessions where I can just like really kind of go heads down on what's really important right now. And then kind of usually in the afternoons, I'm really kind of in brainstorm sessions, problem solving sessions with like kind of other coworkers or other teams and meetings.

So that's in general how kind of things get structured. 

Amy: Fascinating. So I know you can't tell us the details, but at a higher level, what are some of the really juicy problems? That you're starting to wrestle with. 

Jason: You know, the, the problems that I'm wrestling with here at Walmart are the problems that I've wrestled with throughout my whole career, kind of, kind of all the companies I've worked at.

Really it's all about, you know, how do you create the best experience as possible? How do you actually create experiences that are habit forming? So like, how do you actually understand people's lives and their concerns now they think and everything so well, that you can really kind of build something that just elegantly fits and just how they think what they like, and so that they, so that they kind of use more of you.

So those are really interesting problems. I'm also doing a lot of work. Kind of with with HR just trying to figure out like how do we use psychology and [00:04:00] behavioral science to really kind of empower our workers and empower everybody at the company. Um, and just kind of use that knowledge just to create a better work experience for everyone.

Amy: Awesome. Yeah. So give us a quick whirlwind tour of how you developed the skills and insight to be doing this for Walmart, you know, for this retailer, how'd you get started in design and tech and what were some of the key experiences you had that helped you develop these skills? 

Jason: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I have kind of a weird background where, uh, for most of my life up until college, I was really focused on kind of fine art.

So I was really interested in design and fine art, but for more kind of an aesthetic visual point of view. And in the latter half of high school, I got really interested in kind of behavioral science. How do people think? Why do they do what they do? And started studying that pretty, pretty compulsively.

And so I went off to college, decided to study that in college. And kind of not really go down the art path anymore. Um, and so I really kind of devoted myself to the behavioral sciences all throughout [00:05:00] college, um, but was always really interested in doing something applied, not something conceptual and academic, really something applied.

Towards the end of college, I got really interested in the technology work that was going on. Um, you know, all these companies are building apps. There were, you know, tens of thousands, millions of people jumping into these applications. And I just thought, you know, some were successful, some weren't. I got really interested in user experience design.

And so I started thinking, Oh, cool. Can I combine my visual art background? That's really interested in kind of like design. How do things look? How do you structure different things? And could I combine that with the psychology research, the neuroscience research I'd done? College really studied in depth.

And so that's really what those two things together just combined in the perfect way to do this type of work. And then it was just a matter of Uh, so actually I did work in this lab called the Stanford persuasive technology lab with BJ Fogg Kind of learned his methodology and learned how he approached these problems And then I just got my first job as a head of product actually a small startup and the rest is history there But it was really all about just like taking this inherent talent or skill that I had for doing visual stuff [00:06:00] combining it with this more academic Uh, behavioral science stuff and, uh, just trying to figure out how to fit these two things together in an elegant way.

Amy: So can you tell us about a project that you worked on along the way? Where looking back on it, it really taught you lessons that you're leveraging now in your work with Walmart. 

Jason: Yeah, that's a great question. So I mean, every, every project really is, is, has taught me a lot of things. The job I learned the most from by far was my first job ever from a product point of view, which was like my first full time job is like being head of product.

Was this company called rally. org. So we were a donation platform for nonprofits and political campaigns. When I was there, we were the largest payment processor for actually political campaigns in the country. So if you were running the congressional campaign or going for a local judgeship or whatever it may be, we were probably the ones who actually on the backend processing all of your payments.

And we actually were building an entirely new platform to allow non profits and small political campaigns to really kind of [00:07:00] run all their email marketing, build donation pages really quickly, almost in a Tumblr like style. And so kind of put those out there, do blogging in association with their donation activities.

So pretty much building an entire fundraising suite for non profits, political campaigns. And that was really my first time, like before that, I've done a lot of work helping companies that already had products, like optimize what they already had. I helped a lot of companies before that figure out, Hmm, our engagement's not quite as good as we, we want it to be.

What tests should we run to figure out what's driving the lack of engagement? How do we fix this? I've done a lot of work like that beforehand, but this is the first time ever where it was like, okay, cool. We're building a brand new product. We're building this platform from the ground up. How do we do this?

