I missed Kathy Sierra, from Cre­at­ing­Pas­sion­a­teUsers, when she spoke at FOWA in Miami, so it’s awe­some that she pre­sented at SXSW (Note: this is a tran­scrip­tion, so please excuse the gram­mar and run on sentences):

“Bet­ter than choco­late, bet­ter than sex.” Even if nobody really MEANS it, what would it take to craft expe­ri­ences our users would describe like that? In this new follow-up to cre­at­ing pas­sion­ate users, we’ll look at tools that can help take us there (includ­ing some fun sci­ence). We’ll cover some new, some retro, and some counter-intuitive tech­niques to take Cog­ni­tive Seduc­tion to the next level. Best of all, we can do a whole lot of user woo­ing with­out hav­ing to change our product.”

 

Kathy asks us to do four things. The first is, what is it some­thing that you really would have loved to have been. Mine is to have been a pro­fes­sional soc­cer player at the high­est level. My neighbor’s was base­ball. Kathy’s was being a great horse­back rider.

Last year, she asked us “Why are you here?” If you’re mak­ing applca­tions that don’t make face to face meet­ings nec­es­sary, why are you all here?. Last year we said, to make bet­ter apps, we must com­pen­sate for the miss­ing “human-ness”.

So, how do make users say “this kicks ass.” Would you rather a per­son say the com­pany or the prod­uct kicks ass? The secret answer is, you need to help the user have a user where they’re kick­ing ass.

The Hi-Res User Experience.

If you know more about music, the more you hear. For exam­ple, Tan­tek says he looks at the world dif­fer­ently after he started climb­ing elevn months ago. For instance, he builders the Knight Con­cert Hall, the SXSW cen­ter, climbed the wall at the 16bits party in order to get past the hour-long line …

Neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis and neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, researched by Eliz­a­beth Gould, who found out that ani­mals gen­er­ate new brain cells in rich envi­ron­ments. Being good at some­thing is not about nat­ural tal­ent, it’s about a tal­ent for prac­tic­ing. Peo­ple who put in the time. If you put in the time, you will become really, really good. Richard Restak says, “we need a rage to master.”

So, What do you help your users kick ass at?

1. Use telepa­thy. VS Ramachan­dran. It started with a mon­key. There are two fla­vors of mir­ror neu­rons. One is being able to read facial expres­sions. You have to be able to see people’s faces. You’re not think­ing what other peo­ple are think­ing, you’re actu­ally sim­u­lat­ing what’s going on in some­one else’s brains. The other fla­vor is motor neu­rons. You feel the move­ments. When you see some action, a party of your body expe­ri­ences it. We get this by watch­ing other peo­ple, so we can under­stand what the other user is feel­ing, think­ing, going through. And the more you’ve expe­ri­enced some­thing, the bet­ter you under­stand. This means you have had to feel your user’s pain … or skill. Also, you can actu­ally sit in a room and prac­tice by visu­al­iz­ing. The way that you visu­al­ize mat­ters. If you imag­ine see­ing what you would see, that’s bet­ter than see­ing a pic­ture of yoursef.

2. Serendip­ity. Our brans are pat­tern match­ers. We try to find rea­sons for things. There’s a serendip­ity curve. Add ran­dom­ness, for exam­ple “the staff pick of the day.”

3. The Dog Ears Design Prin­ci­ple. If your dog shaeks their head , the ears fol­low the head. Think about how things move. Flu­id­ity turns the brain on.

4. Cre­ate Joy. It’s impor­tant. The brain needs play. Pay atten­tion to Amy Joy Kim and Liz Danz­ico (“frameworks”).

5. Inspire first-person lan­guage. What can I do to cause users to talk about them­selves, rather than about the com­pany or its prod­ucts? Pas­sion­ate users talk more about them­selves, using first-person lan­guage. “I kick ass”! Peo­ple talk through t-shirts (so make a women’s fit­ted tshirt!).

6. What does being your user say about a per­son?

7. Easter eggs and other treats. Read “A Smile in the Mind”.

8. If your users are pas­sion­ate, they will jus­tify their pas­sion by recruit­ing new users. Help users defend to other peo­ple this “totaly lame waste of time.”

