Don't experiment on your own revenue with broken game mechanics. Get our guide "Core Drives in the Wild" to learn how to apply real behavioral science to your product: professorgame.com/WildCD
Episode Summary
Kristen Berman, behavioral scientist and CEO and co-founder of Irrational Labs, argues that personalization is overrated in product design, and she brings the experiment to back it up. She walks through a published onboarding test with Headspace where asking new users a few questions and then recommending the same Basics course to everyone doubled course enrollments, outperforming both the personalized recommendation and the version with no questions at all. She is just as direct about the limit: enrollments doubled, yet people did not meditate more, because the rest of the product never reinforced that first commitment. Listeners come away with a barriers-and-benefits lens for any signup flow and a clear order of operations: get the fundamentals of human decision making right first, then layer personalization on top.
About the Host
Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia.
Key Takeaways
- Headspace's onboarding experiment with Irrational Labs doubled course enrollments by asking new users a few questions and then recommending the same Basics course to everyone, with no personalization behind the answers.
- Personalization pays off when the match is right and loses the user when it misses, and a handful of signup questions rarely reveals enough to get it right. Kristen Berman's advice: design first to avoid getting it wrong.
- Doubling Headspace course enrollments did not get more people to meditate. The enrolled course sat at the bottom of a list instead of on the Today tab, which shows that fixing one step of the funnel does not fix the next one.
- Forced choice beats a Continue button: in an Irrational Labs experiment, showing Accept or Decline led more people to accept, because the cost of saying no becomes visible instead of staying hidden behind an X.
- A meta-analysis from around 2020 found no effect of personalized health feedback on behaviors ranging from smoking to physical activity. With reminders, whether you send them and how often matters far more than small copy changes.
- Duolingo times reminders to the hour a user signed up, and Netflix improved its recommendations by moving from five stars to thumbs up or down so more people rated. Past behavior is the most reliable personalization signal.
Topics Covered
- 0:00 - Doubled enrollments, no more meditation
- 0:13 - Meet Kristen Berman of Irrational Labs
- 2:56 - Where irrational decisions cost the most
- 5:06 - Why game designers get to be paternalistic
- 7:48 - Forced choice: accept or decline beats continue
- 10:02 - Friction versus motivation in fintech and health
- 13:58 - The Headspace onboarding experiment setup
- 17:45 - Non-personalized questions doubled course enrollments
- 19:46 - Why more enrollments did not mean more meditation
- 22:21 - Pre-commitment, lost streaks and why willpower fails
- 25:24 - AI personalization and the health meta-analysis
- 28:44 - Reminders, Duolingo timing and Netflix ratings
- 32:08 - Where to find Kristen Berman
Don't experiment on your own revenue with broken game mechanics. Get our guide "Core Drives in the Wild" to learn how to apply real behavioral science to your product: professorgame.com/WildCD
About Kristen Berman
Kristen Berman is a prominent behavioral scientist and the CEO and co-founder of Irrational Labs, a leading behavioral design firm in Silicon Valley. Irrational Labs partners with top companies such as Intuit, LinkedIn, Airbnb, Meta, and Microsoft to drive behavior change for the greater good. Kristen's expertise in behavioral economics began as a founding member of the behavioral economics group at Google, where she worked with over 25 teams to launch innovative interventions, and she went on to co-found Duke University's financial decision making lab, Common Cents. She also publishes Product Teardowns, a Substack where she takes apart a popular app in about five minutes to show how a behavioral scientist thinks about design, pricing, incentives, and loyalty.
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