Every product team eventually faces the same puzzle: you’ve built something better, but users won’t touch it. The problem isn’t your technology. It’s that you’ve asked humans to leap too far from what they know.
The Octalysis Framework with its game techniques. The California Roll Rule balances Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness, which pulls us toward what we can relate to, with Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity, which rewards the new surprise.
The California Roll Rule is the principle behind Nir Eyal’s story of how the California Roll solved this exact problem for Japanese cuisine in America: people don’t want something truly new, they want the familiar done differently. It is one of the most reliable rules in experience design and behavioral design.
Speed Run Notes
- The California Roll Rule: people don’t want something truly new, they want the familiar done differently.
- Americans avoided sushi in the 1970s until the California Roll wrapped familiar rice, avocado, cucumber, and crab in one barely visible sliver of nori.
- Technology adoption follows the same pattern: the graphical user interface used folders, windows, and trash cans to win over people who feared the command line.
- BJ Fogg lists “non-routine” as one of six Elements of Simplicity, so a product that asks people to learn something new starts at a disadvantage.
- In Octalysis terms, good design balances Core Drive 5 (what we can relate to) with Core Drive 7 (the new surprise that creates curiosity).
Table of Contents
About the Creator of the Octalysis Framework
Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003 — years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
Insightful Post from Nir Eyal
I’ve often been asked about what I think about Nir Eyal’s work.
Most people don’t realize we are good friends (he even gave me a front cover endorsement quote for my book), but regardless of that I think his work on the Hooked Model is actionable and insightful.
I’m also planning to write a post in the future on how to analyze his Hook Model through the Octalysis Framework, which is quite exciting.
Below I’m sharing a great post I read on his site, originally titled “People Don’t Want Something Truly New, They Want the Familiar Done Differently.”
The post is about how Americans were uncomfortable with Japanese food and sushi in the early days until they could start off with the familiar ingredients of the California Roll.
This is in line with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow Theory, where if you make the difficulty curve too high at the beginning, it creates anxiety and users drop off.
Incidentally, this corresponds to Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness, as we only like things we can relate to.
In fact, all jokes and media are a balance between Core Drive 5 and Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity, the balance between what we can relate to and a new surprise that creates curiosity or delight.
I think this is important for any behavioral designer creating any new experience. Enjoy!
In Nir Eyal’s Words
I’ll admit, the bento box is an unlikely place to learn an important business lesson. But consider the California Roll — understanding the impact of this icon of Japanese dining can make all the difference between the success or failure of your product.
If you’ve ever felt the frustration of customers not biting, then you can sympathize with Japanese restaurant owners in America during the 1970s.
Sushi consumption was all but non-existent. By all accounts, Americans were scared of the stuff. Eating raw fish was an aberration and to most, tofu and seaweed were punch lines, not food.
Then came the California Roll. While the origin of the famous maki is still contested, its impact is undeniable.
The California Roll was made in the USA by combining familiar ingredients in a new way. Rice, avocado, cucumber, sesame seeds, and crab meat — the only ingredient unfamiliar to the average American palate was the barely visible sliver of nori seaweed holding it all together.
Familiar Done Differently
The California Roll provided a gateway to discover Japanese cuisine and demand exploded.
Over the next few decades sushi restaurants, which were once confined to large coastal cities and almost exclusively served Japanese clientele, suddenly went mainstream. Today, sushi is served in small rural towns, airports, strip malls, and stocked in the deli section of local supermarkets.
The lesson of the California Roll is simple — people don’t want something truly new, they want the familiar done differently.
Interestingly, this lesson applies just as much to the spread of innovation as it does to tastes in food.
For example, the graphical user interface, a milestone in the popularization of the personal computer, used familiar visual metaphors like folders, notepads, windows, and trash cans to appeal to mainstream users terrified by the command-line interface (perhaps even more than the thought of eating raw fish).
The computer underneath was the same, however the familiar veneer suddenly made it accessible.
Quaint but unnecessary representations of the familiar became a hallmark of Apple products. As Claire Evans wrote for Vice’s Motherboard, “While under the direction of the late Steve Jobs, Apple’s design aesthetic tended heavily towards the skeuomorphic. The Apple desktop calendar, famously, is rendered with accents of rich Corinthian leather; its bookshelves gleam with wood veneers, its chrome always brushed, its pages stitched and torn, its tabletop felt green.”
Now that Apple serves a generation familiar with how its products work, it can shepherd them from California Rolls to sashimi, so to speak.
“We understood that people had already become comfortable with touching glass,” explained Apple’s Jony Ive. “They didn’t need physical buttons, they understood the benefits.”
However, Apple still uses its tried and true methods whenever the company wants users to adopt a new behavior.
For example, the rebranded Apple Wallet helps users feel comfortable with the technology by making payment options look just like mini credit cards. Even though there’s no technical reason to do so, Apple understands the power of the familiar.
(Un)Familiarity Breeds Contempt
As I wrote about in my book, Hooked, unfamiliar products and interfaces are more difficult to use and can impede adoption.
Several psychological phenomena conspire to make us resist the atypical.
According to BJ Fogg of Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Lab, “non-routine” is one of six “Elements of Simplicity” — the factors that affect the likelihood of any particular human action occurring.
Fogg wrote, “When people face a behavior that is not routine, then they may not find it simple. In seeking simplicity, people will often stick to their routine, like buying gas at the same station, even if it costs more money or time than other options.”
Of course, we also have a love for “new and improved” but in relatively modest proportions. “New and improved” is great for things we are already familiar with — like cereal and dish soap — but not for products where we lack a frame of reference.
Unfortunately, our aversion to things that are outside the norm is particularly hard on companies producing radical innovation — no matter how beneficial they may be.
If using a new product does not feel familiar, it faces severe challenges. According to Fogg, “People are generally resistant to teaching and training because it requires effort. This clashes with the natural wiring of human adults: We are fundamentally lazy. As a result, products that require people to learn new things routinely fail.”
What’s Your California Roll?
When describing the Apple Watch, Jony Ive said his goal was to build “the strangely familiar.”
The smart watch is exactly the kind of innovation that is still too new for all but the most early of early adopters. And yet Ive obsessed over the details of the Digital Crown, an esthetic adopted from traditional watchmaking.
Clearly, Ive knows what he’s doing — industry analysts expected the company to sell 19 million units that year.
As the pace of innovation accelerates, human behavior, not technological restraints, will be the deciding factor of whether products are adopted or discarded.
If new products and services are to positively impact our lives, they must find a gateway into our daily routines. The familiar done differently is the way to users’ minds and hearts — and sometimes their stomachs.
Key Takeaways
- The California Roll introduced Americans to sushi by using familiar ingredients arranged in a new way.
- The California Roll Rule: People don’t want something truly new, they want the familiar done differently.
- Things that are truly new need to use familiar mental models to gain user adoption (Apple’s use of skeuomorphic design is a classic example).
- Unfamiliar interfaces are more difficult to use and impede adoption. This maps to Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness in the Octalysis Framework.
- If your new product or service is not engaging users, ask “What’s my California Roll?”
Updated 2 October 2026. Added Speed Run Notes, the Octalysis Framework diagram that maps the rule to Core Drives 5 and 7, and links to the Hook Model analysis, the BJ Fogg Behavior Model, affordances, and innovative product onboarding.
Related Reading
- The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design
- Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness
- Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity
- How to Reach Flow within the Octalysis Framework
- What is Gamification?
- 5 Psychology Books That Contextualize Gamification Design
- Books by Yu-kai Chou