Katie Sierra on how to create popular applications and improve the "coolness" of its users
Is it possible to create a popular application today? Markets are divided, niches are occupied, competition is very dense ... But it’s not time for developers to indulge in sadness! The overall application bar is still low, and it is still possible to bypass all competitors. So says Kathy Sierra (Kathy Sierra) in his speech with the difficult translatable topic " Building the minimum Badass User " and its continuation .
Katie Sierra is known in Russia primarily as the author of the world bestseller "We Learn Java." But programming books are far from everything she does. Learning theory, interface development, application marketing, motivation — this is an incomplete list of topics on which she regularly writes articles and speaks at conferences. It was these two speeches that came to our attention because they summarized and summarized the most valuable of her own development experience, as well as hundreds of scientific works read by Katie. Before you - not a translation, but rather a summary of the most interesting thoughts and practical recommendations.
Let's ask ourselves one very simple question.
')
Why is a certain product or service really desirable and in demand in the long term? What exactly the properties or qualities of this product make it so?
The first thing that comes to mind is the quality of performance. However, there are many superbly made products that have failed. And at the same time there are a lot of other products, filled with almost terrible, but enjoying the same popularity and demand. Users are ready to understand and forgive a bad implementation, and gross errors with a smile are called "features."
Word of mouth today ruled the ball: 92% of respondents trust the recommendations of friends and family members more than all other forms of advertising. 70% trust reviews and advice from strangers on the Internet. Both indicators grew year after year, and most likely will continue to grow. Consequently, the key to success is for your customers to tell their friends: “You really need to buy it!”.
But how to achieve this? The trouble of most companies is that they are not competing there . “Excellent product”, “excellent company”, “excellent service”, in other words, they are struggling to “be the best”. But the user's goal is different. The user wants to become better himself. He wants to be cool in anything. To be badass .
Sad chart:
The main mistake is to focus on making the application better. Instead of helping the users of the application become better , simplify their lives, give them a new useful skill or make them professionals in something. If the focus is chosen correctly, then a high rating of the application and recommendations to friends is just a side effect.
The most important attribute of a successful application is not in the application itself, but in its users . The most important part of the application is the benefit that its owners receive. And it is much more important than a stylish design, intuitive interface, fast and polite support service, marketing and other things.
Let's look at the following scheme:
On the left, we see what happens if we are focused on the product itself (application, service, etc.). We find ourselves in a difficult situation: you need to surpass dozens or even hundreds of competitors. It takes tremendous effort. And only by making the product better than anyone, do we gain access to a small free market niche.
It is a completely different situation if we are focused on the consumers of our product and think first of all about them. Unfortunately or fortunately, the bar is still surprisingly low. To bypass competitors and access to a free niche is much easier. Let the quality of the performance of the product you lose to competitors (in other words, lose in the left scale). However, your product will be more successful.
Example : Kathy Sierra's Head First Series Programming Books. Books for many years in the list of the most popular and sold on Amazon. How did you manage to achieve this? Most authors of books on programming seek to demonstrate their weight, depth of thought, and the significance of the theses. The book makes you feel stupid, and the author - smart. Often it seems that the authors do not care whether the reader understands them. As a result, many begin to read and throw: "Not my level, I have not been given." The authors of the Head First series were not afraid to do it differently: go down to the lowest level, present everything in accessible language and explain even the obvious things in as much detail as possible.
People don't use apps because they like apps. They use apps because they love ... yes, yes, an unexpected surprise is themselves. This is their true incentive. They tell friends about your application, because they loveyou their friends.
However, this main secret is easily forgotten. It's all about the point of view from which we look at the development process. The right point of view can unexpectedly replace a massive marketing budget or the need to search for venture capital for your product.
What is this very “steepness” (badass) of the user, for which we must fight with all our might? In short, it means acquiring a new useful skill, solving your problem, becoming a professional or an expert in something.
Before we talk about this in more detail, let us dwell on the fact that it is not a slope :
1. Gamification. In most cases, gamification hurts the user. There is one exception: when you need to force users to do something that they strongly dislike. In other cases, you treat users like experimental rats and run the same operant conditioning mechanism, based on which slot machines or cocaine operate.
