Badass: Making Users Awesome by K. Sierra - Book Summary

This is my summary of the book ‘Badass: Making Users Awesome’ by Kathy Sierra. My notes are informal and tailored to my own interests at the time of reading. They mostly contain quotes from the book as well as some of my own thoughts. I enjoyed this book and would recommend you read it yourself (check it out on Amazon).

Make your users badass

Word of mouth virality of your product is your end goal as a PM.
- Products that are sustained bestsellers are recommended. We want people to say, “You must get this!”
- When we say WOM, think only of honest, non-incentivized comments about either the product or the results the user got with it.
- We want to build products, service, and support in ways that inspire users to talk about themselves.
  - An ‘okay’ Amazon review: “Wonderful product! I love it!” - “This is an excellent product! Easy to use, yet powerful. Looks like it will last forever. You won’t regret this purchase!”
  - An awesome Amazon review: “Amazing! Works perfectly!” - “The instructions were a little weak, but I was able to set it up myself in less than 5 minutes. I’ve already made amazing progress with it in three weeks. You won’t regret this purchase!”
  - More examples of good WOM:
    - “Colors on my latest video came out perfect.”
    - “I built this in less than two hours.”
    - “They said I got the deal because of those charts in my spreadsheet.”
- Nielsen’s global trust in advertising report (2012):
  - 92% say they trust recommendations from friends and family above all other forms of advertising
  - 70% say they trust online consumer reviews, the second most trusted recommendation above all other forms of advertising
Indicators that your users are getting value from your product:
- They tolerate problems
- They remain loyal
- They evangelize (telling/convincing others)
- They show off their results
- The appreciate the value/need for advanced versions
- They get accessories, add-ons, T-shirts, pride items
- They seek out/form communities of other users
- They resist the competition
It’s not about your product, company, or brand. It’s about the user himself.
- It’s not about how the user feels about us. It’s about how the user feels about himself, in the context of whatever it is our product, service, cause helps him do and be.
- They don’t say they like the product because they like the product. They say they like the product because they like themselves.
- It’s not so much what our user thinks of us but what our user’s friends, family, peers think of our user.
- But people don’t actually talk like that. Nobody says, “I’m awesome” because of a product. They say, “I love this” or “This app is amazing”. It’s not about the actual words, it’s about the feelings that inspired them to say it:
  - What they say: “This product is amazing. You should see what it does…”
  - What they mean: “I am amazing. You should see what I can do with it…”
Most products and services support a bigger, compelling, motivating context.
- Tools matter. But being a master of the tool is rarely our user’s ultimate goal. Most tools (products, services) enable and support the user’s true - and more motivating - goal.
- People don’t want to be badass at using your tool. They want to be badass at what your tools helps them do.
- More examples:
  - Example:
    - Context: Hosting world-class dinner parties
    - Tools: online recipe site, party games, cooking appliance, cocktails & mixology app
  - Example:
    - Context: Making great presentations
    - Tools: Book on public speaking, data-visualization software, spreadsheet app, stock photo site
Don’t make a better [X], make a better user of [X].
- Don’t make a better [camera], make a better [photographer].
- Don’t make a better [power drill], make a better [DIY home builder].
It’s the context - not the tool - that builds desirability for more/better tools.
- The better you get at [x], the more distinctions you perceive [x]. Enhanced perception means the ability to appreciate the value of higher-end and/or more advanced versions of products.
- When you’re more skilled at something, it’s as though a part of your world just got an upgrade. It’s as though pre-badass you had been experiencing the world in Standard and now a part of the world has become High Resolution.
- As the user knowledge and skills (for the bigger context) grow, they go from:
  - “Why would I ever need more?” to
  - “Maybe I could do cool things if I upgraded”
  - “I NEED the PRO version”
  - “I will find the money. This is so much more powerful.”
  - “I’m helping design & test their advanced plug-ins.”
- Examples:
  - Some people have a passion for cameras, but most of us don’t buy a camera to get a camera. We buy it to take photos. And the deeper we get into photography, the more likely we are to recognize and appreciate the benefits of higher-end cameras.
  - An audiophile might perceive a substantial difference between two speaker systems, while a non-audiophile swears the speakers are identical.
Design for the post-UX UX.
- UX means the user experience while using the tool. “I can switch between shooting stills and video with just one button.”
- Post-UX UX means the user experience after using the tool. The UX of results. “Wow. The comments on my video are inspiring.”
- Think about:
  - What did that experience enable?
  - What can they do now?
  - What can they now show others?
  - What will they say to others?
  - How are they now more powerful?
- Thought experiment: Post-UX documentary:
  - Imagine one of your users gave a documentary camera crew full access to track them after they use your product or service.
  - What do they do in the next minutes, hours, days, weeks? Who do they talk to? What do they say?
- Thought experiment: User at a dinner party:
  - Imagine One of your users at a dinner party, and describe what you do (or could do) to help him be more interesting at that party. What have you given him to talk about (that isn’t about you). What have you given him to show?
- Thought experiment: Your users competing against their users
  - “Our users are better at this than their users.”
  - Your competitive advantage is not how you compare to the competition but how your users compare to the competition’s users.
  - Instead of marketing based on your benchmarks, show you users’ benchmarks.
Customer service matters as well.
- The role of customer service is to support and enable users to not just feel better, but to be better.
- Competing on out-caring the competition is fragile unless “caring” means “caring about user results.”

