Getting people to change

The fellows at ParticleTree have posted another fine summary, this time on the challenges of getting people to use the software you’ve created. It’ll make you feel like you’re back in Economics 201, trying to understand how economists can complicate and twist something so obvious into an idea you have to study to understand. The basic premise of the post: it’s hard to get people to change what they’re used to doing. You have to provide a lot of value over your competitors to get people to switch, or you have to offer something that can’t be gotten anywhere else.

If you consider yourself an average individual (and you most likely are in the second and third quartiles of pretty much everything, statistically speaking) , and you reflect on your habits, I’d wager that you aren’t going to change a behavior until there’s an incentive. In fact, even if there is an incentive (like losing weight if you stop eating cookies), it has to REALLY appeal to you. The incentive has to outweigh the cost of changing (I like cookies!). That’s just human nature: why fix what ain’t broke?

Ultimately, there’s always value to be had in evolutionary improvements, but developers won’t be raking in cash the way we feverishly dream of; rather we’ll be building a business. The pipe dream, Bubble 2.0, cash-out-for-a-Ferrari insanity comes from developing something that meets a want that people didn’t even know they had (generally speaking, of course).