2. Bid on support service. The support service is good only if it helps the user to become better. Everything else - the speed of reaction, courtesy of treatment - for the user is secondary. Unless the support service is the essence of your business.
Now about the very "slope" and that behind it is hidden.
No one wants to be a pro only in your application (with some exceptions). Most often, your application has a larger context that is attractive from the user's point of view and needs to be seen. What does the user actually do with or because of you? Let's look at the following scheme:
For example, you are Sony Vegas Movie Studio, the competitor is Adobe Premiere Elements or Final Cut, and the general context is video editing. The user does not want to be "cool" in video editing programs. He wants to create cool videos.
By the way, marketers understand this well. Let us recall how we are usually treated before and after purchase using digital cameras as an example:
Before shopping - focus on what the user will do with the camera. After purchase - focus only on the instrument.
Exercise : Imagine a dialogue that a user of your application may have while chatting with friends. What does he brag about?
Your success depends on the results of users. Consider the following questions:
Design and UX is designed not only for the user, but also for what happens after interacting with the application (design for the post-UX UX). Not only users of the application should be impressed with your application, but others should be impressed with your users!
To be “cool” is to be an expert in something.
Definition The expert shows stable excellent results in anything compared to other users with comparable experience. These are not one-off achievements , even if they are very, very outstanding.
Examples:
The latest research in the theory of motivation suggests that we all by nature strive for mastery. Having started using something that helps grow - an application, service, a series of books - it's hard for us to stop. Growth becomes a habit: we become more tolerant of shortcomings and want more advanced versions.
One of the ways to improve is to increase the “resolution” in any business. The more experienced you are, the higher your skill, the more details, subtleties and nuances you can notice in your business. This is also a reward and a source of pleasure.
Example : if you do not know anything about astronomy, then the starry sky is for you this is just a black background with randomly scattered bright points. Someone can find the Big Dipper and the polar star, someone knows dozens of constellations, someone - the planet, someone on the starry sky can determine the time of year. Distinction of details is the true power.
Three giant myths of skill:
1. Mastery requires knowledge. Yes, experts know more, but simply knowledge does not make them experts.
2. Mastery requires experience. Experience is also not an indicator, we all know people for years engaged in the same and remaining at the same level. After about two years, further experience is a poor predictor of efficiency. However, practice matters, and we will discuss this later.
3. Mastery requires talent. Talent never arises out of nowhere - behind it are years of practice, but often it is deliberately hidden.
Experts are not determined by what they know, but by what they do. Many have heard about the magic number of ten thousand hours of practice, guaranteed to turn an ordinary person into an expert. The main thing here is not the amazing figure of ten thousand hours, but the quality of this practice. This is not a simple routine repetition of any skill. There must be three components :
1. Models for imitation - examples of the standard execution of certain actions.
2. Deep practice - practice on the verge of possibilities with the obligatory correction of errors.
3. Moving Forward is a phased plan for the development of skills in the long term. It is like a table of contents in a book.
Below we will talk in more detail about these components and their application in practice.
Preliminary stage : determine what is the skill and "toughness" in your case. For example, list all the tasks that a user encounters within a larger context. For each task, write what result the expert is able to achieve in it.
Tip : avoid the word “best” (“the expert will choose the best option of all”) and try to determine its meaning for your case as specifically as possible.
It would seem that everything is simple further: you need to find experts and learn from them how they do it. But here we are faced with the "curse of experts": experts do not know what needs to be done to teach other people what they can do . They forgot what it is to not know. Or they do not know how to highlight the essential and say that they need to learn much more than is actually required. Or they find it too obvious. Or refer to intuition. Unfortunately, none of these answers is encouraging.
But: just observing the expert and copying his actions makes the practice better (even if there are no comments and explanations - the expert simply shows something and says “this is good”, shows something else and says “this is bad”). Observing and repeating mediocre practices produces mediocre results.