And what I really learned during that job, which is really stuck with me to, you know, on every job I've done ever since that is it's super important to look at what people are currently doing. I think a lot of times people in our field try and get too creative and a little bit too crazy and they try and reinvent the wheel or just come up with [00:08:00] just shockingly cool new stuff.

But I think it's very important to understand that we're very good at kind of using things that we're familiar with, we're not, you know, of course, we're not good at using things that we're not familiar with, and so many different products try and do just like cool, creative, wild stuff, and it just doesn't really get taken up by users because when the user comes into their application, they look at it, they don't really have any mental model for understanding what should they do, what's the next step, and so on and so forth.

And so really in that job, I was really, I had some kind of pretty creative wild ideas early on during my tenure there and as we would kind of come up with the designs and as I'd play around or look at the designs and like show them the people and play around with these like cool creative ideas, I got a lot of feedback.

People just were obviously very confused when I would do quick user experience or user kind of interviewing sessions. Um, even just casual ones like friends and acquaintances. And it became very obvious to me that actually the best way to build the first version of the product was to do some really in depth research around what are people currently familiar with?

What are the popular apps and products out there that they're using? Like, what are their current habits? [00:09:00] Like what does their world look like, their mental model of the world look like, and then fit into that or borrow heavily patterns that are used within the current applications and products that they use and bring those into your product.

And so I really kind of learned within that, within that context. Like, borrow very heavily, remix elements that other people are already using for the first version of your application, because chances are very high that if you do that, and if you actually understand the design patterns that are being used and that your user base is familiar with, You're going to build something that actually will have a very high probability of being quickly understood and quickly usable by the people that you're building it for.

And actually, one of the biggest problems that I see with companies that I've worked with over the years is that they release the first version of their product and it's hard to tell whether or not people aren't using it because the usability is horrible or because the idea is horrible. Is it a demand problem?

Do people actually just like not really want this thing? Or are they just confused? And if you use wacky new UX and UI that nobody's ever used before, and people are confused coming in the application, it's hard to tell whether the lack of engagement is due to the fact that [00:10:00] they're like, Oh my gosh, like, I have no idea how to use this application.

I don't know what's going on here. So a lot of times people have bad UX, bad usability, and they're like, Oh, nobody wants our product. We should just pivot and do something completely different. When it's like, well, actually you use these bizarro kind of design patterns and try to get too creative when actually for your first version, just do something dead simple that everybody can understand that, you know, everybody understands so that you can actually understand whether or not you're measuring demand and like whether or not people actually want this thing.

Amy: Oh, that's such a great point. Let's drill down on this more. So it sounds like. I too have learned this lesson. I think it's one of those things that when you're younger, it's harder to see, but when you look back, you go, Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about blind spots. It sounds like that's a blind spot that you observe make this problem.

They have a blind spot all the time. Yeah. So what are some of the other really common blind spots as you work with teams [00:11:00] as you engage with people all over Walmart? And I know you also, you know, help out teams just in the broader industry. You're a real fixture in our industry. 

So what are some of the other things that you see teams, mistakes they make, blind spots they have, that you would love to help them overcome and that you would help them overcome?

Jason: Yes, I don't think this is a, this is a particularly a Walmart problem, but I'd say the biggest problem that I, that I've seen over the years in general, working with clients is, I mean, I mean, this sounds so silly, but it's, uh, or so simple, but not perfecting the basics.

So a lot of, a lot of product teams will come to me and they'll say, Hey, we're building out this new suite of features. We've gotten a lot of feedback that we need to build out, you know, whatever it is, like group messaging or whatever the feature may be. And I go and I do like an audit of the product before I like engage with any client to understand what's going on there.

Like what do I think the problems are and so on and so forth. And when I do a lot of these audits, it just becomes very obvious that [00:12:00] actually the UX of the core features, let's say it's like, let's say, let's say it is a messaging app. Let's say the messages don't go through a lot of the time. For some reason, there were just bandwidth issues or just, they, they, Encoded or build it in a way where it's like that stable, so it crashes a lot.

