Irrational Labs

For cancer patients, regularly logging symptoms is critical to health outcomes—and even survival. So why is it so hard to get them to do it? 🔁 🚧 🔁 One common reason: prospective memory failure. This is when we intend to do something, but forget. It happens in everyday life, and also in patient symptom and treatment management—where logging symptoms can be critical to patient outcomes. Richard Mathera recently walked us through how his team leveraged behavioral insights to rethink and redesign a digital patient monitoring (DPM) platform for a major pharma partner. The goal? Motivate patients with cancer to regularly log their symptoms. In addition to the insights he presented, here are some of the burning audience questions that he answered: ❓How does novelty drive engagement? ❓How might we collect more data while avoiding cognitive overload? ❓What are the most common barriers to behavior change in healthcare? ❓How do you draw the line between behavioral science and user research? Check out the full video and case study linked in the comment section below. And if your team is facing a critical challenge, get in touch—we’d love to help: 📧 [email protected]

Does behavioral science belong at the ballot box? 🗳️ 💡 We think so. Because when it comes to voting, there’s often a gap between our intentions and actions. Most Americans (90%) say voting is important—but many don’t make it to the polls come election day. For example, even in 2020–when voter turnout smashed records—only 66.8% of eligible citizens showed up to vote.   So, here are a few research-backed behavioral strategies to improve future voter turnout. 💪 👉 Implementation Intentions Prompt people to plan ahead—and get granular. Guide them to think through how, where, and when they’ll vote—but also what they’ll be doing beforehand, how they’ll get to the polls that day, and whether they’ll need childcare. Research has shown this to be up to 2x more effective than just asking, ‘Are you planning to vote?’ 👉 Social Norms We’re social creatures—and social voters, too. Experiments have shown that more people go to the polls when told turnout will be high. The lesson? Never underestimate our motivation to follow the herd—and adjust voter messaging accordingly. 👉 Temptation Bundling Activities like working out become a lot more fun when you combine them with something enjoyable—like watching Love is Blind while you exercise. And there’s evidence that “temptation bundling” works with voting, too. Multiple studies have shown that making voting fun—with celebrations, BBQs, and “parties at the polls”—can improve turnout by an average of 2%. 🥳 👉 Decreasing Friction Hassles decrease our likelihood of doing anything—and voting is filled with them. Finding your polling spot, printing out papers, and waiting in line all feel like chores. 🙄 But we can reduce friction—and drive participation—with interventions like automatic voter registration & ballot mailing. ✉️ So as your heading towards the ballot box? Consider bringing these behavioral insights along—and enjoy the ride. 😊 Research referenced in first comment below. 👇

🚨 Applied research alert! 🚨 Irrational Labs was thrilled to partner with B3 and Tesouro Nacional (the National Treasury of Brazil) to help consumers build savings through better investments. We tackled a major behavioral challenge - getting people to reinvest after bonds expire - and drove 5x more scheduled reinvestments! In Brazil, treasury bonds offer the highest return consumers can get for a low-risk investment. They are a great option for savings, because investors can keep pace with inflation but quickly withdraw money whenever they need it. Bonds, however, have a wrinkle relative to other savings and investments. They expire! This means that people usually need to choose a new bond to keep earning. But many forget to act: only 20% of funds were getting reinvested after bond expiration. Enter behavioral science! We developed new emails for investors to bring their attention to expiring bonds and compel them to schedule a new bond investment. We tested three behaviorally informed frames: 1️⃣ Forced choice: frame the choice as invest or stop investing. We specifically called out the “stop investing” option to bring attention to this as the consequence of inaction 2️⃣ Active choice: frame the choice as which bond do you want next? This makes “keep investing” seem like the implied default 3️⃣ Attention only: no choice framing, but bring attention to the expiring bond 🥁 Drumroll for results… forced choice was the winner! It drove 5x more scheduled reinvestments relative to the control group. This message was more than twice as effective as the treatment that simply brought attention to the expiring bond. The takeaway: making choices seem simple but salient is key to getting people to act. 👀 See the full write up in the case study linked below for more findings. Since we ran this experiment, B3 and the Treasury have continued to build on these learnings, and have moved the final reinvestment rate from 20% to over 50%. Huge growth in a short period of time! Bravo to Mariana Wichinevsky, Christianne Bariquelli, and the full team across both organizations for this success. 👏