An impressive and most extreme example is the sex determination of newborn chickens. This is a task of high complexity, since newborn chickens look the same regardless of gender. The pupil stands behind the conveyor and silently begins to sort the newborn chickens by the floor: the future chickens to the right, the roosters to the left. He is also silently watched by an expert. Every time, in case of an error, he corrects the student, without any explanation: just "yes" or "no." After some time, the student begins to reliably determine the sex of the chicks. At the same time, he is unable to even partially explain how he does this.
Information about the skills of an expert can be presented in the form of the following scheme:
Explicit knowledge we can express in words. This knowledge can be described and told to other people. With implicit (or perceptual) knowledge is more complicated: it is acquired with experience, but not expressed or poorly expressed in words. It used to be that it took an incredible amount of hours of experience to gain implicit knowledge.
But recent studies show that the brain is able to absorb implicit knowledge through examples. And do it very quickly, if the examples are selected correctly. The technique works not only for the skills of the body (such as in sports), but also for such complex areas as pilot training or mathematics.
There should be a lot of examples (maybe hundreds) of examples in order for the brain to separate the signal from the noise, which is significant from the secondary. Examples of "how not to do" will not work. Even if we know that this is bad, the brain still unconsciously copies. Remember how often we unknowingly copied someone's accent or manner of pronunciation, although we didn’t want it. Examples of "how not to" useful for advanced users, but certainly not for average and beginners. And once again we emphasize the danger of creating examples with mediocre practice: they are also easily remembered.
The assimilation of explicit knowledge strongly depends on how they are served (structure, form, language) and on the characteristics of the student. But memorization of implicit knowledge is much less sensitive to the presentation of material and individual differences, since this knowledge does not pass through the part of the brain that is responsible for thinking and speaking.
This fact was confirmed by studies of people with brain damage who were unable to create new memories. Any information after the injury was new to them whenever they met her. However, if they were taken for a walk a few dozen times along the same route, they could go the same way on their own. Although they could not explain how they do it.
Let's pass to practical recommendations. There will be three of them.
1. If you can give users only one thing, give them a fair amount of examples of what is really good looking.
These should not be examples of exorbitant complexity, where users can not make out anything. But, as the example with chickens shows, skills can be fixed without understanding.
2. The second most important thing - deep practice (deliberate practice) . This practice is on the verge of possibilities with the obligatory commitment of errors, their awareness and correction. Required components of deep practice:
To learn something, we must master a lot of skills. Each skill goes through three stages: “I do not know how”, “I can perform an action with effort” and “I can perform an action automatically.” Let's look at the diagram below. Yellow squares are individual skills. At first glance, everything is simple: in order to learn something, you need to move all the yellow squares from zone A to zone C.
Most stuck in the middle zone. The main problem of the mediocre level is not that some skills are not mastered, but that too many wrong actions are brought to automatism. Too much is being done wrong, but unconsciously and effortlessly. It pulls back and does not develop. In order not to fall into this trap, experts are doing something that is not obvious. If a skill is fixed in the automatism stage incorrectly or can be improved, then they return it to the previous stage, work it out again, consciously and with effort, improve it and return it to the automatism stage again.
But there is something worse than being stuck at an average level. There is a popular opinion: to maintain your level, it is enough just to regularly use acquired skills. For example, the fact that a pilot drives airplanes or a doctor treats patients is in itself a guarantee that their professional level will be maintained. In fact, this is not the case: without additional training, the professional level is slowly but steadily declining. This is a bit scary if you think again about the doctors who treat us, and the pilots who fly the aircraft we fly. The problem is not age-related changes, namely, the need to regularly return my skills to the “do with efforts” stage.
Consider another typical stuck situation at the middle level. This is an attempt to simultaneously pump and transfer from zone B to zone C all your skills in something. This takes a lot of strength, but the skills remain at the same level, as for each specific skill, effort is still not enough. Then the student believes that it is necessary to work even more intensively, but this also does not work. Problem solving - focus on small groups of skills. It is better to have a very simple, but perfectly learned and automatism skill in zone C than a very complex skill in zone B.
How to build training from scratch, given the problems above? The second step in transforming a user from beginner to expert is to break what you want to teach into simple skills and add a series of exercises of increasing difficulty to master these skills. Let the exercises be built in such a way that users acquire one stable skill in 1-3 lessons of 45–90 minutes. Stability in this case is the ability to repeat the skill with 90–95% reliability (no more than one mistake for 10–20 repetitions). If this fails, the complexity of the exercises is too high and you need to make them easier.