The messages don't go through half the time. Let's say the UX is a little bit weird for like sending emojis or something like that, which is just like a core part of just messaging. Let's say, uh, it's just really hard to sync your address book and find your friends. These are like the core features, just like ground zero.

You better you better get this foundation perfect before you move on to the higher levels. A lot of these things just companies just do not perfect before they move on. And so I would say that like half the work that I've done over the years is really pushing the clients that I work with to actually Rewind a little bit and actually perfect and polish the foundation further just because in almost every instance of a product just kind of sucking it's because they didn't really put enough love and attention into the core feature set that everything else should derive from.[00:13:00] 

And so I think this is just fundamentally a part of human nature, especially if you're a founder and you're working on this product every day or like you're the lead product person for a product and you're thinking about it every day. It's really boring actually to think about. Let's make the address book sync really sleek and simple and oh man, it's not quite there yet.

Let's spend another two sprints on it. Or like, oh man, this emoji finder. Yeah, it's good enough. Let's just move on to the next thing. No, no, no, no. Don't move on to the next thing. Your core feature set, which is let's say maybe three or four features for Uber. It's like inputting your address, like where you want to go.

It's like clearly inputting where you currently are, either through a pin or through kind of typing it in and then choosing like what type of car you want and like maybe updating your payment information, like those are the core things, if those things are not good and don't work. Perfectly every time, or if the map is just unreliable, like the map of where the car is, let's say like half the time, it looks like the car is like static and then suddenly it jumps over here.

Perfect those things before you do anything else, because those are the core elements that are going to drive the whole [00:14:00] system. And if you don't really make those things perfect before moving on to new things, you're just shooting yourself in the foot. So I'd say that like, just focusing on the basics, focusing on the fundamentals is the number one thing that I see teams not doing, and it causes huge failure.

Amy: That's such an excellent point and totally reinforces our whole framework in game thinking. And so, you and I have discovered that coming from different angles, and I think it's incredibly important lesson, especially for young teens. What do you wish people knew about behavior science that they get wrong?

That they get mistaken? 

Jason: Oh, that's a good question. I think people inappropriately look at behavioral science as a, instead of tricks and tactics, it's like almost like a quiver full of tricks and tactics that you can just deploy whenever you want, or that do these little hacks. I think that this hack, hacker mindset or like, oh, like shopping hacks, like weight loss hacks, like this hacker mindset has kind of infected our field a bit [00:15:00] and people see behavioral science is like, Oh, do you want to get better conversion? 

Like here's six tricks that you can use. You can use loss aversion. You can use like social group, blah, blah, blah. I think that that way of thinking about behavioral science is completely wrong.

And I think the right way to think about it is we all have an operating system or kind of a lens that we look at the world through, right? Uh, most of us have never really updated this lens or I've never really consciously constructed this lens for thinking about humans and why they behave or how they behave, right?

Like we've, we've, you know, grown up in a certain culture and the culture has beliefs about why people do what they do in school Like teachers will teach us a little bit about human nature and like behavior and why people do what they do and what? Motivation is and what causes it, you know over the years we'll notice things like oh i'm interesting like when I you know at work When I tell everybody that they'll get this incentive or this reward at the end of the week, uh, like free pizza, if they do really well, they tend to do really well.

Oh, God, I, incentives are powerful. Like a lot of the stuff that we, our understanding of behavior is kind of built in this like weird piecemeal way throughout the years. It kind of creates this folk [00:16:00] psychology or this folk understanding of psychology that we all have. But the problem is most of us. I have not really gone to the scientific literature and looked at why do people actually do what they do?

What things do we know really help motivation? What things kill motivation? How do people make decisions? Like, are people really good at kind of making straight up decisions? And in what context are they good at making these straight up decisions? What things are they good at thinking about? What things are they bad at thinking about?

Like, what things Most of us have not really looked at the scientific evidence for these things. And so I think that the best way to think about behavioral science is, it's something that all of us in the product world and in the marketing world should be constantly paying attention to and pulling in to build a better lens to look through.

That lens, just like your, your fundamental assumptions about why people do what they do, what constitutes a good reward, all these things like that. They're not little darts to be taken out and thrown, they're not little tactics to be deployed just in certain contexts. The behavioral sciences should fundamentally change your worldview and the way that you look at the world and give you a more accurate model of humanity and just like the market and everything.

