Anuradha Sridharan

The way we interact with the physical world and the digital world has a lot of similarities. Let me explain. Last weekend, I had been to a book store, which had a wide collection across various categories. How did I navigate this place? First, I went to the categories that I'm mostly interested in - psychology, business, marketing, spirituality. As I was walking through the different aisles, I picked up books to browse - those I have either heard of OR added to my Amazon wish list. Except for a few random books with an interesting title, I mostly stuck to books that I was familiar with. I wanted to take a look at this book "Behave" by Robert Sapolsky but couldn't find it under psychology. I asked an associate working there and he brought the book from the "Science" section. I also enquired about a few other books and also wanted to check if they are available in the used books collection. The associate answered all my questions patiently. I ended up buying t...

  I came across this insightful article  this morning  - How to know what you really want . It talks about  how our desires get formed. I could resonate with it so much. And at multiple points, I paused and reflected upon why a certain point makes so much sense. This post is just a collation of those reflections with examples. "Desire (as opposed to need) is an intellectual appetite for things that you  perceive  to be good, but that you have no physical, instinctual basis for wanting" Such an interesting take on connecting our desires to  Intellectual Appetite ! Someone desiring a high-end smartphone *intellectually* perceives that a superior configuration is better. "Desire is a social process - it is mimetic. Mimetic desires are the desires that we mimic from the people and culture around us. If I perceive some career or lifestyle or vacation as good, it’s because someone else has modeled it in such a way that it appears good to me." This is such a ...

  This book has been on my wishlist for quite some time. I finally got hold of a copy thanks to a nice Kindle deal (currently it is even better - Rs.149. Grab it before it goes away). What a fascinating read it was! The author has broken down in detail the habit formation process with so many interesting case studies. He defines a habit as " a routine or behavior that is performed regularly—and, in many cases, automatically. " In the first chapter, he sets the context on the importance and role of daily habits in our life. The quality of our lives often depends on the quality of our habits. Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations. The section on why one should focus on systems/processes (that translate to habits) rather than end-goals was thought-provoking. Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.  Goals are good for setting a direc...

A couple of days back, I was at a supermarket, shopping for groceries, when a new promotional coffee stand inside the premises caught my attention. There were 2 guys standing, along with few coffee packs lined up in front of them. Curiosity caught the better of me and I asked them what it is. The tallest among the two (Let’s call him A) quickly responded, “Ma'am, this is Nescafe Latte. You can quickly prepare coffee when you come back from work or when you have guests. Please taste it”. Being a coffee lover, I thought why not and said, “Just a sample”. A instructed the other person(Let’s call him B) to make one for me. B promptly emptied a sachet of coffee mix and added hot water till it reached half a cup. When I said “enough”, he stopped but A instructed him in a low voice that the coffee will taste sweet and that he needs to add more hot water for one sachet. B followed the instruction and he handed me a full cup of hot coffee. Meanwhile, my little girl who accompanied me start...

 Before I elaborate on the “discovery”, let me first state that I’m okay if my child watches TV or computer. I don’t think we can keep them out of it completely as the deprivation would lead to more anxiety and interest towards digital devices. But what matters most is the “time spent” in front of these devices. When my daughter was around 2 years old, we decided to disconnect from DTH services. I didn’t want her to watch any of the kids' channels that play the luring TV commercials of packaged junk food targeted towards children all day long. Instead, we started buying her the Infobells DVDs - which are age-appropriate, educational and most importantly, without any commercials. When we gave her the TV time, she would be watching one of these DVDs. As months passed, she got so addicted to these DVDs. On top of it, due to her pestering, we ended up buying more new DVDs whenever we step into a toy store. Her collection of CDs were neatly arranged in CD pouches. Sometime, last year...

Image source: http://www.artofmanliness.com/2012/01/08/willpower-part-ii/  Willpower is a powerful tool in each of our hands that can help us achieve our goals. I've always been intrigued by how willpower works and have been reading up on a few behavioral psychology books/articles/blogs. Willpower is a limited resource and it gets depleted with each decision we take. Psychologists refer to this concept as ego depletion . Wikipedia  defines it as follows: Ego depletion  refers to the idea that  self-control  or  willpower  draw upon a limited pool of mental resources that can be used up.  When the energy for mental activity is low, self-control is typically impaired, which would be considered a state of ego depletion. I visualize it this way. Imagine a "pot" of willpower that gets refilled every morning, as you wake up. With every decision that requires you to either inculcate a new good habit or stop an existing bad...

