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[josnashak69]

Then it is not a bad idea to adopt this approach when designing related products.

Of course, for projects with long experience times, large content, and complex processes, appropriately adding a summary link of the previous content is also a process in which the knowledge system is HE Tuber gradually formed. It's just appropriate, not too much. Maybe you have a better way of handling it.

In addition, repeated experience can deepen memory. This has to mention functional and process issues, so that each link can be carried out independently as much as possible. For example, during informal assessment, the experimental process does not need to be started from scratch every time. The user may only need to re-understand or operate a certain link in the middle.

Thinking and imagination. Without expansion of thinking, it is difficult to concretely translate it into product experience. Any content and experience can trigger thinking and imaginative activities in the user's brain.

To simply understand, all information provided to players (users) can stimulate their brains, induce thinking activities, and have a psychological impact.

Paying attention to all the content you give (environment, objects, information, effects, atmosphere, etc.) may make players (users) consciously generate emotions, attitudes and values.

Cognitive bias:

Cognitive bias is a phenomenon in which when people perceive themselves, others or the external environment, their perception results are often distorted due to their own or situational reasons.

When designing games or other software systems, we have to pay attention to the issue of cognitive bias. As designers and developers, we are very familiar with the system, but without any cognitive preparation, users are at a loss when facing a new system.

From the beginning to the end of the experience, users need to be given necessary instructions and guidance on the "operation, functions, gameplay, mechanisms, rules, feedback" and other aspects of the product in a suitable way.

Instructions and guidance don’t ignore another issue: the user’s attention.

③ User’s attention

Human attention is divided into: intentional attention and unintentional attention.

Intentional attention is the spontaneous attention driven by the user's brain, such as looking at the progress bar, score board, timer, etc. Think about what information your product should provide users with intentional attention.

Unintentional attention is attention paid to certain things involuntarily without a predetermined purpose, without any effort of will. For example, you are listening to a lecture, and the classroom door is suddenly opened and there is a knock, and you can't help but take a look. If a large amount of information prompts always interfere with the user's unintentional attention, it will inevitably affect the experience, causing the user's flow to change and not being able to fully devote themselves to it.

The large number of "bugs" mentioned above can both attract intentional attention (focus on finding bugs) and unintentional attention (always intermittently interfere with the learning process), so will the experience be good?

④ Curiosity and motivation

Think about the player's true motivations. The real reason why the player wants to complete the goal (motivation) - combined with the motivation, think about how to make the player interested and curious.

The learning motivation of virtual reality (simulation training) is very clear, enriching cognition and improving operational skills in the experience, so as to achieve the teaching goal of "knowledge and skills, emotions, attitudes and values".

Summary of this section:

Only by starting from the user's perspective can we make good products - that is, human-centered experience design.

All things that affect user perception and experience (such as information and performance, interaction and feedback, constraints and balance, stories and emotions mentioned later) should be designed around user flow.

It conforms to the user's cognitive rules, pays attention to the content that affects the user's attention, and considers the user's curiosity and motivation.

2) Information level

As mentioned earlier, players use sensory systems such as listening, seeing, and triggering to perceive your system information. Then the content of these perceptions will further promote the player's brain to process and understand the information and make corresponding actions or mental activities. Images, text, sound effects, special effects, models and other information can all produce this reaction, so the information level is also one of the aspects that must be considered.

So this has to make us think:

What information should the HUD in the interface contain? Have you considered showing and hiding the HUD with one click?

How should UI style and element design fit the theme? What style and specifications are suitable?

Where is the appropriate place for “prompt” information during the experience?

Do you need to give some clues for players to obtain corresponding information? How to provide it, through a sprite? Or an NPC on the street?

Use text prompts, voice prompts or sound effects prompts? Or use some kind of visual special effects or signs to provide intentional reminders (such as dangerous goods signs, burning oil drums...)?

What information do users want to obtain? What should users not see (hide first)?

What’s the point of wearing a character model? How does it fit the character in the scene?

I want players to build a strong sense of patriotic mission. What resonant information resources and material objects should be placed in the scene?

Which of the information provided, including graphics, text, special effects, audio and video, and even scene object elements, is valuable and which is meaningless?

Is the information provided too simple or too complex?

Is the information unified for the theme? For example, a gun-fighting game uses funny sound effects (of course this is an impossible mistake). In short, all information provided to users must be consistent with the theme.

…

Don’t underestimate users, even students. Originally, a poisonous sign can attract the user's attention and remind the user that it cannot be touched, or when it is approached, the icon flashes and triggers a hissing warning sound, while the blood volume gradually decreases, etc., so there is no need to use a pop-up text box. He said stupidly, "Don't get close, you'll get poisoned."

Summary of this section:

At the information level, a simple analysis was conducted on the "interface UI, scenes and objects in the space (models, graphics, audio and video, special effects, etc.)" related to information expression.

People perceive information through seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, etc., and use their brains to process the information and then drive them to further think and act.

All information that can be provided to users, regardless of form, good or bad, will have a positive or negative impact on users.

3) Process level

In the game world, with all kinds of information provided to users, users can achieve the purpose of the game by interacting with the content.

In the game, there is a lot of content that users can operate. Including interface interaction buttons, objects in the scene, interactions between players, etc. During the interaction process, the user experience is continuously enriched through instant feedback, necessary constraints, appropriate storytelling, and a certain balance.

In the game, what specific content of the user's operating experience should we pay attention to?

① Interaction and feedback

The interactivity of games includes players controlling the behavior of game characters by operating devices (such as keyboards, controllers, etc.); including players obtaining information through in-game text, images, audio, etc.; including interactions between players, such as through online Or multiple people can collaborate online to complete tasks, or communicate and share through social media, online communities, etc.

In games, interactivity is not only the core of the game, but also the charm of the game. Friendly interactivity should allow users to quickly get used to cognitive processes, and should not be completed through a lot of learning and practice.

We should focus on improving interaction friendliness and reducing the user's cognitive load, memory load, visual load and physical load as much as possible. For example, reasonable information layout, logical functional flow, keyboard, mouse and handle button definitions that conform to user habits, etc.

Based on the player's understanding of the game's goal rules, personal behavior and operating object status, etc., the necessary feedback is provided in a timely manner at the appropriate location. Giving the player useful information can help the player continue to deepen their understanding of the game from being exposed to the game to completing a series of activities. The understanding of the process promotes players' continuous exploration.

Perceive your own operations through feedback, which allows players (users) to evaluate what they have done and whether they are doing well or not.

[josnashak69]

Game thinking on XR virtual reality (simulation) pan-game content design

The aspects that affect the experience have been mentioned above, but the content is not systematic and intuitive enough. Regarding the game experience, we will continue to communicate from the following levels.

1) User level

People perceive everything through seeing, hearing, touching, thinking, etc.

Whether it is games or XR virtual reality (simulation training) and other pan-game content design, the design HE Tuber should be based on human perception, behavior and habits - that is, human-centered.

Human beings have habitual behaviors, emotions, and general rules for cognition of things. Various characteristics of people will also appear in the game, including emotional resonance of surprise, loss, and curiosity, confidence in overcoming challenges, satisfaction in achieving success, WASD operating habits, etc.

Designing games or products that conform to user habits, emotional traits, and cognitive patterns embodies human-centered design thinking. Next, let’s briefly analyze several aspects that your users, as colorful people, should pay attention to.

① User flow and interest curve

Flow, in psychology, refers to a psychological state that occurs when people focus on a certain behavior. Usually in this state, one does not want to be disturbed (also known as resisting interruption). It is a feeling of fully devoting one's mental energy to some activity.