I know I'm being a little bit vague and kind of rambling a little bit [00:17:00] but I make a million decisions differently on a monthly basis based on my just like because I've been studying behavioral science for so long for like what is it like pretty much it's like most of what I've thought about for most of my adult life.

And so I think about why people do things in a way, way, way different manner than other people. I think about why Facebook gets popular in a way different manner than just a random person you pluck off the street. I think about Amazon and a lot of their strategies in a way different manner than somebody that you pluck right off the street.

I understand when looking at like a DMV form, just based upon what's opt in and what's opt out. I understand exactly what's going on there from the choice architecture point of view, and just like a, in a, in a, in the subconscious, intuitive way. Yeah. Fundamentally, I look at the world very differently than somebody that hasn't studied this stuff.

And I think that that's the purpose of this stuff. It's just to change our worldview and to change our lenses. It's not just tips and tricks that you can just pull out willy nilly. The behavioral scientists should fundamentally inform all the decisions you make from the What product do you even choose to build in the first place?

What is the form and shape of the product? Is it a mobile [00:18:00] app? Is it actually something that's in the store? Like these things, these decisions, these ground shifting decisions in the early days of like a product team, somebody that understands why people do what they do and human motivation, all these things like that will make very different fundamental core assumptions and decisions than somebody who doesn't know this stuff.

So I would say this should be a never ending quest, a never ending process of learning this stuff for people. It shouldn't just be, I got Robert Tronini's books here, The Six Principles. Oh, let me try social proof on my marketing landing page. Oh, that didn't work. Let me try loss aversion. That's not the way to do it.

Amy: Right. I think what you're really getting at here. Is the difference between features and systems? Yes. And a big part of game thinking is thinking in systems versus VR. 

And you're very much speaking that language. So let's get specific about As a behavioral scientist looking at how people apply behavioral science and, and as you say, they often just take a hack here and there.

That's human nature. [00:19:00] We all like the silver bullet, you know, the magic pixie dust. So, you know, for instance, as a behavioral scientist, you're very familiar with. Um, how behavior is shaped by incentives and rewards? 

Jason: Sure.

Amy: And there's a lot of complexity around that some of what people are often advised to do is for example Use a variable reinforcement schedule.

Sure to keep folks interested sort of as a hack, you know, as an all purpose hack, you and I have both heard that. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Amy: How would you first, why shouldn't I? So here I am, I'm a product developer. I really want to do a good job. I want to run some smart product experiments. What's the harm in just following that and saying, okay, that works good that gets people's attention. 

I'm just going to use it here. What's the harm there? What can I do better? What's the smarter thing to do with variable reinforcement where I'm using it as part of a system rather than just [00:20:00] this random feature, you know, that's positioned as a silver bullet? 

Jason: Well, you know, here's actually the funny thing, you know, there's this big craze around slot machines, variable ratio reinforcement, all this stuff.

It's happened, you know, there's been this craze for a few years now. And I've actually been like going into like almost every new product that I see. Actually, every time I look at a new product, I look at, Hmm, is there a variable ratio reinforcement reward system here that like some developer or somebody consciously put in.

And outside of the gaming world, there are apps that contain variable ratio rewards. But I, I haven't seen any applications outside of games where, like, knowing this information, like, got the developer to code in something completely new or a completely new feature or a completely new element of the product that operates according to some kind of, like, stochastic logic or something like that.

I just have not really seen that. Um, I think that actually knowing that, knowing that variable, like, that things that are variable, that things that are new, that things are hard to predict. Is very kind of attention grabbing and compelling knowing that [00:21:00] element of perception can be very helpful because it can actually cause you to think about, okay, cool.

What subject matter is like ever changing his novels is constantly kind of evolving. You know, gossip and things like that are kind of a great example, like going to TMZ or going to Paris Hilton or going to like even the National Enquirer. I mean, that's a variable ratio reward system. You never know what you're going to get when you go there.

It's completely unpredictable. Sometimes there's like these big bombshell stories that arise. Most of the time, it's just kind of boring stuff and just who cares. But every once in a while, when you open up the National Enquirer, you go to like one of these gossip or gossiping sites, there's just something that's truly kind of world changing from like a gossip point of view, right?