3. Moving forward. Add a clear map of the cultivation path in this area. If the user will be engaged regularly, what tasks await him in a month, in half a year or in a year? What can he achieve during this time? It's like a GPS navigator that shows where I am now and motivates to move forward.
It is equally important to explain not only the goal and intermediate results, but also potential difficulties along the way. As a rule, the user knows well what he wants. However, faced with difficulties, the user loses faith and begins to think: “This is not for me. I can't handle it. It's too hard. ” What is the typical and wrong solution to this problem? We add even more motivation, make the goal even more attractive. And how should this problem be solved?
First, understand the reasons. Maybe the user is disappointed because the gap between what he expected and what he received is too large? Recall the example of advertising cameras. Before shopping - examples of luxury photos, after purchase - a boring complicated black and white instruction.
Secondly, explain that obstacles are part of the path. Difficulties are normal and temporary . Everything passes through them, and the problem is not in a specific user.
Third, make sure that the user can get the first meaningful result as quickly as possible. For example, in 30 minutes. There are companies that use this as a rule. The joy of their own success - the most important type of motivation. This is an intrinsic motivation that forces the user to move on. And it is precisely here that the dangers of gamification appear: it is proved that external rewards (badges, glasses, etc.) kill intrinsic motivation.
And another equally important aspect of training is the reduction of cognitive leaks .
Cognitive leakage is all that consumes the user's psyche resources where it can be avoided.
There is a famous experiment. Participants are divided into two groups. The first group is asked to remember a two-digit number, the second group is a seven-digit number. After the end of the experiment, participants go to the hall, where there are tables with fruit and cakes. Participants from the first group more often choose fruits, from the second - cakes. Why it happens? Because will, self-control, attention and concentration are all resources from one source (cognitive resources). These resources are limited and very quickly depleted. Participants in the second group spent more cognitive resources, so they no longer have the strength to resist temptations. They choose less healthy, but more attractive food: cakes.
How can developers use the results of this experiment? Eliminate cognitive resource leaks wherever possible. Then the user will have the strength to focus on the main thing: to learn new things, to become better and “better”.
Typical cognitive resource leaks:
Some specific examples of cognitive leakage from everyday life:
1. The location of the handles on gas stoves. In most models, to save space, they are located in a line. Because of this, explanatory diagrams are placed nearby. Even after a few years, we have to look at the charts to remember which pen is responsible for which burner. Possible Solution:
2. Tire pressure - Toyota Camry onboard computer:
Is it possible to understand, looking at such an interface, where is the wheel? And most importantly: how do the displayed values compare with the norm? Does the driver need to do something or is everything ok?
The reasons for the success of the application are not in the application itself, but in its users. If the application makes the user better in something, then it is doomed to success. Three things will help you become an expert in something to the user:
1. Qualitative examples: "as it should."
2. Conscious practice.
3. Understanding the sequence of steps and obstacles to the goal.
And do not forget about the main thing: fix leaks of cognitive resources wherever possible.
Surely you want your employees to be experts in their work, which means that the above is applicable to the entire workflow of the company. Consider the following questions:
1. Does your company have enough examples of high-quality code, looking at which new employees could learn? Qualitative specifications? Qualitative response templates from support service?
2. Do your employees have time to practice and improve their level? These should be separate dedicated hours, not related to work on paid projects. If there are such watches, then make sure that the staff fix the wrong skills for as little time as possible.
1. Detailed and popularly about how experts become experts, is written in the book “Code of talent” by Daniel Coyle.
2. On internal and external motivation, read the book “Drive” by Daniel Pink.
3. Post Katie Sierra “Your app makes me fat” talks about an experiment with memorizing numbers and cognitive resources in general. Also, the topic of cognitive leaks with a mass of examples is versed in the book Micro-Interactions .