With a good balance between challenge and skill, players will be fully focused on the game when their user flow experience is in the green zone. Adding challenges when players are not proficient in the game (low skills) will make users feel fearful and anxious; when players are high-level (high skills) but there is no challenge, users will feel bored.

Flow chart:

A word similar to flow is interest curve, which expresses the audience's degree of participation and response to the stimulation provided by an experience. By setting up a challenge strategy with alternating difficulty and easy difficulty, and gradually improving it, players can continue to stay within a good interest curve.

When flow occurs, there will be a high degree of excitement and fulfillment.

There are many factors that influence flow. Reasonable plot, reasonable challenges, friendly interactive experience, etc. can keep users in the correct flow state of the game and immersed in the experience.

Thinking about some of the not-so-good experiences mentioned earlier, they must have had an unpleasant impact on users, leading to an imbalance of heart.

Here we just want to understand the concept first. Under the influence of the flow effect, how to design games or XR virtual reality (simulation training) content will be discussed later.

② Human cognitive behavior

This section mainly talks about cognitive processes and cognitive biases. The cognitive process is mainly analyzed based on virtual simulation training content. If you are not interested in cognitive processes, please look directly at Cognitive Bias.

Cognitive process:

In general psychology, cognition generally goes through the processes of feeling, perception, attention, memory, thinking, imagination, etc.

Feel . It is divided into two categories: external sensation and internal sensation: external sensation refers to receiving external stimulation. Including vision, hearing, smell, taste, and skin. Internal senses include movement sense, balance sense, body sense, etc.

We should pay attention to whether the information provided to users is reasonable and whether the content is designed based on user sensory triggers (such as whether the information is useful for game or teaching goals);

Whether it affects the user such as causing motion imbalance, dizziness, etc. (such as considering the moving speed of objects in space, relative size, lens switching frequency, picture stability, viewing angle constraints and control, etc.).

perception . Perception is the combination of scattered and fragmented information that is felt to form a complete image of things. Generally speaking, the richer and more precise the sensory material is, the more complete and correct the perceptual image will be. Perception is not a simple accumulation of sensory materials, but an organic unity of these materials according to certain relationships.

The UI interface is ugly, the functional logic is illogical, and the model actions are strange…

 These scattered and fragmented information that users feel ultimately form a complete impression of the entire product: poor.

Fragmented and scattered content information provided to users, chaotic process logic, and severe jumps and incoherence between functional modules are common problems in current simulation courses, making it difficult for learners to organically organize the causes and consequences and the fragmented knowledge they experience. It reflects the gap between the two fields of technical service providers and education and teaching - the educational subjects do not understand technology and its implementation, and the technical service providers do not understand education (teaching).

Designers and developers should put themselves in someone else’s shoes and have empathy. Set yourself up as a student (a newcomer with no basic cognition and no operational experience, a theorist with basic cognition and no operational experience, a veteran with basic cognition and operational experience), then how will you structure the functions of your product? What about designing experience processes and organizing knowledge and information?

The same goes for designing games. Analyze it as a player...

Notice. Divided into intentional attention and unintentional attention (see "User's attention" below). Individuals can focus on information that is of interest to them and ignore other harmful or irrelevant information.

Don’t expect your users to actively ignore harmful or irrelevant information. Maybe they are "lucky" in finding bugs.

[josnashak69]

How to treat these problems

The development of virtual reality simulation courses is still in a stage of continuous exploration. Most courses are still delivered in the form of projects. After customized development and delivery of HE Tuber knowledge points in a certain professional field, there are few opportunities for tracking and iterative optimization. There is a lack of tracking of user pain points in terms of ease of use, operability and other aspects of experience during use.

In fact, experiential considerations such as ease of use, operability, and friendliness are still analyzed and adjusted briefly during the project design and development process, which is not enough to make the delivered products have a high level of quality. experience. The result is that a large number of testing (usage) links are handed over to users, and the results after use (testing) lack timely tracking and feedback, and there is no iterative optimization process, resulting in mixed reviews and criticism of this type of product on the market. There are many.

In addition, for technical service providers, there is a lack of tracking of delivered products and collection and analysis of experience. It is difficult to find the direction of iterative optimization in the product design and development process of other projects. In addition, thinking reuse and homogeneity The problem of productization is serious. After the product is divorced from reality, it is difficult to obtain more useful inspiration from past experience. Insufficient optimization results in the inability to achieve greater improvement.

Of course, there are also many virtual simulation courses with high ratings and good experience. This type of course has its advantages and highlights no matter from the perspective of topic selection, design, experience, etc. This has to make technical service providers and design developers think deeply.

"Are we soberly aware that we indulge in "self-pleasure" in all kinds of short, fast, fragmented pictures, texts, and short videos? We seem to have gained a lot but seem to have gained nothing, and ultimately lost the little bit that should belong to us. Valuable thinking time. 』

Inspire virtual reality pan-game product design from the perspective of game design

In response to the above issues, combined with triggering from game design experience, still taking virtual simulation training course products as an example, let’s talk about the content design of XR virtual reality (simulation) pan-game products.

Before that, let’s talk about the general content of game design.

1. How much do you know about games?

1) Types of games

There are many types of games, and if they are broken down, they can be divided into hundreds of types.

Generally speaking, it can be divided into role-playing games, competitive games, cooperative games, strategy games, skill games, luck games, entertainment games, performance games, expression games and simulation games, etc.

After seeing the game types, do you have any ideas?

Experimental operations - simulation type;

Medical rescue - simulation;

English immersion simulation learning - expression games;

Of course, patriotism learning categories that reproduce battlefields can also be designed as “competition, cooperation, and simulation.”

It is not limited to the design of a single type of product, it can be "one-to-one", "one-to-many", or "many-to-one".

This is also one of the reasons why the content of virtual simulation training tends to be thought and explored in the direction of gamification.

2) Basic concepts of the game

Game space: a space defined by rules. We can understand it in a narrow sense as a scene with certain scene rules.

Player: The operator of the game. corresponds to the user.

Goal: A measurable or purely empirical outcome that the player is trying to accomplish by playing. Think “knowledge and skills, emotions, attitudes and values.” The game goals are mapped to the educational training goals-teaching goals that are implemented around the theme in the virtual training.

Actions: Actions taken by players in pursuit of game goals. The actions taken include user operations, strategies (thinking decisions and taking actions), etc.

Rules: A set of instructions or constraints on how a game should be played. How to define operations, which ones can be interacted with and which ones cannot be interacted with, what restrictive things should be included - the definition of user keyboard and mouse commands, the control strategy of the perspective, the scope of activities, the actions that cannot be performed, etc.

Objects: All interactive and non-interactive things that players use to complete game goals (mounts, gold coins, weapons, physical objects in the scene, etc.). For example, objects in the virtual space (scene) environment (features, equipment, tools, instruments, avatar characters, etc.) in virtual reality simulation training products.

3) Basic content of the game

Game goals: goals provided to players (rescuing hostages to gain a sense of justice, interactive puzzle solving to enhance the social experience between players, instant communication to satisfy emotional catharsis, knowledge-based breakthroughs to strengthen skills, etc.). Shape the game experience around your goals and give them meaning.

Constraints: Give players constraints through the design of behaviors, objects, and the game world.

Direct interaction: It is the player's behavior that directly affects the game world and objects.

Indirect interactions: are actions that occur without contact through the player or through their primary "prop".

Game Challenge: Obstacles set for players. Sometimes the challenge comes from the difficulty of achieving the goal, and sometimes the challenge comes from the concepts inherent in the game.