Last night, I had prepared white rice for my 4 year old and broken wheat for myself for dinner. The accompaniments were rasam and carrot curry. D had little rice and was curious to know what's inside the pressure cooker. She has a fascination of pressure cookers just like me :-) I said "that's broken wheat for amma". She said she wanted to taste it and so I offered her a spoonful of it. She loved it and then finished almost the entire cup with rasam and curd. After finishing her dinner, she said, "mumma, this is yummy. Tomorrow, I want buckwheat". Don't be surprised yet. During the weekend, I had prepared ragi idlis and regular rice idlis for breakfast. While I was feeding her ragi idlis, she asked "mumma, are these kambu idlis?". (Kambu means pearl millet / bajra) This is the effect of our reading ritual. Every night before going to bed, we go through pictures in the book " aaraam thinai " and that's how she knows the names of o...

I'm sure every product startup founder must have asked themselves and their teams these 3 important questions - How to get my product in front of my users/customers? => Acquisition How to get them to try it out? => Activation How to ensure they come back to it repeatedly? => Retention For the last few months, I have been investing time in understanding the second question pertaining to " Activation ". Activation corresponds to different goals for different types of markets and products. For social products like Facebook or Twitter, it could mean adding X number of friends or followers. For SaaS products focused on certain business needs, it could mean completing a certain workflow. For e-commerce products, it could mean making the first purchase. The key insight from all these goals is that the intended person understands the " value " your product brings in and the " perceived benefit " he can get as a result of using your product. Demonstrat...

I admit it, I consume a lot of content - books, e-books, blogs, links from twitter feed etc. Most of the content is not really assimilated. I don't often sit back and think through what I read and reflect on the relevant take-aways and how I can apply/expand/refute/customize further. On one of the routine content consumption days, I stumbled upon this wonderful piece - "Don't die of consumption, Learn by writing" . I have read this article thrice so far and I intend to read it atleast once a week. Not to say, my consumption has reduced but I have started to consciously introspect, analyze and write down my thoughts around content that resonated with me. The below article is one such reflection. I was listening to the first lecture in "How to start a startup" series, initiated by the folks at YCombinator. It was a valuable lecture with many useful insights. Although I would have loved it even more if Sam Altman had shared the awesome material in a more prese...

While reading Chapter 3 of the book " Thinking fast and slow " by Daniel Kahneman, there were multiple "aha" moments for me, when the author talks about how self-control is a tiring task for humans. Below are some of the key take-aways for me from this chapter (quoted directly from the book): "People who are simultaneously challenged by a demanding cognitive task and by a temptation are more likely to yield to the temptation" "Cognitive load is one of the causes of weakened self-control" "Self control requires attention and effort" "All variants of voluntary effort - cognitive, emotional or physical - draw atleast partly on a shared pool of mental energy. This phenomenon is called ego depletion" "An effort of will or self-control is tiring. Exertion of self-control is depleting and unpleasant" "Effects of ego depletion could be undone by ingesting glucose" These points give us some clarity on many areas of ...

Couple of weeks back, I participated in a Product Camp event in Ebay-PayPal office premises in Bangalore. It was one of the well-planned and executed events. Product Camp is an unconference where the interested speakers volunteer for a topic they want to speak about and participants vote on such topics before the event. The schedule of the event is decided just before it starts, based on popular topics and speaker availability. The event kicked off with two inspiring keynote speeches. Piyush Shah, VP of Products at InMobi talked about how the playing ground for mobile startups is the same irrespective of geography. Couple of interesting points he shared: "You can build and launch an app in 100+ countries on the same day" "Fast iterations, pilots and making mistakes crucial to learn in fast paced markets like mobile" "Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details" The second keynote was by Ravi Gururaj, Serial Entrepreneur and Chair - Product C...

