733 new employees of a health company used a single opt-in process to subscribe to a retirement plan. Results were compared to a multi-step phone process used with 455 and 407  employees from the two previous years.

Participation rates were 5% after one month and 8% after three months. With the new process, they rose to 19% and 35% respectively.

Perform a friction audit.

Identify all the hurdles and delays your user may feel while using your product and attempt to minimise them. How many barriers to a near-effortless user experience can you find?

Adding friction can help people from making mistakes.

Add barriers to counter System 1 mode, prompting users for conscious reflection to validate important information (e.g. monetary transactions). What strategic friction can you create?

Add friction to make waiting times feel shorter.

Houston airport reduced the number of luggage waiting times complaints by moving the luggage area further away so that passengers spent more time walking and less time waiting.

Remove friction but highlight effort.

Our willingness to pay for something increases by knowing how much work is done for us. We pay more for a cup of coffee if we see the barista working on it for several minutes.

22 students were shown a range of graduate yearbook photographs a varying number of times for 2 seconds each. They were then asked how much out of 7 they liked each person.

Results showed that the more times they’d seen a given graduate photo, the more they liked them.

Expose the unknown within the known.

Create trust for new, unfamiliar products by sample-bundling with existing products. UK supermarket, Waitrose did this expertly when it first introduced kiwi berries, managing consumer unfamiliarity by bundling a small free sample with large packs of trusted blueberries.

This approach is known as a Foot In The Door.

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Exposure first. Behavior change second.

Reduce people’s Risk Aversion by taking a staged approach to rolling out new ideas or policies.

Instead of starting by looking to change behavior, just expose people to some introductory aspect of it, using the Spacing Effect to spread experiences out across time and environment.

Let the new become the familiar for a while before making more advanced requests of people.

Overcome your own Confirmation Bias...

...by exposing yourself to new viewpoints. Though you may not agree with all you hear, you'll develop a skill to see common ground in an increasingly-polarized world.

The persuasiveness of your opinions with others with whom you disagree will  be strengthened by empathically considering their views alongside your own.