Discover the Insights Hidden Within Yourself

Hero Academy is one of my all-time favorite mobile games. The game, for those unfamiliar (and if you are, go download it. Right now. I’ll wait.) uses an asynchronous mechanic similar to Draw Something or Words With Friends, where players exchange turns. Once your opponent has made their move, a push notification is sent to notify the other player that it’s their turn.

When I first discovered Hero Academy, I was hooked and immediately invited several of my friends and coworkers to battle. For the first month, I played religiously, sometimes to the detriment of my productivity, immediately responding to every push notifications to take my turn. But eventually my enthusiasm faded. I stopped challenging my friends, I was slower to take my turn, and my daily usage progressively declined from 20+ daily sessions to one at best. I was…

…wait for it…

CHURNING! (and all the game developers gasped)

So why am I telling you this story? What can we learn from these observations?

As product designers, we’re often focused on other people’s behavior, conducting user interviews, running usability studies, analyzing metrics, and other external information sources but we fail to deeply observe ourselves. While the former is incredibly important, studying ones own behaviors can lead to remarkable discoveries and new ideas. Additionally, we have access to our own thoughts as opposed to “getting inside of the user’s head”, formulating hypotheses on how others think.

After reflecting on my Hero Academy experience, the leading indicators of my churn are clear. And through these observations I can learn and hypothesize how one might build a churn-predictor[1] or other product features to counter this behavior[2].

Observe your everyday behaviors to uncover hidden insights and ask yourself questions like:

• What led me to grab my phone out of my pocket at that moment?
• Why did I just share that picture on Instagram?
• Why did I spend $100 on a round of jager bombs last night?

Observing what you don’t do is just as telling as what you do do.

• Why didn’t I go to the gym today?
• What influenced me to choose Philz Coffee over Starbucks?
• Why didn’t I purchase that book recommended by my good friend?

Observation of oneself can lead to previously unseen opportunities.

I’m sure I’ll discover several more hidden insights within my Hero Academy experience if I just take the time to observe myself.

——

[1] Gamasutra has an excellent article on Predicting Churn: Data-Mining Your Game by Dmitry Nozhnin.

[2] If you’re a game developer, I’d love to talk to you. We’re building some badass stuff at PlayHaven.