How Do You Spot a Winning Company Before Wall Street Does?
Before Zoom exploded, its product leaked a signal. Yu-kai Chou's Product Superiority Test: the tiny-detail check for picking…
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The Blog
Ideas on motivation, behavior & design.
Deep dives on the psychology behind why people do what they do — from Yu-kai Chou, creator of the Octalysis Framework. Pick the topic that matters to you.
The Onboarding Mistake That Kills Innovative Products
I watched an innovative product’s onboarding fail in real time last year. The app looked like a small…
Why Did a Missing Horse Skin Make Me Actually Sad? A Live Octalysis Autopsy of Heroes of the Storm
A live Octalysis autopsy of Heroes of the Storm: why a missing horse skin made me sad, why…
The Harmless Dragon: Why You Can’t Actually Lose by Reaching Out
There is a terrifying, fire-breathing dragon that lives just outside the edge of your comfort zone. You’ve never…
How to Gamify Strategy Sessions Without Killing Buy-In
Adding game mechanics to strategy sessions usually backfires. The losing team quietly sabotages execution. Here's the white hat…
Why Do User Surveys Lie? The Four Layers of Desire
Ask ten people in 2009 whether they’d spend three hours a day clicking on virtual cows, and ten…
Is Your Gamification Worth the Friction It Adds?
Every gamification layer you add costs your users something nobody measures. We call it efficiency loss: the friction…