Katie Sierra is known in Russia primarily as the author of the world bestseller "We Learn Java." But programming books are far from everything she does. Learning theory, interface development, application marketing, motivation — this is an incomplete list of topics on which she regularly writes articles and speaks at conferences. It was these two speeches that came to our attention because they summarized and summarized the most valuable of her own development experience, as well as hundreds of scientific works read by Katie. Before you - not a translation, but rather a summary of the most interesting thoughts and practical recommendations.
How to make the product desired?
Let's ask ourselves one very simple question.
')
Why is a certain product or service really desirable and in demand in the long term? What exactly the properties or qualities of this product make it so?
The first thing that comes to mind is the quality of performance. However, there are many superbly made products that have failed. And at the same time there are a lot of other products, filled with almost terrible, but enjoying the same popularity and demand. Users are ready to understand and forgive a bad implementation, and gross errors with a smile are called "features."
Word of mouth today ruled the ball: 92% of respondents trust the recommendations of friends and family members more than all other forms of advertising. 70% trust reviews and advice from strangers on the Internet. Both indicators grew year after year, and most likely will continue to grow. Consequently, the key to success is for your customers to tell their friends: “You really need to buy it!”.
But how to achieve this? The trouble of most companies is that they are not competing there . “Excellent product”, “excellent company”, “excellent service”, in other words, they are struggling to “be the best”. But the user's goal is different. The user wants to become better himself. He wants to be cool in anything. To be badass .
Sad chart:
The main mistake is to focus on making the application better. Instead of helping the users of the application become better , simplify their lives, give them a new useful skill or make them professionals in something. If the focus is chosen correctly, then a high rating of the application and recommendations to friends is just a side effect.
The most important attribute of a successful application is not in the application itself, but in its users . The most important part of the application is the benefit that its owners receive. And it is much more important than a stylish design, intuitive interface, fast and polite support service, marketing and other things.
Let's look at the following scheme:
On the left, we see what happens if we are focused on the product itself (application, service, etc.). We find ourselves in a difficult situation: you need to surpass dozens or even hundreds of competitors. It takes tremendous effort. And only by making the product better than anyone, do we gain access to a small free market niche.
It is a completely different situation if we are focused on the consumers of our product and think first of all about them. Unfortunately or fortunately, the bar is still surprisingly low. To bypass competitors and access to a free niche is much easier. Let the quality of the performance of the product you lose to competitors (in other words, lose in the left scale). However, your product will be more successful.
Example : Kathy Sierra's Head First Series Programming Books. Books for many years in the list of the most popular and sold on Amazon. How did you manage to achieve this? Most authors of books on programming seek to demonstrate their weight, depth of thought, and the significance of the theses. The book makes you feel stupid, and the author - smart. Often it seems that the authors do not care whether the reader understands them. As a result, many begin to read and throw: "Not my level, I have not been given." The authors of the Head First series were not afraid to do it differently: go down to the lowest level, present everything in accessible language and explain even the obvious things in as much detail as possible.
People don't use apps because they like apps. They use apps because they love ... yes, yes, an unexpected surprise is themselves. This is their true incentive. They tell friends about your application, because they love
However, this main secret is easily forgotten. It's all about the point of view from which we look at the development process. The right point of view can unexpectedly replace a massive marketing budget or the need to search for venture capital for your product.
What is this very “steepness” (badass) of the user, for which we must fight with all our might? In short, it means acquiring a new useful skill, solving your problem, becoming a professional or an expert in something.
Before we talk about this in more detail, let us dwell on the fact that it is not a slope :
1. Gamification. In most cases, gamification hurts the user. There is one exception: when you need to force users to do something that they strongly dislike. In other cases, you treat users like experimental rats and run the same operant conditioning mechanism, based on which slot machines or cocaine operate.
2. Bid on support service. The support service is good only if it helps the user to become better. Everything else - the speed of reaction, courtesy of treatment - for the user is secondary. Unless the support service is the essence of your business.
Now about the very "slope" and that behind it is hidden.
Look for a larger context.
No one wants to be a pro only in your application (with some exceptions). Most often, your application has a larger context that is attractive from the user's point of view and needs to be seen. What does the user actually do with or because of you? Let's look at the following scheme:
For example, you are Sony Vegas Movie Studio, the competitor is Adobe Premiere Elements or Final Cut, and the general context is video editing. The user does not want to be "cool" in video editing programs. He wants to create cool videos.