When I was working on a product that expects a behavior change from its users, I started digging into research work that has happened in this field. That's when I came across this new term named " captology " and related work happening in Stanford's persuasive technology lab. Captology is the study of computers as persuasive technologies. This includes the design, research, and analysis of interactive computing products created for the purpose of changing people’s attitudes or behaviors. Dr.BJ Fogg directs this lab and his model on behavior change is extremely useful to understand the elements required for a behavior to occur. The three elements that need to converge at the same time for behavior (B) change to happen are - Motivation (M) - Perceived Ability (A) - Appropriate trigger (T) The equation of this model => B = MAT When the motivation is sufficient and the user has the ability to perform the desired task, that specific moment is called the " acti...

It all started with diving deep into the phenomenon (yes, it is!) of user retention. What makes a user come back to a product/service? Books, blogs, articles, research papers - my search continues and takes me to interesting directions. I haven't reached a conclusion yet but all roads seem to be leading to the basic premise that a user takes the help of a product/service to achieve his/her goal. After the first use, if he "believes" that the product will help him reach his goal, he is sure to come back. This belief has to be reinforced with each visit, until the user accepts the product as his support / companion that helps him accomplish his goal. For product creators, the key challenge is not just ensuring that user * gets * this connection (user's goal <=> my product) but also to understand what these goals are in the first place. Talk to any product manager about his job profile and the first thing he would say is that I need to " understand my customer...

Marty Cagan in his book " Inspired: How to create products Customers love " talks about the characteristics of inspiring and successful products. Apart from the popular ones such as usability and visual appeal, one specific characteristic that struck me is the importance he has given towards human emotions and the role they play in creating a winning product. Being a key enthusiast of marketing strategies driven based on consumer behavioral aspects, it felt like a "aha!" moment while I was reading the chapters on the role of emotion in products. Marty says, "People buy and use products largely for emotional reasons". It could be a positive emotion that is triggered by the product or a negative emotion that has been wiped off by the product. For example, Facebook users might feel friendship, love and pride by being part of their social community and being in touch with their friends Anyone who had to make an urgent phone call might have felt irritated...

An article I had written on "Product trials": Peter Drucker in his book "The Practice of Management" says "There is only one valid definition of a business purpose - to create a customer". In this era of globalization, many different brands are eying for consumer's attention at the same time. So it becomes essential for the brand to try different strategies for building awareness about its offerings, thereby creating a presence in the mind of the consumer. One such strategy that has been in existence for a while is to give consumers a chance to try out the product.  The “trial” strategy gives consumers a first-hand experience of the product, which helps the brand to develop certain associations in the minds of the consumers. The recent Nescafe ad starring Vir Das illustrates this aspect where the primary focus is on getting new consumers to try out their “first cup of coffee”. This ad appeals to the target segment – the current youth generation. ...

I use a Yahoo! mail account for my personal emails and I have subscriptions to many group emails. Over the past few months, my mailbox has been overflowing with many unread emails as I tend to scroll through the list and read only the most important ones at the beginning of my day. I have unsubscribed from many group lists to keep the incoming information under control. However there are some groups in which I might get a few important messages occasionally which I do not want to miss out. So I decided to create a few filters and organize my inbox. This is exactly THE time in the lifecycle of product-user interaction when one starts to think about filters in a mail product - when there is a bunch of unread mails and the user feels that it is getting unmanageable and wants to get organized; not when the time he/she creates a new mail account and immediately starts to create filters. Coming back to my problem, I located the "Filter emails like this" and created a filter. S...

It's interesting to analyze the low penetration of e-commerce in India from a consumer behavior perspective. Why are Indian consumers not really buying this idea of e-commerce? What are the critical factors that prevent them from becoming an actively engaged buyer in the Internet marketplace? Although the factors could be many, I would like to look at it more from a risk perspective. Pick up any text on consumer behavior and you will come across this relevant concept called "perceived risk". Schiffman and Kanuk in their book on consumer behavior define perceived risk as "the uncertainty that consumers face when they cannot foresee the consequences of their purchase decisions". Although Internet has become a powerful tool in enabling information search and content aggregation, many consumers still prefer to make the final transaction by visiting a store. There are certain uncertainties in the minds of consumer that need to be addressed. Consumers think about the ...