There are certain areas of the human experience or certain areas of content that are just constantly changing, that are ever evolving, that are going to be surprising. And just knowing that and the fact that that really grabs attention, which is really what variable ratio rewards are really talking about.

I think can be very helpful, but that's thinking at it from a systems point of view, rather [00:22:00] than like a tactic point of view, it's actually funny. So I've been writing a book for forever just because I get so pulled off on different projects for work and everything that it's just taken me forever to finish.

But in one of the chapters I write about motivation and rewards and What should people know about rewards and motivations and like how the most addicting apps or like the most engaging apps, what do they do differently? And so I looked at all of the most popular, engaging kind of quote unquote addicting applications that are out there to look at, see, like, what do they do from a reward point of view that they all have in common?

And actually it wasn't the variability of the rewards itself. That was the thing that bound them together, but bound them all together is that they were all social. And that makes sense from like an evolutionary psychology point of view. So if you think about it, like, what do all these things have in common, like, from an evolutionary point of view, like, we don't care about everything equally, right?

Like, we're kind of really predisposed to think, to like, really pay deep attention to certain things, right? Those things could be like, you know, like food, you know, predators, things that are extremely dangerous. Especially things that are dangerous that we [00:23:00] can't see like microbes and stuff like that Which is like where the disgust reaction comes from like when you see like a piece of rotting meat You just feel sick That is an inbuilt reaction to like avoid that thing or spit that thing out or bomb that thing out Right in order to actually like stay away from danger.

Um, but also we are social creatures We evolved in the social environment. Uh, our survival is really based upon like understanding other people gaining their favor Attracting them as mates and so on and so forth So much for our brain is really built around understanding other people and thinking about other people and getting positive attention from people is incredibly rewarding and getting positive attention from members of the opposite sex or the member of the sex that you're attracted to is incredibly rewarding.

So if you look and if you think about just social activity, it's the ultimate variable reinforcement system. A lot of time when you have a conversation with your friend. It's just the same conversation you've had before. It's not all that compelling or not all that rewarding. But then every once in a while, you have the most amazing conversation ever.

Or like your friend tells you something really fascinating or interesting and boom, suddenly, whoa, jackpot reward, right? And so like [00:24:00] humans, social creatures are the only thing that we can never really predict. And that the, uh, they're, they're constantly evolving on us. They're constantly changing. And, uh, if you just look at human interaction, it's like the perfect variable ratio, uh, reinforcement system.

And it's completely natural. This doesn't require an engineer to like go in and come up with some amazing reinforcement schedule. This doesn't require an engineer to like know the math behind this stuff and think about, oh, cool, I'm going to create a continuous ratio reinforcing system. And then above that, I'm going to actually have this variable ratio reinforcement system that I'm going to build in.

And then every 50 times to get a jackpot, like you don't need to think about that at all. You just get, if you just get a bunch of humans together in a system and you get them interacting, you're going to have variability of reward. You're going to have like certain jackpot moments that are wild and amazing and fantastic.

And if you look at all of the apps that have just really taken off and are world changing from just an engagement and kind of usage point of view, they're all social. I don't think it's a surprise. That's just an inherent part of a social system. You don't need to overthink it. You don't need to over engineer it.

In certain games, of [00:25:00] course, you have people actually building these specific reinforcement schedules and systems and stuff like that. But in the consumer app world or in the enterprise app world, I think the people that think about these things from more of a like a higher level kind of like conceptual systems point of view are the ones that do it right.

Amy: So in essence, you're saying a well designed social feed trumps everything else for engagement. 

Jason: Or a well designed, just well designed social features, right? If you give people the ability to like, uh, to message each other, how compelling is it when you download a new app application and suddenly like a friend that you haven't talked to in two years is like, Hey, do you like this thing?

Like what's going on here? And then suddenly you strike up a conversation with somebody you haven't talked to in two years. Awesome. That's really cool. Or let's say you go to eBay and I don't know if actually eBay has this feature, but let's say what if they did, what if you go to eBay and you can see that actually a friend of yours just purchased this really fascinating or kind of amazing kind of like grill or whatever it may be.