Skills and strategies: Mastering the moves in the game is skill. The ability to identify ways to achieve goals is strategy.

Luck and Uncertainty: Randomness in games is luck. Not knowing what will happen next in a game is uncertainty.

Decision-making and feedback: Based on the player's understanding of the game and the pursuit of the player's own goals, the player makes a decision on the next behavior. In order to understand the game state, players must master the feedback information of their own behavior, as well as the changes caused by their behavior to the game state and game plot clues.

Theme: The theme of the game refers to the central meaning and main content of the game, and is one of the factors that constitute the game. The theme can be extended to include what characters will be used in the game, what props will be used, what tasks will be completed, etc. Carry out various designs around the theme, such as weapon systems, prop systems, levels and scenes, processes and gameplay mechanisms, etc.

Storytelling: a series of "means" that shape player experience, which draws on traditional narrative structures. The playability and storytelling of the game are two aspects of the game experience, and there is no priority. It should be decided based on the characteristics of the game itself and the characteristics of the players the game faces. Some games need to be supported by playability, and some games need to be structured by story. The principle is that the story serves the gameplay, and the purpose is playability.

Game environment: Various content of when, where and with whom players play the game, including level scenes, spatial objects and various elements.

The basic content of the game can be focused on only one aspect, or multiple aspects can be considered together, depending on the specific project.

[josnashak69]

Some problems with keyboard and mouse style virtual content on PC

There are still some problems in the actual application process of virtual reality (simulation) content:

1) Interface UI issues

In an era of extremely rich visuals, users have become accustomed to a variety of content with beautiful visual experiences.

With a good visual UI and a design style that fits the theme, users can perceive the friendliness of the product at HE Tuber first glance - although it is only an evaluation brought about by the experience at the visual perception level, that is, the "primacy effect" in psychology "——Through "first impression", the first input information has an impact on the subsequent cognition of the object.

“The interface is too ugly and affects my mood”

“The button is so small that I can’t click it even after 5 minutes. The button is so big, it feels like the style from 10 years ago.”

"Everyone in red or green has doubts about life."

"The pop-up windows have covered the test bench, and you can't see any reaction?"

“The loading page is really unflattering”

…

2) Scene model problem

Virtual reality simulation training content is inseparable from setting up scenes and building models. The scale and size of scenes and models are indeed affected by rendering and other aspects. There is no way to do this for the time being, but carefully laid out scenes and carefully processed models have the greatest impact on the experience. It's important.

The construction of " scenes " depends on the characteristics of the subject, such as laboratories, factories, outdoor geographical environments, battlefields under fire, space, or inside cells, etc. If possible, try to design the scene and the objects in the scene around the theme. Make the textures and textures more detailed. Make necessary optimizations while enriching the details to the greatest extent. Balance the conflict between the visual experience and loading and rendering. .

" Model " refers to the models of all "surface objects", "characters", etc. on the scene. "Geographical objects" generally refers to everything that needs to be laid out around the theme, such as experimental instruments, bridges, buildings, etc. The character model, as an avatar (agent, avatar) or NPC, replaces a real person in the virtual environment, or as an interactive NPC (or even a "guide"). The quality of its image and body behavior also directly affects the user's experience. Experience.

Fortunately, there is now a platform specifically optimized for models in China - the Laozi Cloud Platform - which focuses on 3D model optimization and format conversion to create lightweight and highly realistic scene models.

"These character models are like zombies. Are we learning skills from zombies?"

"Look, the way he walks...oh...it makes me laugh to death."

"Is it the sequelae of cerebral infarction? My hands and feet are so unlucky?"

"Sing~ Where is the newspaper? Where is the newspaper? The newspaper is in that corner... I have been looking for it for a long time."

…

Just imagine, in a training and learning experience process, attention is focused on these aspects, which indeed brings a lot of "fun", but the energy may be diverted by the "fun" and unable to focus on the content.

3) Interactive feedback issues

The system is inseparable from the user's interaction with its content and "interacts" with the user through feedback.

In virtual reality simulation content, in addition to UI interaction and feedback, it is more about the interaction between users and scene objects (equipment, characters, facilities, tools, etc.).

Friendly interaction and feedback determine the quality of the product.

"I..., I clicked this button for 30 minutes and it didn't respond."

"The interface prompts you to observe. Observe? Observe? Observe what? Why is there no response?"

"Why does this zombie keep talking repeatedly? What's the next step? The next step...".

"Where is the close button? After 3 minutes..."..close at this x below" is so obvious!

"That faucet can't be turned off after it's turned on. It almost breaks the mouse."

"The caregiver overlapped with the medicine box and couldn't reach the box."

"When the time came, there was still no response. I...actually died because of this."

"I have experienced snowy mountains and treated the wounded...Does the stretcher have a grudge against the wounded? Why can't I go up? You should save me first."

"One time I went back to the workbench to pick up something. I told the master that I couldn't move it. The master said to see if it was stuck on the chair under my feet."

…

Obviously, these are more bug-level problems and can be avoided. Any product that has interaction must have feedback, but it is necessary to explore what kind of interaction and feedback will be better.

4) Process design issues

As mentioned in my previous article, an XR project needs to consider aspects such as scene space (environment), elements, situations, focus, interaction, feedback, immersion and comfort.

It is crucial to design a series of scenarios around the theme (including level design, functional module design, rhythm design, event design, operation process design, etc.).

For experimental simulation projects, just design according to the operating process.

However, for virtual reality simulation content with storylines such as party building and history, the scenario and process design need to be worked hard.

"It took me 4 hours to learn something that can normally be done in one hour."

"You can't go back, you can only do it again. It took nearly an hour to go through the process again and again..."

"I forgot how to operate it, and I don't dare to go back for fear of doing it in vain."

"No staging functionality...".

"After finishing the previous steps and learning them, I have to start them again every time, either because I am afraid that I will forget or because I think I have enough time."

…

5) Experience issues

All of the above can affect the experience.

It is discussed separately here because its importance to XR virtual reality products exceeds that of previous two-dimensional software systems. XR virtual reality products take the "people-oriented" interactive experience to a new level.

"User flow", "user habits" and "user feeling (dizziness)" are issues that have to be faced head-on. Among them, caring about "user flow" is an aspect that is often considered in script design such as game plot design and film and television story rhythm design. These will be highlighted below.

"It's not interesting. If you don't play anymore, you still have to do it if you can't play. Where are the assessment points?"

“There is nothing to see, the story is mediocre”

"Confused, who am I and where have I been?"

“The NPC’s speech sounds like it’s from a script, and the machine dubbing is so boring.”

…

6) Other questions

Whether it is game design, XR virtual reality (simulation) or game content design, there are many aspects that need to be considered. Regarding the reward and punishment mechanism and statistical mechanism in the game, the "test and evaluation" function also exists in the simulation training content.

There are currently no unified standards for how to "evaluate" (evaluation mechanism), what aspects of evaluation (evaluation content), etc., and qualitative and quantitative evaluation mechanisms coexist.

Whether it is operation procedures, quantitative scoring of exercise responses, or artificial qualitative evaluation, it is a difficult thing to concretely and standardize. You can just make a decision based on the actual situation.

From experience, regardless of whether it is qualitative or quantitative, the principle of "balance" should be followed - it can be evaluated, but the evaluation mechanism cannot be set contrary to the facts. Evaluation still needs to be continuously explored.