By the way, marketers understand this well. Let us recall how we are usually treated before and after purchase using digital cameras as an example:
Before shopping - focus on what the user will do with the camera. After purchase - focus only on the instrument.
Exercise : Imagine a dialogue that a user of your application may have while chatting with friends. What does he brag about?
Your success depends on the results of users. Consider the following questions:
- Have you all done so that users achieve maximum results?
- Do you make users more interesting for their audience (chatting with friends over dinner, likes and repost in social networks)?
Design and UX is designed not only for the user, but also for what happens after interacting with the application (design for the post-UX UX). Not only users of the application should be impressed with your application, but others should be impressed with your users!
A bit of scientific theory about experts and skill
To be “cool” is to be an expert in something.
Definition The expert shows stable excellent results in anything compared to other users with comparable experience. These are not one-off achievements , even if they are very, very outstanding.
Examples:
- a position on the chessboard is given - the expert steadily chooses the best continuation of the game;
- a patient is given a set of symptoms - the expert consistently makes the correct diagnosis
The latest research in the theory of motivation suggests that we all by nature strive for mastery. Having started using something that helps grow - an application, service, a series of books - it's hard for us to stop. Growth becomes a habit: we become more tolerant of shortcomings and want more advanced versions.
One of the ways to improve is to increase the “resolution” in any business. The more experienced you are, the higher your skill, the more details, subtleties and nuances you can notice in your business. This is also a reward and a source of pleasure.
Example : if you do not know anything about astronomy, then the starry sky is for you this is just a black background with randomly scattered bright points. Someone can find the Big Dipper and the polar star, someone knows dozens of constellations, someone - the planet, someone on the starry sky can determine the time of year. Distinction of details is the true power.
Three giant myths of skill:
1. Mastery requires knowledge. Yes, experts know more, but simply knowledge does not make them experts.
2. Mastery requires experience. Experience is also not an indicator, we all know people for years engaged in the same and remaining at the same level. After about two years, further experience is a poor predictor of efficiency. However, practice matters, and we will discuss this later.
3. Mastery requires talent. Talent never arises out of nowhere - behind it are years of practice, but often it is deliberately hidden.
Experts are not determined by what they know, but by what they do. Many have heard about the magic number of ten thousand hours of practice, guaranteed to turn an ordinary person into an expert. The main thing here is not the amazing figure of ten thousand hours, but the quality of this practice. This is not a simple routine repetition of any skill. There must be three components :
1. Models for imitation - examples of the standard execution of certain actions.
2. Deep practice - practice on the verge of possibilities with the obligatory correction of errors.
3. Moving Forward is a phased plan for the development of skills in the long term. It is like a table of contents in a book.
Below we will talk in more detail about these components and their application in practice.
Preliminary stage : determine what is the skill and "toughness" in your case. For example, list all the tasks that a user encounters within a larger context. For each task, write what result the expert is able to achieve in it.
Tip : avoid the word “best” (“the expert will choose the best option of all”) and try to determine its meaning for your case as specifically as possible.
It would seem that everything is simple further: you need to find experts and learn from them how they do it. But here we are faced with the "curse of experts": experts do not know what needs to be done to teach other people what they can do . They forgot what it is to not know. Or they do not know how to highlight the essential and say that they need to learn much more than is actually required. Or they find it too obvious. Or refer to intuition. Unfortunately, none of these answers is encouraging.
But: just observing the expert and copying his actions makes the practice better (even if there are no comments and explanations - the expert simply shows something and says “this is good”, shows something else and says “this is bad”). Observing and repeating mediocre practices produces mediocre results.
An impressive and most extreme example is the sex determination of newborn chickens. This is a task of high complexity, since newborn chickens look the same regardless of gender. The pupil stands behind the conveyor and silently begins to sort the newborn chickens by the floor: the future chickens to the right, the roosters to the left. He is also silently watched by an expert. Every time, in case of an error, he corrects the student, without any explanation: just "yes" or "no." After some time, the student begins to reliably determine the sex of the chicks. At the same time, he is unable to even partially explain how he does this.