And you're just like, whoa, damn, Andy, I didn't realize Andy kind of grilled. And then you can message [00:26:00] Andy and strike up this like kind of new interaction around that. I mean, that could be a really compelling variable, just out of nowhere reward. So I like really thinking about these things from a systemic point of view.

It doesn't have to be a feed. Anytime you just get a bunch of humans together, you're gonna do things that are going to surprise you. They're going to do things that are unpredictable. They're going to kind of give you attention in ways that you didn't expect. That's really compelling and interesting. So just anytime you get humans together, you have this unpredictability, this variability.

Yeah. I mean, it just, that kind of drives the whole system. 

Amy: Yeah. And it creates a really powerful feedback loop. Can you dig in a little bit on the difference between feedback and a reward? So I'll give you an example. So you know those highway feedback signs where you're driving and it shows you how fast you're going?

Jason: Yeah. 

Amy: Studies showed those were far more effective than a lot of other kinds of signs. Very simple feedback. And that's not really a reward structure. That's feedback. But in social systems, a lot of what you're talking about, you [00:27:00] can frame it as rewards. But you, you could also frame it as feedback.

You put something forth and then you get feedback, likes, retweets, et cetera. So as a social scientist, how would you frame the difference, especially in terms of product design, like when to really think about creating a feedback system because feedback is essentially always a system and how rewards play into that.

Jason: Yeah. Um, I actually see the two is pretty much the same thing. Actually. It's funny. I just would see, I would see that that sign it's giving you feedback. The reward is the feedback itself, but it's just kind of a crummy reward. It's just not that compelling or interesting versus like a big juicy slice of pizza.

If you like, Stay underneath the speed limit for a certain period of time would be a reward. So this is something that i've been doing actually a lot recently is like looking at kind of like what things are we what things Are going to be really attracted to or really rewarded by let's just look at like the scope of human experience Let's look at the evolutionary environment that we kind of uh kind of evolved within And let's think [00:28:00] about like what things are we really going to be particularly stimulated or kind of rewarded by right?

It's like you have things like I think the social realm is incredibly rich Complex. I think so many of the rewards of life are social rewards, right? And so you can actually begin to delve into those and classify those. But you can also look at rewards for rewards of like survival, rewards of nourishment.

Of course, food is incredibly rewarding shelter that keeps you safe and just allows you to feel grounded and like you're not in danger is incredibly rewarding. Um, that's like a, that's like a negative reinforcer where you're taking away a negative stimulus in order to actually make the organism feel good.

Attention from other people feels good, feels positive, gaining status or gaining respect within the hierarchy feels good, right? So like, you can actually lay out all the things that we just naturally would be built to really see as valuable or feel good about. And those things themselves. I'd say you can call those things rewards and giving those things to people for doing after they've done [00:29:00] certain behaviors.

I mean, that's like a fairly simple way of thinking about a reward in the case of the sign that you're just talking about. I actually think that that's a negative reinforcer. Because a lot of people get really worried about, am I driving over the speed limit? Am I going to get a ticket? Like what's going to happen here?

And that sign is reducing the uncertainty or the fear you feel about either going over the speed limit, driving dangerously, being in danger of getting a ticket. So I actually think that those signs, like, yes, they're giving you feedback, but that feedback itself is actually a reward. I compulsively look at my speedometer.

A lot of people I don't, I don't think do, but actually it flashes red when you're above the speed limit. So slow down, slow down, slow down. And just that, that red and just the way that it's saying it, I don't think that it has this effect on everybody, but on a decent proportion of the population, it's going to make them feel a little bit uneasier, a little bit like, Oh, I'm breaking, I'm breaking a rule.

I'm breaking some social norm, right? I should slow down. Then when they slow down, that aversive stimulus goes away. So yes, it's just feedback, but I do actually think it is a [00:30:00] reward as well. 

Amy: Cool. Well, this is something we should totally dig into more, especially since you're writing a book. Now that you mention it, tell us a little bit more about the book you're writing.

Jason: Yeah. I mean, so it's, it's a very simple book. It's just really, I just wanted to write a 150 page guide to, okay, cool, you're a marketer or you're in product design in plain English, which is what, what are just the fundamentals I need to know in order to be dangerous at this stuff. And so I've really been focusing on why is behavior actually important within kind of business, right?