Using computer algorithms combined with good evaluation mechanisms (models) to automate intelligent evaluation is obviously not suitable for the characteristics of virtual simulation projects at this stage. "Combine virtuality and reality, use reality as the mainstay, and virtuality as a supplement."

[josnashak69]

From game design experience, talk about the design of XR virtual reality (simulation) pan-game content

There are big differences between XR content and traditional content, and these differences can be reflected in aspects such as interactive experience. In this article, the author extends some thoughts HE Tuber on the design of XR products based on the design and development of PC-side keyboard and mouse-style virtual reality (simulation) pan-game products. Let’s take a look.

"We are swamped by short, fast, fragmented information, even the slightest crack in our thinking is invaded. This is a certain purpose that the information producers want to achieve. 』

1. Summary: Quick introduction to the topic

The difference between XR content and traditional content from an experience perspective is:

Convert two-dimensional vision into three-dimensional space vision;

Convert the traditional keyboard, mouse, and handle interaction methods to one based on the user himself;

Currently, keyboard and mouse-based simulation content is better defined as “VR-like simulation content” and “3D simulation content” than “VR simulation content”. Now that it's been said, there's no need to argue too hard. Perhaps the term VR is used to better express its difference from traditional two-dimensional content and highlight its intuitiveness and immersion. It can be said: "borrow other people's wind and hoist your own sails".

Most XR games are inherited, transplanted, and innovated on the basis of traditional table games. The difference lies in the changes in the dimension of experience and the interaction methods used. Its gameplay and mechanisms, storytelling and fun, design concepts and methods The essential things are the same. Virtual reality simulation content based on PC or mobile touch device (mobile phone/tablet), through interactive operations such as keyboard, mouse/finger, etc., is different from using VR/AR head-mounted devices and using handles, spatial gestures, voice, and eye movements. Interactive true XR products.

Taking user experience as the criterion, drawing on game design experience, and using virtual simulation training course products as an "introduction", we will talk about the design and development of pan-game products based on PC keyboard and mouse virtual reality (simulation), hoping to attract everyone's attention. Some thoughts on XR product design. Although it does not mention the immersive design of XR head-mounted devices and handles, voice or eye movement interaction, "different paths lead to the same goal", but the information presentation carrier and interaction method are different, and the design concepts and ideas are "similar with minor differences", you can refer to it for inspiration.

The main contents of this article are as follows

The following text is divided into 3 parts.

Part 1: Initial design of virtual reality (simulation) content from PC side

By sorting out some of the current problems in PC-side keyboard and mouse virtual simulation content products (UI, scene models, interactive feedback, processes, experience and other problems) and how to treat such problems, we have initially formed a comprehensive understanding of virtual reality (simulation) games. Understanding of product content design.

Part 2: Inspiring virtual reality pan-game product design from a game design perspective

First, the game types, domain concepts and basic content are explained.

Secondly, based on the game experience design ideas, combined with the XR virtual reality (simulation) pan-game content design details, focusing on the "human-centered user experience", "user flow and interest", "cognitive process and attention" that are concerned in game design ", "visual information expression", "interaction and feedback", "constraints and balance", "story and emotion", "target theme" and "innovation", etc., how to use XR virtual reality (simulation) pan-game products Practical applications are described.

Finally, a virtual reality pan-game product design framework is formed.

Part 3: Product Implementation Guide for XR Virtual Reality (Training) Projects

Based on game design ideas, combined with the actual work of XR virtual reality simulation training projects and product design methods, from project docking (docking content, precautions), demand research (research content - "Five determinations and four digs: setting goals, setting scope, Define functions, determine quality, and determine constraints; dig out pain points, dig out bright spots, dig out important and difficult points, dig out points of interest", precautions), business understanding, demand analysis, data collection, overall design (technical route selection, architecture design), detailed Detailed analysis and explanation were carried out in terms of design (product function design, story script process, interaction and feedback, prototype), aesthetic experience design (characters, perspectives, scenes, objects, interface UI and audio and video animation special effects).

At the same time, the game design experience, concepts, ideas, and methods mentioned in Part 1 and Part 2 are combined with practical work to explain.

"All excitement is a symptom of the outside world, and the powerlessness, self-blame, emptiness and loneliness behind the excitement are always our own. 』

2. First understanding of design from PC virtual reality (simulation) content

1. Background overview

After several years of continuous development, virtual reality (simulation) content has exerted its unique advantages in training fields such as education, medical care, aerospace, emergency response, and industry.

For the "three high and three difficult" courses that are "high risk, high cost, and high consumption" and "difficult to implement, observe, and reproduce", immersive virtual reality (simulation) is used to "teach, learn, practice, test, and evaluate". The format greatly enriches the training and learning experience and plays a very good role in skill operation and sentiment cultivation.

The basic hardware and facility environment of virtual reality (simulation) are still being further improved. Qualified units can adopt the head-mounted immersive teaching model for key subjects and knowledge points to achieve better results. But in most cases, it is still carried out using the PC desktop (including the B/S web page) keyboard and mouse control experience. After all, computers are still the most common and easy-to-use device. Whether to use a head-mounted device immersive method or a PC desktop (including B/S web page) teaching method is a comprehensive decision based on the software and hardware environment and the characteristics of the simulated course.

Next, let’s talk about the virtual reality simulation content that currently uses keyboard and mouse control on PC desktops (including B/S web pages).

[josnashak69]

The “aha moment” ignored by B-side companies

For enterprises, if a product comes out but no users understand the core value of the product when using the product, it HE Tuber will easily lose customers. Below, the author compiled and shared an article about the "aha moments" that B-side companies ignore. Let's take a look at it together!

1. “Aha Moment”

Before talking about the main text, we need to first explain what "Aha Moment" is. This concept comes from the concept of "Growth Hacking". "The "Aha Moment" is the moment when the product shines in the user's eyes, and it is the moment when the user truly discovers the core of the product. moments of value (why the product exists, why they need it, and what they get from it).

In other words, this is when users realize why this product is indispensable to them. It’s the experience in this moment that turns early users into power users and ambassadors of the product. "It can be seen that this concept is mainly aimed at C-side products, which can be physical objects or APPs. What I want to say this time is about the B-side "aha moment".

Most B-side solution companies focus on product development and customer lead acquisition, and often ignore the exploration of product highlights. Of course, for a B-side product, the core is still focused on the development of functions and the expansion of scenarios. However, what customers are often concerned about is It is the pain point of current business needs, which is often one or two scenarios and a few functions. When pre-sales are explaining how powerful the product functions are and how rich the scenarios are, customers often have no idea or even have vague concepts.

Relatively speaking, it is easier to communicate with customers such as the Internet and new power car companies, because even if they do not encounter problems, their understanding of the scenario will be brought in quickly. However, for customers from traditional enterprises, their relative operational capabilities and Internet thinking are relatively different. If it is not correct, there will be a lot of information asymmetry problems. It will be embarrassing to say "I almost don't understand this" after talking for a long time in the dark.

The functional layer often has certain understanding barriers with the business layer, so it is necessary to add a presentation layer to help the function explain the purpose, scenario, and meaning of the function, and quickly bring it to the customer, so that the customer "suddenly understands" it. To put it simply, the presentation layer is reports, reports that match functional items, reports that highlight output results and output values, and functions that can make customers shine that are often ignored by B-side companies, which are what I call B-side products. The “aha moment”.

