Switch - Chip Heath [44]
At first glance, that finding seemed as absurd as if you’d discovered that students got comparable scores on their algebra finals whether they took only one week of classes or a whole semester. Research director Cole acknowledged, “Clearly, in one or two levels we’re not teaching them a whole lot, since the bulk of that time is spent flying around the body blowing things up.” Why had the underutilized game been so effective at changing the kids’ behavior?
Cole started asking around, trying to understand the puzzling result. One of his friends, a marketing professor at Stanford, said, “Think about this from a marketing perspective. We can change behavior in a short television ad. We don’t do it with information. We do it with identity: ‘If I buy a BMW, I’m going to be this kind of person. If I take that kind of vacation, I’m that kind of eco-friendly person.’”
And it dawned on Cole: When teens didn’t comply with their drug regimen, the problem wasn’t knowledge, it was emotion. He said, “It boils down to an identity thing. After you have gone through intensive chemo, you’ve had your life stolen from you by cancer. So the kids think, ‘I just want to get back to being the original me.’ They don’t want to be ‘the sick kid’ anymore.”
The game was making a gut-level emotional connection. You are Roxxi, the nanobot, boldly defeating cancer. You fuel your ray gun by taking chemotherapy and antibiotics. Medicine means power. And the educational videos that pop up occasionally, with the mentor-robot lecturing you about the importance of compliance, are completely irrelevant to the change that’s going on. The change is not one of understanding but one of feeling. It’s realizing that I can do this. I’m in charge. Chemo isn’t a reminder of the sickness; it’s how you get your life back—how you steal back the real you from cancer. Take the pills, and you can stop being a cancer kid forever.
—————————— CLINIC ——————————
How Can You Make Developers Care About the End-User?
SITUATION At many software companies, the developers—who are responsible for writing new software programs—fall in love with their code. When their programs are tested by customers, they can be skeptical of the customer feedback. At Microsoft, for instance, one test of a new feature showed that six out of ten users couldn’t figure out how to use it. When the test lab shared the data with the developers, their reaction was, “Where’d you find six dumb people?” Many companies experience a form of this problem. Is it possible to convince developers to be more responsive to customer feedback?
WHAT’S THE SWITCH AND WHAT’S HOLDING IT BACK? Ultimately, companies need developers to tweak their software in response to feedback from customers; otherwise, the programs won’t be successful. But sometimes developers resist or dismiss customer feedback and make only “token” revisions rather than trying to empathize with customers’ difficulties. This is probably an Elephant problem—the developers understand what’s being asked of them but resent being forced to change their beautiful code for the dummies in their audience. But let’s not be too quick to treat developers as a “type” (e.g., as arrogant technologists). Character judgments like that reflect a psychological bias that we explore in Chapter 8. Let’s focus on providing developers with more motivation and a smoother path.
HOW DO WE MAKE THE SWITCH?
• Direct the Rider. 1. Point to the destination. We should paint a picture of the group glory that will result from a successful product launch. The developers will be software heroes, and they’ll have a line on their résumés that will always be impressive. Listening carefully to the customer is simply a way to accelerate that glory. 2. Script the critical moves. Are we being specific enough about what’s needed from