Information about the skills of an expert can be presented in the form of the following scheme:
Explicit knowledge we can express in words. This knowledge can be described and told to other people. With implicit (or perceptual) knowledge is more complicated: it is acquired with experience, but not expressed or poorly expressed in words. It used to be that it took an incredible amount of hours of experience to gain implicit knowledge.
But recent studies show that the brain is able to absorb implicit knowledge through examples. And do it very quickly, if the examples are selected correctly. The technique works not only for the skills of the body (such as in sports), but also for such complex areas as pilot training or mathematics.
There should be a lot of examples (maybe hundreds) of examples in order for the brain to separate the signal from the noise, which is significant from the secondary. Examples of "how not to do" will not work. Even if we know that this is bad, the brain still unconsciously copies. Remember how often we unknowingly copied someone's accent or manner of pronunciation, although we didn’t want it. Examples of "how not to" useful for advanced users, but certainly not for average and beginners. And once again we emphasize the danger of creating examples with mediocre practice: they are also easily remembered.
The assimilation of explicit knowledge strongly depends on how they are served (structure, form, language) and on the characteristics of the student. But memorization of implicit knowledge is much less sensitive to the presentation of material and individual differences, since this knowledge does not pass through the part of the brain that is responsible for thinking and speaking.
This fact was confirmed by studies of people with brain damage who were unable to create new memories. Any information after the injury was new to them whenever they met her. However, if they were taken for a walk a few dozen times along the same route, they could go the same way on their own. Although they could not explain how they do it.
Let's pass to practical recommendations. There will be three of them.
1. If you can give users only one thing, give them a fair amount of examples of what is really good looking.
These should not be examples of exorbitant complexity, where users can not make out anything. But, as the example with chickens shows, skills can be fixed without understanding.
2. The second most important thing - deep practice (deliberate practice) . This practice is on the verge of possibilities with the obligatory commitment of errors, their awareness and correction. Required components of deep practice:
- high quality and fast feedback;
- splitting complex into simple elements;
- 90-95% reliability in 1-3 classes.
To learn something, we must master a lot of skills. Each skill goes through three stages: “I do not know how”, “I can perform an action with effort” and “I can perform an action automatically.” Let's look at the diagram below. Yellow squares are individual skills. At first glance, everything is simple: in order to learn something, you need to move all the yellow squares from zone A to zone C.
Most stuck in the middle zone. The main problem of the mediocre level is not that some skills are not mastered, but that too many wrong actions are brought to automatism. Too much is being done wrong, but unconsciously and effortlessly. It pulls back and does not develop. In order not to fall into this trap, experts are doing something that is not obvious. If a skill is fixed in the automatism stage incorrectly or can be improved, then they return it to the previous stage, work it out again, consciously and with effort, improve it and return it to the automatism stage again.
But there is something worse than being stuck at an average level. There is a popular opinion: to maintain your level, it is enough just to regularly use acquired skills. For example, the fact that a pilot drives airplanes or a doctor treats patients is in itself a guarantee that their professional level will be maintained. In fact, this is not the case: without additional training, the professional level is slowly but steadily declining. This is a bit scary if you think again about the doctors who treat us, and the pilots who fly the aircraft we fly. The problem is not age-related changes, namely, the need to regularly return my skills to the “do with efforts” stage.
Consider another typical stuck situation at the middle level. This is an attempt to simultaneously pump and transfer from zone B to zone C all your skills in something. This takes a lot of strength, but the skills remain at the same level, as for each specific skill, effort is still not enough. Then the student believes that it is necessary to work even more intensively, but this also does not work. Problem solving - focus on small groups of skills. It is better to have a very simple, but perfectly learned and automatism skill in zone C than a very complex skill in zone B.
How to build training from scratch, given the problems above? The second step in transforming a user from beginner to expert is to break what you want to teach into simple skills and add a series of exercises of increasing difficulty to master these skills. Let the exercises be built in such a way that users acquire one stable skill in 1-3 lessons of 45–90 minutes. Stability in this case is the ability to repeat the skill with 90–95% reliability (no more than one mistake for 10–20 repetitions). If this fails, the complexity of the exercises is too high and you need to make them easier.