2. Give some actual cases

I have been responsible for digital marketing, that is, CDP, MA, and DMP. MA and DMP are both biased towards business products, which have a lot of data management and data analysis capabilities, so I won’t use these two as examples (yes) If you don’t understand the platform, you can check my previous content). Take the customer data platform as an example. CDP itself is a management platform for customer data. It links upper-layer data for standardized integration and provides data for business layer products to use. MA and DMP both require scenarios. The data accessed from CDP is not limited to these two platforms. You can check the specific applicable scenarios:

Since the attributes of CDP data are more focused, its business operation scope is given priority, that is, grouping, tags, and portraits. Often these cannot highlight the core value of CDP, and its value is more reflected in ID management, ID fusion, and attribute events. Updates and applications tend to have hidden functions; the most common one is comparing CRM with CDP. You see, it also has groups and labels. Is CRM enough?

When encountering this kind of problem, some B-sides come up with a lot of configuration functions, telling customers that they need to configure data sources, configure IDs, perform IDmappng, and flexible attribute events. However, many traditional customers are confused. Marketing is mostly a business-side operation. When Kaka talks about data sources, most people don't understand. This leads to serious information asymmetry and the pain of not getting the point. But if there are several pictures showing the results, and the functional value can be quickly explained

the superiority and inferiority can be clearly understood.

But when it comes to ID fusion, technical capabilities such as big data, graph computing, and pruning are required. However, through image presentation and a correlation diagram, you can clearly see the many IDs associated with one ID and the source of each ID. For different systems, ID fusion is to integrate the IDs and data of each system to form this type of ID map, which is easy to understand.

Similarly, CDP only has data support capabilities, which are called through APIs and other methods. You may not know what the API is when you tell the business, so you need to visualize the request volume. Through charts, you can quickly understand which platform, what is called, and what is called. How much, call trends, etc., can prove in one click that although the business is not used much, in fact, relatively large value will be generated in each system.

To put it bluntly, many systems are back-end systems, biased towards data processing, and are very important for upper-level business support. However, from a purely business perspective, more emphasis is placed on their use of the system. Most enterprises are driven by business needs and ignore the underlying system. Support function, thereby reducing the human and financial support for the underlying system. Once problems occur later, they are often irreversible or require more labor costs to repair.

The same is true for B-side companies. Because there are no business needs or pain points, the underlying system tends to be usable. In many cases, it is not easy to use, let alone the ability to demonstrate concretely.

We often encounter a problem. System B is a business system, and system A is the underlying support of system B. Customers always question why we have to buy system A when buying system B, and what is the use of system A? After purchasing systems A and B, For a while, the company asked for an analysis of the AB system. What value does the two systems provide? System B is a business system and can easily demonstrate performance. System A is the bottom layer and supports the upper layer. If it does not consider the dependence on data and the use of data, It is difficult to realize the underlying value of system A due to the collection.

It is very simple to solve the above problem. It is to present the data in a BI-like way and realize real-time or T+1 update of the data. This not only provides better explanation in the post-deployment business scenario, but also facilitates ordering on the B-side and provides comparison. Much help. People talk about eye-catching, and products also talk about eye-catching. People who don’t understand can tell which system looks better, which system is more comfortable, and which system is more “cool” by putting the two systems together. Although it is a bit one-sided, this This is the “aha moment” for B-side products.

columnist

Guangbo, WeChat public account: Guangbo, everyone is a product manager columnist. He has extensive practical experience in the digital transformation of large enterprises, has product implementation experience in public and private domain marketing, and is familiar with domestic and foreign launch platform rules and application logic.

This article was originally published on Everyone is a Product Manager. Reprinting without permission is prohibited

The title picture comes from Unsplash, based on the CC0 agreement

The opinions in this article represent only the author's own. The Renren Product Manager platform only provides information storage space services.

[josnashak69]

How to solve the current problem on the platform where drivers cannot get paid due to various reasons?

For example, the driver is driving towards the passenger and the passenger cancels the order, or the passenger refuses to evade the order without paying.

When I asked this question, I felt that Didi, as a bridge connecting drivers and passengers, does have some parts that need to be taken into consideration. However, at different stages of development of 

HE Tuber

 the company, the stance and attitude will determine the direction and size of strategic adjustments; In terms of the role of the platform itself, it guides education in the positive direction and governs and punishes in the negative direction.

Guidance and education: Arrange corresponding measures before/during/after the incident.

Negative governance: Introduce a black database mechanism for users who refuse to change despite repeated admonitions, or even directly switch accounts but can be identified as the same natural person.

2. How to solve the problem of no shared bicycles during peak hours? Can we use price increases as leverage to adjust allocations?

It is clear whether the question is about solving the problem of lack of cars during peak periods, or whether we want to raise prices. These two questions have different ideas.

If there are no cars during the peak period, we need to explore: which area has no cars, what is the upper limit of car use during the regional period, and whether there is a source of cars that can continue to be put into use. Based on these issues, we can investigate the maximum demand for cars in different areas and different times, and we will get Two types of conclusions:

(1) The platform does not have enough vehicles in a certain place and has no plans to continue investing in vehicles in the short term.

When you can't invest in a car, the total expenditure is relatively stable. If you want to increase your income, if the income from each ride increases, there will be fewer cyclists. Objectively, the demand will be clearer, and the total income of the platform will also grow steadily - -feasible.

(2) The platform’s overall vehicle dispatching problem in a certain place is insufficient during peak periods due to insufficient transportation capacity.

Insufficient transportation capacity - the operation gameplay allows users to get red envelopes by riding from A to B by setting up fixed-time cycling routes, solving the scheduling and ordering problem of insufficient transportation capacity, and at the same time making up for the shortcomings of vehicle use during peak hours;

Price control - Because we already know that there are definitely not enough vehicles, we can obtain the income of core cycling users by proactively pushing operating activities to target users to book rides, and then make price adjustments for intervals and time periods to ensure platform income while also meeting the needs of the users. The needs of different user types.

ByteDance - The problem is sharp and it doesn’t play its cards according to routines

Interviews with Byte are the most interesting because the business lines are very broad and there are many directions. In the various interviews I have experienced, the interesting questions are as follows

1. When building a score system, there will be inevitable problems. For example, users are eager for high scores. How to deal with the problem of low scores?

Whether it is local business or content risk control and management, scores can only represent things evaluated from a certain perspective by a certain platform, or built within rules recognized by the platform and with greater weight, so there will naturally be a certain target group.

In terms of content management, two types of users are monitored: minor + multiple violations, and serious + few violations. For local businesses, the score system assigned to merchants by the platform can be viewed from a relatively fair perspective, that is, after excluding subjectively imposed scores and non-objective evaluations, it comes from user evaluations. This will inevitably lead to the fact that what the public likes may not always be delicious. For the same restaurant with a score of 4.7, some people think it is good value for money, but some consumers think it is not exquisite enough. However, a restaurant with a score of 3.9 will be flocked to by many people.

Therefore, rating is just a general function of the platform to maintain the ecosystem. To allow more diverse preferences to be naturally presented on the platform, it is necessary to introduce more dimensional evaluation tools. These tools can be customized based on tags of niche concern. Circle culture store list; it can also be a category ranking, regional ranking, taste ranking, and price ranking based on different consumer needs.

The score itself is not unique, but keeping the bottom line of score evaluation is the basis and foundation of credibility.

2. How to handle stress interviews

I also experienced a very jumpy and challenging stressful interview question and answer session. Questions are very difficult to review, because basically every time you want to answer a certain question of the interviewer, you will be challenged to answer another question from another perspective. The main reason why the interviewer continues to be frustrated is that the train of thought is interrupted and rethinking has just come in. issues are under great pressure.