9. Reduce their stress. Think about ways for your users to man­age stress. They can’t be pas­sion­ate if they’re stressed.

10. Exer­cise the brain. Read “Brain Age”. Plain old phys­i­cal exer­cise is one of the best ways to exer­cise the brain. Geeks are com­ing late to the notion “I have a body and I can do things with it.”

11. Give peo­ple super­pow­ers, quickly. The com­pany “Elec­tric Rain” has a motto: Users Must Do Some­thing Cool Within 30 Minutes.

12. (missed it)

13. Speed their knowl­edge acqui­si­tion. Get them up the knowl­edge curve. Are there short­cuts? For exam­ple, chess mas­ters have an abil­ity to recall from just a glance at a board which game it was. But if you show them a ran­dom board, they won’t remem­ber it. So what is it that experts know, really? One of the top Go play­ers in the US became an expert in a very short time

14. Make your prod­ucts or ser­vices reflect people’s feel­ings. Add a but­ton: WTF? Mar­keters have a twisted, ideal, stereo­typed view of what their cus­tomers feel like. It’s the dif­fer­ence between “oops” (they love you) vs. “those bas­tards!” (your users hate you).

15. Help with reinest­ment of men­tal and phys­i­cal resources into new prob­lems they can solve that will help them learn and grow more. The expert never shrink the size of their lists, they just keep adding new stuff to do. Com­mu­ni­ties do this too. Encour­age your com­mu­ni­ties to take on more chal­leng­ing tasks. Give peo­ple the chance to focus, to devote all of their atten­tion to things. Think of “Atten­tion Off­sets” … If you con­sume par­tial atten­tion, give them some­thing that will con­sume full atten­tion.

16. Cre­ate a cul­ture of sup­port. There are no dumb ques­tions. Give peo­ple a chance for peo­ple to become men­tors at a much ear­lier stage, before they are experts. But more impor­tantly, there are no dumb answers. Encour­age peo­ple to answer ques­tions, even if they’re incor­rect. Get them talk­ing. Don’t destroy peo­ple for a wrong answer, tell them it’s ok.

17. Do not insist on “inclu­siv­ity”. Pas­sion­ate users “talk dif­fer­ent”. They use jar­gon. You say one word, and peo­ple who were there with you get it. Don’t make advanced peo­ple friendly to new­bies, but do give new peo­ple a place to feel safe.

18. Prac­tice Seduc­tive Opac­ity. Mys­tery. Antic­i­pa­tion. Curios­ity. Michael Lopp: “It’s not secrecy, it’s the­atre.” Diane Ack­er­man “Deep Play.” There is a resur­gence in things that are real and tan­gi­ble. It is impos­si­ble to see your Ama­zon deliv­ery box and not smile. Just hav­ing it on your doorstep makes you smile and the deliv­ery guy is a sex sym­bol! (It’s all about the pack­age! haha . And peo­ple doc­u­ment the unpack­ing! Elex­ctirc Rain says “the expe­ri­ence of get­ting and installing a prod­uct should feel like receiv­ing a gift.” Etsy is huge. Make is huge and grow­ing. It’s not “boomer nostalgia.”  Think about the fact that peo­ple have senses. Stud­ies show peo­ple who pet­ted rab­bits had lower cho­les­terol.

19.5 Do what this guy does. This is the best and moti­vat­ing story Kathy has seen. Wel­come Gary Vayn­er­chuk! (He was also in Miami for FOWA). Every­thing Gary does is about mir­ror neu­rons. Gary gives peo­ple a higher res­o­lu­tion wine expe­ri­ence. He says “Most peo­ple in the wne indus­try are douchebags. Wine is fun­da­men­tally bro­ken in Amer­ica. Try dif­fer­ent stuff. Stop drink­ing Yel­low Tail, peo­ple, you’re killing me!”

The last thing we’re asked to do is to “keep in touch” by touch­ing the shoul­der of the per­son next to us.