First Major Win State: Onboarding’s Key Metric
I spent the last decade watching good products with smart teams fail for the same reason: they were…
Work with Yu-kai
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.
Life as RPG: How to Convert Your Life Into a Game
In 2002, I quit Diablo II and watched my character vanish. Three months of inactivity, and thousands of…
Designing for Different Audiences Through Octalysis
Every product designer faces the same question: “Who am I actually building for?” Most people answer with demographics.…
The Complexity Threshold: Can Your Users Handle It?
The question I hear most often is, “Won’t this be too complicated?” Designers ask it. Stakeholders demand it.…
The CD7 × CD8 Gambling Spiral: How Casinos Exploit Human Motivation
I want you to picture something. You’re standing in front of two buttons. Press the first button, and…
The Booster Design System: How to Create Power-Ups That Actually Retain Users
I’ve spent the last two decades watching gamification implementations come and go. Most follow the same tired formula:…
Why Most Behavioral Frameworks Fail: Actions vs. Motivations
Every behavioral framework conflates actions with motivations. This is why a restaurant designer who understands Core Drives builds…
Flow Theory: Csikszentmihalyi’s 9 Components of the Zone
Flow Theory is a psychological framework developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi proposing that people reach their highest levels of…
Gene Resilience: Why Your Ethnicity Changes the Health Rulebook
This is Part 2 of a data analysis covering 159 countries and 7,853 individual Americans. Part 1 showed…