When facing a stressful interview, look at the essence through the phenomenon. If you are interrupted, you will naturally feel like you can't keep up with your thinking. At this time, start from the intention behind the question and think about why the interviewer asked this, what aspect of professional ability is he concerned about, and then to respond.

final summary

There will definitely be people who are curious about why the specific interview questions were not revealed after interviewing so many major companies and finally getting several offers. But as I said at the beginning, during this journey, I originally just wanted to sort out my career plan and find growth opportunities from the perspective of the general environment for my confused self. As for whether I got an offer or not, it was an accident. Easter eggs, please allow me to keep these wonderful results privately. The career path is long and requires patience and long-term persistence.

After the interview, I also understood better that growth in the workplace is not black and white, nor does it go straight up or down. Everyone's growth is a spiral.

In reality, there is definitely no shortage of students who are very capable and grasp opportunities very well. They may be promoted to front-line managers in about 5 years of work, and already middle-level leaders in about 7 years. But what if it doesn’t happen? Don’t employees who work hard and work hard on the front line deserve respect? I used to feel that if I were really like that, I wouldn't deserve to live a good life and would be useless as a classmate in a technology company.

But after going through these few months of interviews, I understood that everyone has their own cultivation guide, and no one can fly up in a helicopter. There will definitely be hardships and challenges on the way forward , but if we uphold the With a growth mindset, you should understand every development opportunity in job search, career, and career, treat every experience as a wonderful journey, and be curious to experience, think, and review your own transformation in the process, and you will be able to understand something. Only through merit and not in vain can you understand that your ability determines your lower limit in society. Although opportunities may not come easily, if you are ready to be in your best state on the road of growth, when it comes, you will definitely seize it. get. And the opportunities that come from this hard work make it easier for you to have the confidence to move forward.

[josnashak69]

Alibaba – In addition to professional skills, we also need to pay attention to cooperation

Alibaba's interview was quite satisfactory. The information provided by the headhunter at that time was that the person in charge of the position had been transferred to other business lines and had been vacant. The business side had urgent requirements and had requirements for the base location.

However, what confused me very HE Tuber much during the interview at Alibaba was that HR was present, and I only communicated with the business once. It was said that he was the big leader responsible for auditing security. In the process of communicating with HR, the actual business discussions are very limited, and most of them involve cooperation with others. This shows that the employment situation in large factories is not just about business capabilities, but also about teamwork.

Baidu – Good questions come from self-awareness

Although Baidu's business lines are not that eye-catching compared to positions in other companies at the same time, it happened during the frustrating process when I didn't have an offer and was rejected many times. Objectively, it provided me with a certain spiritual value in continuing to invest in interviews. , Based on this, I will also briefly explain the situation of this business.

Baidu's main focus is search, but in its historical development, it not only does core indexing, but also creates its own content. Therefore, it also has a certain acumen in the construction of content ecology, especially as the domestic content ecology tends to be short videos and live streaming media. Under the form, there is still room for lack of supply for some long-tail Q&A. Different from Zhihu-type business scenarios, Baidu's long-tail mainly solves some very vertical segmentation problems. This field is also the most prone to problems such as irregular content generation and lack of authenticity.

Asking questions in the two stages of the interview made me feel that the information I asked was in line with the other party’s expectations, and it directly determined that the process could be continued:

During the business leader’s interview question-and-answer session , I directly asked what issues I am currently paying more attention to in terms of content management? What are the core issues to be solved at this stage? Why arrange resources that way. This question is actually a double-edged sword. If the previous conversation is very harmonious, it is a bonus. If the interviewer is not satisfied with the content of the previous communication, if you ask this question during the question period, you will be directly rejected with "no comment."

 I was more confident at that time because of several characteristics:

When introducing business details earlier, I highlighted structured expressions. For example, how can I clearly introduce to the interviewer the difficulties and challenges at work and what are the abilities behind them?

Show your own in-depth analysis on the determination of content risks. Maybe the direction may not be completely correct, but the actions and principles of disassembly are well-founded and full of logic.

In terms of past project communication experience, because the department I am applying for is relatively vertical, I rely on horizontal and cross-department resources. When introducing the project, I also objectively explained how I 

The other question was from the leader of the entire team. I asked, "If you have the opportunity to join, what strengths do you expect the candidate to contribute to this position?" The reason why I ask this question is because the previous communication business was very smooth, and there were almost no challenging problems.

But there will be two situations. One is that my answer is not on point at all, and the other party does not want to talk more, so I answer whatever it is, so no additional explanation is needed; the other is that every answer I give is clear and logical. Able to get the right direction. In order to identify clearly which one I am, I asked the above questions. Fortunately, the answer given by the interviewer was very related to my previous introduction. Sure enough, 30 minutes after my interview, HR made an appointment for my final interview with HRBP.

Based on this interview experience and combined with past experiences, I have a deeper understanding of my past resume.

Professionalism from an IC perspective: Cognition of pure new content genres, ability to locate the stage of the problem, and strategy design capabilities

Project management perspective: The ability to horizontally connect the businesses of all parties, involving goal alignment, task dismantling and manpower arrangement, and cycle progress management.

External communication and cooperation ability: Past work not only involved strategy promotion, but also required liaison with various cooperation departments. Roles covered: compliance and legal affairs, PR/GR, algorithm research and development, product operations, human review base, and rules team communication

A good interview is like this. You can find your own sense of value in the process of external communication, and also sort out your cognition and vision in various dimensions.

Didi-Product Military Academy, dual challenges of professionalism and management

Didi’s position is also an international business, mainly building a feedback link for driver and passenger issues. From this perspective, it was the first time that I stood in the reporting feedback link and thought about how to proactively identify problems when the normal business process does not work. Issues that may be reported back.

The intuitive feeling of the interview is that it is very professional, with professional communication establishment, professional problem discussion, and professional problem feedback. There are two questions that are relatively big challenges for me. Later, I also discussed how to do it with several product friends. deal with:

[josnashak69]

The overall process of interviews in large factories

Generally speaking, the product manager interviews of large manufacturers are 4 rounds of business + 1 round of HR, with 4 rounds of business interviews.

The first round - Intermediate and HE Tuber advanced level: Parallel reporting within the group or direct leader; Beginner level: Parallel reporting to classmates within the group

Round 2 – usually +2 if it’s a mid-sized team

The third round - cross-interview, it may be students from other product sides who cooperate closely. If it is very strategic, it may be an interview with the leader of the sub-team or the leader of the algorithm team. The principle of intersection will not affect anyone, but the conclusion is an important basis for judging rank, so it is very important to show your professionalism and strategic vision as much as possible

The fourth round - the leader of the large team mainly makes the final confirmation of whether he is qualified for the grade.

What kind of groups do big companies like?

Pragmatic, smart and practical

Have solid product skills and pay good attention to technical details

Draw inferences from one example and continue to iterate on your own through multiple channels

The article has a lot of text. After all, it took a long time. I will use each major manufacturer as a node. What follows is the biggest benefit I gained from the interview.

Meituan-Taking interest from growth and grasping balance from ecology

The previous business communication is relatively simple, because the work experience matches the position itself very well, so the details of the business communication are very smooth. The following are some actual problems worth thinking about. You can sort them out based on your own work thinking:

1. What are the similarities or differences between content governance on content distribution platforms and local scenarios?

Content governance itself is a very basic strategic business. The main links include positioning what the problem is, sorting out rules, machine review and human review strategies based on rule configuration, feedback/reporting links for online abnormalities, and monitoring online content. The ability to sweep back and intervene in governance effects.