3. Moving forward. Add a clear map of the cultivation path in this area. If the user will be engaged regularly, what tasks await him in a month, in half a year or in a year? What can he achieve during this time? It's like a GPS navigator that shows where I am now and motivates to move forward.
It is equally important to explain not only the goal and intermediate results, but also potential difficulties along the way. As a rule, the user knows well what he wants. However, faced with difficulties, the user loses faith and begins to think: “This is not for me. I can't handle it. It's too hard. ” What is the typical and wrong solution to this problem? We add even more motivation, make the goal even more attractive. And how should this problem be solved?
First, understand the reasons. Maybe the user is disappointed because the gap between what he expected and what he received is too large? Recall the example of advertising cameras. Before shopping - examples of luxury photos, after purchase - a boring complicated black and white instruction.
Secondly, explain that obstacles are part of the path. Difficulties are normal and temporary . Everything passes through them, and the problem is not in a specific user.
Third, make sure that the user can get the first meaningful result as quickly as possible. For example, in 30 minutes. There are companies that use this as a rule. The joy of their own success - the most important type of motivation. This is an intrinsic motivation that forces the user to move on. And it is precisely here that the dangers of gamification appear: it is proved that external rewards (badges, glasses, etc.) kill intrinsic motivation.
Take care of cognitive resources!
And another equally important aspect of training is the reduction of cognitive leaks .
Cognitive leakage is all that consumes the user's psyche resources where it can be avoided.
There is a famous experiment. Participants are divided into two groups. The first group is asked to remember a two-digit number, the second group is a seven-digit number. After the end of the experiment, participants go to the hall, where there are tables with fruit and cakes. Participants from the first group more often choose fruits, from the second - cakes. Why it happens? Because will, self-control, attention and concentration are all resources from one source (cognitive resources). These resources are limited and very quickly depleted. Participants in the second group spent more cognitive resources, so they no longer have the strength to resist temptations. They choose less healthy, but more attractive food: cakes.
How can developers use the results of this experiment? Eliminate cognitive resource leaks wherever possible. Then the user will have the strength to focus on the main thing: to learn new things, to become better and “better”.
Typical cognitive resource leaks:
- when we ask the user to make a choice where the choice is not really needed, is not fundamental, and we can make it for the user;
- non-obvious interface, when the user needs to think about how to enable / disable this or that function, change the mode, etc .;
- complex confusing help to the application.
Some specific examples of cognitive leakage from everyday life:
1. The location of the handles on gas stoves. In most models, to save space, they are located in a line. Because of this, explanatory diagrams are placed nearby. Even after a few years, we have to look at the charts to remember which pen is responsible for which burner. Possible Solution:
2. Tire pressure - Toyota Camry onboard computer:
Is it possible to understand, looking at such an interface, where is the wheel? And most importantly: how do the displayed values compare with the norm? Does the driver need to do something or is everything ok?
findings
The reasons for the success of the application are not in the application itself, but in its users. If the application makes the user better in something, then it is doomed to success. Three things will help you become an expert in something to the user:
1. Qualitative examples: "as it should."
2. Conscious practice.
3. Understanding the sequence of steps and obstacles to the goal.
And do not forget about the main thing: fix leaks of cognitive resources wherever possible.
For executives
Surely you want your employees to be experts in their work, which means that the above is applicable to the entire workflow of the company. Consider the following questions:
1. Does your company have enough examples of high-quality code, looking at which new employees could learn? Qualitative specifications? Qualitative response templates from support service?
2. Do your employees have time to practice and improve their level? These should be separate dedicated hours, not related to work on paid projects. If there are such watches, then make sure that the staff fix the wrong skills for as little time as possible.
Notes
1. Detailed and popularly about how experts become experts, is written in the book “Code of talent” by Daniel Coyle.
2. On internal and external motivation, read the book “Drive” by Daniel Pink.
3. Post Katie Sierra “Your app makes me fat” talks about an experiment with memorizing numbers and cognitive resources in general. Also, the topic of cognitive leaks with a mass of examples is versed in the book Micro-Interactions .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/231711/
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