It seems very obvious, very simple, but I kind of go over that. Then I go into what do I think are the best models that you need to know from a behavioral science point of view in order to actually kind of understand why people do what they do, to be able to actually troubleshoot behavioral problems that you see within the field, and so on and so forth.

Then I go into like from a behavioral or psychological point of view, like what makes certain things easy to do, certain things hard to do, what are we good at thinking about, what are we bad at thinking about. Then I go into motivation. Like what are, what do we know about motivation and why people do what they do, what things are going to be incredibly motivating, what things are going to be less [00:31:00] motivating.

What about these reward systems and structures? Like, do you actually need to think about this variability stuff and so on and so forth? Then I go into habit formation. Like, what do we know about habit formation? How do you actually get people to form habits? What's the underlying purpose of what, why do we form habits?

Why are they important? And therefore, how will that help you understand which products to go after, how to build a product. Then I kind of go into kind of an analysis of like the most successful products out there today. Like, what do they all have in common? And if you want to build one of these, what should you do?

And then I have a couple of case studies. And then I talk about, from what we know about behavioral science, what can we predict about what products are coming down the line or like, what should be popular within the future from like a behavioral science point of view. So that's like kind of the basic structure of the book, but it's just very, just like straight to the point, no filler, plain English.

I don't get too nerdy. I just wanted just to build the thing that I wish I'd gotten when I first got into the field years ago, just something that's like really short, but I can just give out to my friends and just people that are interested. 

Amy: Sounds [00:32:00] like a must read. 

Jason: Thank you. Yeah. And I, I, I'm actually really pleased that that's come along.

I'm almost done. I've just been procrastinating the last like two chapters so. 

Amy: Oh, I hear that. Let's talk for a moment about how you as a product leader, as a, someone, you know, working with teams, working on innovation initiatives, how you think about collecting. And then synthesizing and taking action on feedback as you're bringing new ideas to life.

You know, there's feedback comes from many different sources. You get feedback from potential customers when you're testing new ideas in some form, you know, when you're in the problem space versus the solution space, you get feedback from your stakeholders. You get feedback from your team, you get feedback from customers who are a different kind of customer when your products further along and closer to launching.

So how do you think about managing all of that and then guide your teams that [00:33:00] you're working with to know essentially what to pay attention to? And what to ignore. 

Jason: So at the end of the day, like really what I care about are the numbers, the results. So like, what are people actually doing? Of course, like if you get a slew of negative feedback from like surveys or forms that you send out, you should pay attention to that.

But at the end of the day, what matters is like people doing, like using the system, engaging with it frequently. fulfilling a need that they have through the system that you're building, right? So the number one thing that I always look at are the numbers. What are people actually doing? And what does the retention look like within the system?

And how frequently are people doing the different key actions within the system that I built? So that's like number one for me. I do pay attention a lot of attention to qualitative feedback. I hate focus groups. I don't like anything where you have a group of individuals together, where you have, where one particularly opinionated individual can just poison the well.

I don't really like, I do read it and I take it into account, a feedback form or like, there's a feedback of like, hey, how are we doing, you know, on a lot of apps or a lot [00:34:00] of websites or a lot of products that I work on, you know, people can just submit. feedback whenever they want, uh, just, just freely, you know, either at the bottom of an email, there's a link to like, Hey, how are we doing?

Or like, Hey, have any feedback click here. A lot of that stuff I find is just like very, it's when people are in a particularly angry, hot state, they're telling us about a problem and then just telling us how much we suck or like telling us all this other stuff that feedback you have to take with a huge grain of salt.

Because I think from that, you can pull. Their initial complaint or the thing that really triggered them getting really angry. You can pull that out of that feedback, but almost everything else they say, they're just really angry. And so they're going to find every single fault that they can with your product or your service and just hammer you for that.