The local business mainly focuses on the scenes before and after the actual transaction between users and merchants, and the content affects consumers’ purchasing decisions, including first-time consumption and repeat purchases. In this business scenario, in addition to paying attention to content quality and whether the bottom line violations of the content extend vertically, content governance also needs to pay attention to the authenticity of the content from a horizontal perspective, that is, whether the comments written by users who have posted comments occurred after real consumption. Whether the writing of the evaluation is affected by subjective factors and biased etc. Therefore, the content ecology of local business will naturally have both quality and authenticity.

2. How to strike a balance between recommendation and growth strategies for strategic products?

This question comes from the intersection, and because it is based on the comprehensive understanding of content ecology, it is also listed here to continue to expand thinking capabilities. The original question is: "From the perspective of growth and traffic diversion, when companies enter short videos, they convert traffic by obtaining gold coins. As a product of the content ecosystem, how to obtain online users' preference for the content itself through gold coin scenarios? ".

The prerequisite for answering this question well is to understand the design principle of gold coins, that is, why users come to watch videos to obtain gold coins, and how users are motivated. Under this framework, we discuss ways to identify whether a user is “just watching videos” or is “fascinated” by watching a certain type of video; whether a user opens the APP again because of a “cash reward” or because he “likes the content”; whether a user forwards a certain video Is it because of "points" or because of "fun".

How can I answer systematically from an interview perspective?

My solution is to first introduce several core points for users to obtain incentives from the perspective of the gold coin reward mechanism: building trust, obtaining continuous incentives, and earning gold coins worth enough for withdrawal. The main levers that adjust the entire incentive are: cash and gold coins. Among the above three links, the main way to expand the gameplay and ascertain the user's interest is to obtain continuous incentives. Through the exchange rate changes of cash and gold coins, and the effective timing method of watching videos, the user's interest points can be obtained, that is, during the non-cash driving time. Range operations can all be calculated into actual "interests".

3. Have you read any books recently? Review a book

I feel like it’s not very relevant to the actual interview, but it’s a very interesting question. Product managers themselves need to continuously expand their abilities. In addition to reviewing their own work, reading can provide a larger perspective on the world, interpret their own worldview, and reshape the way they work.

The book "Reading This Way Is Enough" introduces in detail three types of readers: junior learners: recorders who simply record encyclopedias; advanced learners: use book content for personal work and life; learning facilitators : Proactively guide others. As a requirement for the scalability of the product position, the books introduced should at least make the other party feel that they are advanced learners, that is, they can continue to iterate their cognitive methods through reading, so that there is room for continuous updating of work.

The book I introduced at the time was "What Have Philosophers Did". In fact, I had not finished reading the book at the time, but I combined it with Gallup's test analysis to extract common points and switch from an individual perspective to a global perspective. , switching from individual contributions to connecting various partners to work together around the same goal. It is equivalent to explaining it from the perspective of advanced learners.

Kuaishou - When content ecology meets local growth

Because the position was a good match, the interview went very quickly, and the questions were all very basic strategies. There was only one question that impressed me deeply, which essentially discussed the relationship between governance and revenue growth.

From a governance perspective, it is possible to dismantle user violation information in different business scenarios on the platform. If this problem continues to expand, from the perspective of local e-commerce, how do you evaluate the GMV of a store to delineate the gradient of store management value?

Because my background is in content management and I am not good at local growth, this question is in-depth. From the perspective of capability assessment, the main test is the basic skills of dismantling strategies. Therefore, logic and structure are the basis for winning the interview follow-up process. The GMV of a store is ultimately determined by two elements, traffic and customer unit price. As a platform that needs to explore new stores, it is natural to hope to conduct market research through relatively clear GMV to establish a basis for mutual trust with merchants, and to develop marketing strategies to encourage merchants based on different GMVs, such as incorporating them into the task system. The goal is still to Expand the number of local merchants.

The dismantling ideas are divided into two types: online and offline, known and unknown. Therefore, the reply basically revolves around, if you want to get the magnitude of GMV of different merchants, you must first classify the merchants in the platform according to the platform rules, and obtain the known on-site exposure, conversion, and write-off rates of merchants at different levels based on the classification, and use the known merchants Traffic inference is used to estimate the on-site traffic of unknown merchants; at the same time, the off-site traffic, conversion, and write-off rate are investigated offline. These data can be researched through business BD, or through industry and competitive product analysis. It is not necessarily accurate. It only needs to be approximate market share. , and obtain the target value for the write-off rate, which can be used for speculation.

[josnashak69]

I interviewed Meituan, Kuaishou, Alibaba, Baidu, Didi, and Byte to tell you which group the big companies like the most.

In the workplace, we will go through many interviews. With the help of interviews, we will discover some of our own HE Tuber problems. This article combines the interview experience of different factories to show and introduce the experience one by one. I hope it will be helpful to you.

1. The origin of sharing

From June to October of 2023, I had no solution for career planning and future development. I hoped to establish connections with higher-level people, but because there was no particularly suitable channel, I had to rely on interviews to continue to help. Diagnose the problem by yourself, discover the problem, iterate on the understanding, and strive for new job opportunities. I will introduce the experience one by one according to the interview experience of different factories. The first is to review my own past; the second is to refine the interview ideas of large factories for reference. reader.

The order of the entire article is: self-awareness, the needs of big companies for interviewers, and what I gained from interviews with different companies.

2. Self-introduction

I have been engaged in Internet-related work since I graduated with a master's degree in 2016. The company that first accepted me was a company listed on the New Third Board, and I started my internship in April. Later, by various coincidences, I finally got a job opportunity from a big factory. I started working in a big factory in 2017. In 2017, 2018, and 2019, my job roles covered data products, data analysts, and back-end products.

Since the beginning of 20 years, I have focused on content understanding and content strategy. Content understanding based on the perspective of first-line manufacturers is more inclined to the role of screws. A clear division of labor means clear goals. What is practiced is collaboration and the ability to dismantle problems to the smallest atoms. Granular capabilities, but far away from the real business line, always make me feel like a blind man is trying to figure out the elephant. The specific questions are as follows:

First, the work content is overly segmented and can only focus on a very vertical ecological perspective.

The content understanding I do occurs in the content center, and the content center distinguishes many directions, such as content understanding, content recommendation, content growth, content e-commerce (interest e-commerce), etc., and I can clearly list them. Uploading, editing, and publishing the entire link from one video comes from the perspective of the content ecosystem, but it is difficult for me to explain clearly how these videos are consumed on the recommendation side and the growth side. What linkages will there be with cooperative departments, such as e-commerce and local business, how will their strategies be broken down into specific corresponding actions, and how to prepare.

Second, the long-term implementation of specific front-line actions lacks the vision of macro-structure and dismantling.

Focusing on issues arising from high-level decision-making and using only very limited energy to do things that are important and recognized from one's own perspective. This will result in - I understand the process from macro-structure to implementation, but instead ignore the process from A more complete and macro-directional dismantling perspective. And the blind spot of the perspective of going from high to low, from execution to high level, caused me to encounter greater troubles when striving for a higher level of development. There is no direction and no focus.

Third, the uncertainty brought by the work itself is not stable enough from the psychological level and is seriously involution.

In the middle and late stages of the epidemic, the Internet industry as a whole was in a slump, and even the jobs being opened by major companies were becoming scarcer. Looking within the company, upward channels were also scarcer. However, my overall career plan is not very clear. In other words, although I have a goal, the direction and motivation of dismantling are not moving towards the goal. Under the objective environment, it is very troublesome. Is my career in the Internet finally coming to an end? Excluding the company's halo, how much is its value in the market?