—

How to achieve mastery in anything

Definition of an expert:
- Given a representative task in the domain, a badass performs in a superior way, more reliably.
- It’s not just what they know. It’s what they do with what they know. And it’s their ability to do it again and again and again.
- Example: Given a valid position on the board, a chess grandmaster selects a superior move, more reliably, than chess players of a lower rating.
How to become an expert #1: deliberate practice:
- Get to 95% reliability for a specific task in 1-3 practice sessions of 45-90 mins:
  - Pick a small sub-skill/task that you can’t do reliably (or at all), and get it to 95% reliability within three sessions. Getting to 95% in a single session is often better. Examples:
    - Play this section at half speed, without errors.
    - Create four test blog posts using the starter template, with photos inserted at the top and middle of the post.
    - Analyze the six cockpit instruments and determine the plane’s altitude, within five seconds.
  - If you can’t get get 95% reliability in one to three practice sessions, change the exercise. Either split the task into a smaller sub-task, or reduce the performance criteria.
  - Don’t take too much time between the sessions. This means that each subsequent session is virtually a repeat of the first section.
- Practice doesn’t guarantee better performance. Practice makes permanent, not automatically better.
  - The wrong way to practice feels right. Most people focus on things they can already do, or things that they absolutely cannot do.
  - The more we practice being mediocre, the more we reinforce mediocre skills.
- Common practice-related activities that don’t qualify as deliberate practice:
  - Work on a project. For example, create a small game in a new programming language.
  - Work through a step-by-step tutorial.
  - Listen to a lecture or presentation.
  - Play a complete piece of music, at a speed that you already perform reliably.
  - Play a complete piece of music, at a speed you won’t be able to perform reliably within three practice sessions.
How to become an expert #2: perceptual exposure:
- Those who became experts were exposed to high quantity, high quality examples of expertise.
- Where you find deep expertise, you find a person who was surrounded by expertise. The more you watch (or listen) to expert examples, the better you can become. The less exposure you have to experts or results of expert work, the less likely you are to develop those skills.
- Simply being exposed to examples of expertise doesn’t necessarily build perceptual knowledge unless the exposure meets specific criteria.
- How to design effective perceptual exposure activities:
  - Use a high quantity of high quality examples that seem different on the surface, but actually aren’t.
  - Make bad examples feel bad, and good examples feel good. If it’s a photo or video, apply a harsh ugly filter or graphic overlay. If it’s text, put it over a universal NO sign or a skull and crossbones. Make it appealing for the emotional/subconscious brain.

—

Derailer gaps in product design

The gap of suck:
- The large, painful gap between the motivating goal and their early experiences in the suck zone (as beginners).
- For anything worth becoming badass at, there will be pain. Whether it’s the first day of snowboarding, or the first week of programming, our users will struggle. Some things are just hard.
- The main reason people stop when they’re struggling is not because they’re struggling. It’s because they don’t know that struggling is appropriate. It’s because they don’t know that they’re exactly where they should be. It’s because they don’t know that everybody struggles at this point. Struggle is typical and temporary.
- When something is hard, don’t hide or deny it. You can either:
  - Fix something that makes the problem go away completely (e.g. make your product easier to use).
  - Just tell them. Acknowledge it. They don’t need you to be perfect. They need you to be honest. Tell them in as many ways and places as you can:
    - User manual
    - Marketing
    - Support website
    - Community / user groups
    - Product/context blogs
    - YouTube videos
    - Product user interface
    - Testimonials (most testimonials are the opposite of what users need to hear)
    - Case studies and examples with lessons learned
    - New user training, seminars, etc.
- Example:
  - If you make snowboards, everything associated with your beginner gear should be infused with the First Day Sucks, Second Day Gets Better message. Everything. User manual, follow-up email, in-store posters, Facebook posts, initial marketing brochure. Everything the new snowboarder sees should emphasize: “Your first day will be frustrating and painful. But here’s what’s gonna happen…”
The gap of disconnect:
- When users lose their motivation, they don’t lose motivation for the context.
  - They lost the connection between the compelling context and the tool. And they no longer trust that we’ll help them with anything but the tool.
  - Before they buy/join we’re all about the context. This is where motivation lives.
  - After they buy/join we’re all about the tool. This is where motivation dies.

—

Willpower

Willpower and cognitive processing draw from the same pool of resources.
- Think of cognitive resources as a single bank account, and every cognitive task or use of willpower as a withdrawal from that account.
- If you spend the morning using up willpower (e.g. in meetings being polite to people who annoy you), you will have less cognitive power to draw from in the afternoon (e.g. you will struggle to play chess).
- If you spend the day using your cognitive resources (e.g. solving tricky technical problems), you have less willpower in the evening (e.g. you’re more likely to hit the fast food drive-through on the way home).
There are things you can do to replenish cognitive resources, but the big two are a good night’s sleep and good nutrition.

—

The goal of onboarding

The goal of onboarding is to lower the initial threshold for user-does-something-meaningful.
After the first 30 mins of using your product they should think, “I rule”. They should be surprised/delighted/impressed by what they see.

Click here to browse more book summaries.