So, as I said, you know, I pay attention to the quantitative feedback. I stay away from group feedback or group context in which to give feedback. I look at specifically triggering moments from stuff that just submitted by feedback forms to whatever group that I'm working with. But I also really love going out into the field and doing one on one conversations.[00:35:00] 

So in the early stages of a product, or even actually after the product's been released, what I will like to do is, uh, have individuals play with what I've created. I have a three step user interviewing slash user testing plan that I've built out over the years, which is, I like to, I like to either recruit people or just find people out in the field and then, like, pretty much show them.

The product that I'm working on or show them whatever I want feedback on and just tell them to, you know, talk aloud, tell me what's going through your head and just like with no instruction, just see like how quickly can they grasp what the product does, how obvious is it to them that they can do the different things within the product that I want them to do.

I'm looking just to see just. No background, no information, just how understandable is this thing and the value proposition and how to use it in that first phase. In the second phase, what I like to do is I like to ask them if I'm doing like a, uh, like a usability or user test, can you do this for me? Can you do that for me?

I write out all the key tasks that I want people to be able to do within the system. And then I have them go one after [00:36:00] another. I go down the task list and I ask them to do each thing. And that way I can actually create a tally. After I talk to, let's say, 10 or 15 people that this task was the hardest one to do, this one was the next hardest one to do, that one was the next hardest one to do.

So I can actually rank all the tasks within my system by usability. And then the third phase, I really like to ask the person that I'm talking with, a little bit about this problem space in their life. So let's say I'm building a washing service, like where we come and pick up your laundry, wash it for you and return it a day later.

So I would talk to them about like, well, like today, like, how do you wash your, how do you wash your clothes? Like, nice. Do you live in an apartment building? Like, Oh, interesting. Quarters are a pain, pain in the butt. Okay. Interesting. And we'll talk to them just about how they scratched that itch today, because really for every significant problem.

Or kind of issue that people have, they're scratching the itch somehow today. So I want to understand as well as I can, what are their current patterns? How are they thinking about this problem today? Like, what are they doing so that I can actually fit within that in an elegant way and not just completely disrupt [00:37:00] what they're already doing, or if I do disrupt what they're already doing.

It's in a way that's like very elegant and actually like fits within like their mental model of the world, how they think about this thing. And I'm not just coming across some zany weirdo so... 

Amy: Beautiful. That was fantastic. That's such great advice. I love it. Yeah. So Jason, you're a really inspiring guy.

Where are you getting your inspiration these days? What are you reading, watching, playing? What's interesting to you? 

Jason: Yeah, um, I've been going back to my roots a little bit. So in college, I stayed neuroscience and I still try and keep up with the field as best I can. It's like such a massive field and there's so much new stuff coming out.

That's hard for me to like really keep up with that. One of the main areas that I studied in addition to neuroscience was evolution because I was always really interested in actually one of the big questions that I always found fascinating in neuroscience that really tried to make one of my specialties was how did the brain evolve?

And how did the brain of all over time, how did this incredibly complex, [00:38:00] beautiful system that we have within our brains that just like allows us to perceive the world and make wonderful decisions and grow and flexibly adapt to the situation? Like, how did this arise over time? And so I've been getting really back into the evolutionary biology literature again, reading that a lot and thinking a lot about, um, kind of like the evolution of our behavior and our psychologies.

So like looking at evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology. And kind of really approaching things from that point of view. So I find that stuff really fascinating. That's taken up a lot of my time reading. Other than that, I'm doing a lot of art these days, actually. So spending as much time as I can actually out of the like super rational kind of mindset and trying to like zen out a little bit.

So doing a lot of charcoal drawings. And, uh, that's pretty much what I'm doing for inspiration these days. Yeah. 

Amy: Wow. I look forward to maybe seeing some of your drawings and definitely.

Jason: Yeah. 

Amy: Yeah. I'd love to see that. We can actually post them along with your interview. Yeah. Absolutely. 

Jason: That sounds good to me.

Amy: Thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your insights [00:39:00] and wisdom and really awesome advice. It was wonderful. 

Jason: Great. Thanks so much, Amy. I really appreciate it. I love what you're done. 

Amy: All right. We'll talk soon. 

Outro: Thanks for listening to Getting2Alpha with Amy Jo Kim, the shows that help you innovate faster and smarter. Be sure to check out our website, getting2alpha.com. That's getting2alpha.com for more great resources and podcast episodes.