Is Your MVP a Hypothesis Test or a Crappy Product?
Most founders confuse "minimum viable" with "minimum effort." A real MVP is the simplest possible experiment that proves…
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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.
Why Do Duplicate Drops Feel Like a Bug? The Merging Loop Fix
The first time I pulled a five-star duplicate in a gacha game I cared about, I felt the…
Why Do Beautiful Slides Sabotage Your Best Ideas?
Beautiful slides routinely undermine their own message. The Main Character Principle exposes 5 slide failure patterns and the…
Should You Stop Doing to Learn? Learning Quests vs. Doing Quests
Should you stop and learn that skill, or just start doing? Yu-kai Chou's three-condition framework for choosing a…
Should You Stop Studying and Just Start? (Two-Quest Rule)
Most ambitious people are not under-learning. They are over-learning, and using studying as a hiding place. The fifth…
Realistic Conflict Theory: An S-Tier Behavioral Designer’s Guide
Short answer: Realistic Conflict Theory says hostility between groups comes from competition over scarce resources, not from personality…
The Chameleon Effect: An S-Tier Behavioral Designer’s Guide
Short answer: The Chameleon Effect is the unconscious mimicry of another person’s postures, mannerisms, and facial expressions during…
Just-World Hypothesis: An S-Tier Behavioral Designer’s Guide
Lerner's just-world hypothesis in plain English: the defensive cascade, the BJW-self vs BJW-others split, moderator-dependent victim derogation, and…
Social Comparison Theory: An S-Tier Behavioral Designer’s Guide
Show me a leaderboard and I will show you Leon Festinger’s 1954 paper grafted onto a database table.…