In Brazil, treasury bonds offer the best return consumers can get for a very low-risk investment — even safer than a savings account! However, around 80% of investors miss out on continued earnings by not reinvesting when their bonds reach maturity. ♻️💰 The challenge: How do you help users take action when they’re overwhelmed by too many choices? Irrational Labs partnered with the Tesouro Nacional and B3 Stock Exchange to tackle this “choice friction” and increase everyday Brazilians' financial health. The result? Scheduled reinvestments increased by 5x. We did this by testing behaviorally-informed messages to investors, focused on encouraging re-investment for bonds that were reaching maturity. Specifically, we designed: 📧 New emails reminding investors that their bonds would mature soon, focused on getting users to “pre-commit” to reinvesting. 📧 Two behaviorally informed messages aimed at resolving choice friction. Each one focused on a different key decision, with the goal of facilitating choice and driving action. Here are three overall lessons that emerged from our experiments: ✅ Make choices easy: Reduce the cognitive effort required to make a decision. The easier the choice, the more likely users are to act. ✅ Reduce decision fatigue: When people face tough choices, they may abandon the process. Providing decision aids and reducing choice can help. ✅ Stay on their radar: Regular, well-timed reminders are crucial. Keeping the opportunity in front of users with multiple touchpoints can help them follow through on their intentions. Read the full case study in the comment section below to learn how we drove 5x more reinvestment in Brazilian treasury bonds—and hit us up if you have a challenge you think we can help with: 📧 [email protected]

Product teams know how tough it is to motivate users to do the thing they’re designing for. In her recent talk, Lisa Zaval, PhD walked us through strategies for enhancing user motivation—and shared when (and how) to best use each one. Watch the video linked in the comment section below, where she: 🥕 Deconstructs some of the more traditional views on motivation and explores its complexities 🥕 Unpacks why monetary incentives may fall short or backfire 🥕 Introduces several key behavioral strategies designed to engage users  🥕 Zeroes in on how to motivate people to take action on a present behavior that has delayed benefits 🥕 Shares gamification strategies for optimizing engagement and sustaining interest Subscribe to our newsletter so that you don’t miss future events like this one. Link in the comment section below! 👇

Here are 3 key takeaways from our case study Q&A with Lyft's Kirsten M. last week on how we boosted new feature opt-ins by 2X: 🚗 Find innovative ways to attract attention. Testing multiple conditions is key to knowing what works best for your users. 🚗 Drive overall usage with concreteness. Use specificity to shape the mental model of your feature.  🚗 Reminders matter. Our cognitive capacity is limited. Users often miss the first notification (and the second... and the third...) so it’s essential to account for this limited attention. Watch the clip below for Kirsten’s take on why working with us was such a value-add. If you’re interested in bringing behavioral design into your company, reach out: [email protected]. Missed this event? Link to recording—and to our original case study with Lyft—in the comments! And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter to stay on top of upcoming events. ⚡️⚡️⚡️

The easiest thing to do…is nothing. That is the status quo. How do you change the status quo? The Brazilian Stock Market (B3) and Tesouro Nacional asked Irrational Labs for help with this question. Our team designed an experiment that drove a 5x increase on bond reinvestment. Bonds mature at a certain date. If you do nothing (which most people do) you just get your money back. But are people getting their money back because they want to…or because it’s the easiest thing to do? We tested this. We tested behaviorally informed emails that present investors with a choice about what to do at the point of reinvestment. Yes, you could still do nothing, but now it’s a decision to do nothing: 1️⃣ Forced choice 📧: We made it simple—reinvest and keep earning or stop and lose potential gains. This email framed the decision in a way that emphasized loss aversion. Result? Scheduled reinvestments increased 5x! 2️⃣ Active choice 📧: We reduced the overwhelm by suggesting just three bonds, similar to what investors held before, and highlighted the most popular choice. Active choice boosted reinvestments by 4.3x compared to control. We also tested an "Attention Only" message as a baseline—a neutral reminder that a bond was expiring soon. While helpful, it only led to about half as many reinvestments as the forced choice message. By simplifying the decision to reinvest and guiding investors to make a choice, we made it easier for everyday Brazilians to grow their savings. Curious to see all the results and get lessons for your own product’s email design? Check out the full case study (link in comments). 🔗 Want to work with Irrational Labs? Hit me up. [email protected]

💡 How do you get users to take action when they’re faced with too many choices and an overwhelming decision? That was the challenge Tesouro Nacional and B3 Stock Exchange was facing when they partnered with Irrational Labs earlier this year. 🇧🇷 Despite treasury bonds being one of the safest and most profitable savings options in Brazil, most investors weren’t reinvesting their money once their bonds matured—missing out on continued growth. The reason? Choice friction. When bonds matured, investors faced two key hurdles: first, remembering to reinvest before their money was returned to their account. Second, they had to choose from over 30 new bond options, which overwhelmed many people and led them to punt the decision to later (aka do nothing). To solve this, we tested two behaviorally-informed emails designed to encourage reinvestment: 1️⃣ Forced choice: This made the decision stark—either reinvest and keep earning, or do nothing and stop earning. It emphasized the consequences of inaction to motivate people to act. 2️⃣ Active choice: Here, we focused on making the bond selection easier. Instead of overwhelming users with all the available options, we suggested three bonds similar to their previous investment, and highlighted the most popular choice to guide them. We also included an "attention only" condition to understand the impact of these designs relative to a baseline notification: “Heads up: your bond is expiring!”: This email simply reminded investors that their bond was about to mature, without prompting any specific action. So, what worked? The “forced choice” email drove 5x more scheduled reinvestments than no email at all and more than doubled the “attention only” condition. The “active choice” email helped guide investors through the decision-making process, and ultimately reduced drop-off rates more than the “forced choice” email once they clicked through to reinvest their bond. By simplifying both the decision to reinvest and the bond selection, we made it easier for everyday Brazilians to keep their savings growing. 🤑 Special thanks to Paulo Moreira Marques of the National Treasury of Brazil and Felipe Paiva, Christianne Bariquelli, and the whole team at B3 for their partnership on this project and steadfast dedication to growing the savings of Brazilians! 💪🤓 Want to see how small changes in design can drive meaningful behavior shifts? The full case study is in the comments—check it out for a real-world example of how simplifying choices boosts engagement and retention.👇 And if your team is working on something that you think Irrational Labs could help with, shoot me an email: @[email protected] 📧 We love solving tough problems using behavioral science. 😉 #BehavioralEconomics #FinancialInclusion #investing #Brazil

The easiest thing to do…is nothing. That is the status quo. How do you change the status quo? The Brazilian Stock Market (B3) and Tesouro Nacional asked Irrational Labs for help with this question. Our team designed an experiment that drove a 5x increase on bond reinvestment. Bonds mature at a certain date. If you do nothing (which most people do) you just get your money back. But are people getting their money back because they want to…or because it’s the easiest thing to do? We tested this. We tested behaviorally informed emails that present investors with a choice about what to do at the point of reinvestment. Yes, you could still do nothing, but now it’s a decision to do nothing: 1️⃣ Forced choice 📧: We made it simple—reinvest and keep earning or stop and lose potential gains. This email framed the decision in a way that emphasized loss aversion. Result? Scheduled reinvestments increased 5x! 2️⃣ Active choice 📧: We reduced the overwhelm by suggesting just three bonds, similar to what investors held before, and highlighted the most popular choice. Active choice boosted reinvestments by 4.3x compared to control. We also tested an "Attention Only" message as a baseline—a neutral reminder that a bond was expiring soon. While helpful, it only led to about half as many reinvestments as the forced choice message. By simplifying the decision to reinvest and guiding investors to make a choice, we made it easier for everyday Brazilians to grow their savings. Curious to see all the results and get lessons for your own product’s email design? Check out the full case study (link in comments). 🔗 Want to work with Irrational Labs? Hit me up. [email protected]

Everyone is trying to figure out how to build digital product experiences that feel tailor-made for each individual user. Personalization is king. When it works, it’s amazing. But too often, the effort doesn’t achieve the intended result. What’s missing? 🤔 This article will teach you ways to avoid common pitfalls and deliver personalization that actually resonates with your users and drives engagement. As a sneak peak, here are the three mistakes that you will gain a deeper understanding of, including what you can do about them and how to do it: 😔 Your product doesn’t make users feel seen 😔 You are not involving your users in the process 😔 Your users can’t tell that the experience is personalized Personalization is about connection, not just tech. Check out the article linked in the comment below to learn how you can take your product’s personalization to the next level. ⚡