Based on the above reasons, I decided to distance myself from work, work in a completely stress-free state for a period of time, and then seek a new opportunity for my next job.

1. Resume section

As of the time to submit my resume, I have been working for less than 7 years. Based on my past experience in three major companies, I listed my project experience and work performance from the three perspectives of content strategy, platform capabilities, and data products, and used the star rule to list myself. The core tasks, roles played, values ​​realized, and capabilities for growth in each project.

Listed as a whole, I feel that my obvious role transition stages are: analyst with simple tasks , independently designed products for small projects , products responsible for the core data indicators within the team , products responsible for core business and core strategies , and leading strategies for most industries. product . Based on this kind of thinking, when sorting out the self-introduction part, I used a large structure as the output tone. When introducing each past experience, I looked at the big picture. First, I looked at the background of the company's project, and then confirmed my role at the time and the meaning of the division of labor. , output the value of income, which not only enriches the value of personal introduction in the resume, but also makes a good opening statement during the interview stage.

2. Advantages and disadvantages

For domestic students, especially those before 1995, they are particularly embarrassed to directly introduce their strengths to others. Correspondingly, when talking about their weaknesses, they are even more worried about being challenged by interviewers. me either.

Calmly deal with your own strengths and weaknesses, and you should not just prepare very official words for the outside world. There are also a lot of clichés in the templates on XHS. Before I really knew myself, I would also copy some classic textbooks, but I found that every time If the questioner's method of questioning changes, my interpretation will change, which will cause corresponding changes in my understanding of myself during the continuous interview process. Based on this, I specifically consulted a professional Gallup coach and made a complete personal assessment. Based on my strengths, I understood them as several strengths that turned into talents, and how to leverage strengths and avoid weaknesses through relative weaknesses.

Finally, the answer to this question was confirmed - the process of allowing the interviewer to get to know me more deeply, understand who I am, what I can do, and what parts of me are comfortable in doing these things. What are the parts of the problem that I need the support of the team for, and what are the parts that I can overcome independently. After answering with this kind of thinking, the interviewer will feel that his eyes are brightened. At least the person opposite is "sober".

Next is some interview experience and summary. I just list some interview questions that are meaningful from my point of view. They may not fully represent the overall level of the company’s interviewers. They are only for students who want to pay attention to 

[josnashak69]

Use topics of interest

Why use interest culture instead of single fan culture? Because I feel that although fan culture has its value, its influence is no longer what it used to be. Although there are indeed some loyal fans who follow a certain star for a long time, such examples are rare.

Interest culture covers a wider scop, HE Tuber involving lifestyle, hobbies, entertainment, emotions, food, sports and many other fields. These points of interest can quickly switch, bring people together, and form a resonance among large groups.

If you often watch short videos, you will find that many topics can quickly arouse widespread resonance. For example: What have I lost this year? Life without hands is meaningless. Princess, please get in the car...

I remember that there was a time when Oriental Leaf was particularly popular. After careful research, I found that because many people felt depressed during that time, the copywriting it provided touched this emotional need and provided people with psychological compensation, so it became popular.

Provide a field

Many brands know that leveraging trending topics is part of topical marketing.

But have you ever thought about why, despite countless topics emerging on big platforms every day, many brands struggle to capture these hot spots? Or, why do some KOLs or ordinary people become famous with just one sentence?

The key lies in the "closed loop" of marketing.

From taking advantage of the situation to using the topic, we must eventually form an instruction. This instruction is like, we need to complete a certain task and go to a certain place to check in.

KOLs and amateurs can complete a certain command on the platform immediately, so they can earn more than 100,000, but what about brands? Generally, the lack of instructions after participation makes it unclear what to do next, so it is difficult to trigger actual actions.

If you don’t believe me, think about it, are the dance instructions for “Subject 3” provided by Haidilao? Of course not, it is popular on short video platforms, but now many people are eating, and when thinking about subject three, why go to Haidilao?

Because Haidilao has successfully transformed this online hot spot into an offline experience, allowing customers to experience this popular culture in physical stores. Therefore, people are willing to experience and interact.

Just like Mixue Bingcheng, every action on the Internet guides you to participate or purchase in an offline store.

These three points have become Haidilao's standard moves. Perhaps in the future, more popular dances, topics, and memes will become secret codes and traffic passwords for eating hot pot. Think about it, right?

Summary

You can learn Haidilao marketing. Compared with the series of memes such as Subject 3, Princess Please Get in the Car, Every Cause Must Have a Fruit, I’m Too Difficult, perhaps the brand should stop and think about whether the current users have really changed?

columnist

Wang Zhiyuan, public account: Wang Zhiyuan, author of the best-selling book "Compound Interest Thinking", everyone is a product manager columnist. Internet scholars, the technological Internet on the left, and individual cognitive growth on the right.

This article was originally published on Everyone is a Product Manager. Reprinting without permission is prohibited.

The title picture comes from Unsplash and is based on the CC0 license.

The opinions in this article represent only the author's own. The Renren Product Manager platform only provides information storage space services.

[josnashak69]

Entertainment services

After piloting Yingma in a city, Haidilao realized that providing diversified derivative services could increase customer satisfaction and significantly increase turnover. Therefore, just play as popular as you want, starting from the Dragon Boat Festival, open all services that can be provided around fans.

In the past, when I went to HE Tuber eat hot pot, I only watched ramen performances and listened to the Happy Birthday song. Now, influenced by celebrity fan culture, some new entertainment elements are gradually introduced, such as K-POP, glass cleaning, and the recently popular subject three.

Even if Aiyouteng (Youku, iQiyi, Tencent Video) has not yet successfully created a mainland entertainment singing stage, Haidilao has also begun to try.

In Xi'an, they noticed that tourists here almost always go to the Tang Dynasty to cosplay, put on Hanfu, experience the ancient culture, take photos and play; to make it more convenient for everyone, Haidilao started a Hanfu rental business directly online, and took photos for 99 yuan. All the work in the studio is included, from hair washing, makeup, DIY bracelets, and manicures. Except for the shooting, which cannot be done for you, everything else is taken care of.

In Wuxi, Haidilao found that many customers were busy at work during the day and had no time to wash their hair, so they simply introduced hair washing services in the store. The products are not inferior, including Dyson hair dryers and recliners with massage functions.

There are also more detailed services, such as the "frozen roses" launched on Valentine's Day.

 Consumers can bring their own roses, and the store provides transparent cups and ice cubes to seal the flowers in them.

Later, the more I played, the bigger it became.

According to public information, they have simply established an internal incentive mechanism and are committed to meeting the various needs of customers. They will also invite some KOLs, anchors, and celebrities into the store to check in.

These innovative services have made Haidilao frequently searched on the Internet and become the focus of various hot topics, such as "It's not that male models can't afford it, but Haidilao is more cost-effective" and "What is the secret code for Haidilao gifts?" ?" and more than 50.

Netizens have commented that Haidilao's desperate efforts to make money make the community feel ashamed; Haidilao should earn this money.

On the other hand, service changes have also made Haidilao realize that abandoning the traditional single service model and instead adopting an entertainment-based approach and combining fan culture to serve customers will be more touching.

This strategy is similar to an amusement park using the appearance and talents of NPCs to attract customers.

Maybe they didn't think too much about it at first and just wanted customers to have fun and stop by for a meal. But it turns out that this kind of roll is very useful. Some analysts pointed out that in the second half of this year, some Haidilao stores had a table turnover rate of more than 5 times.

The question is, is this kind of business suitable?

Nowadays, more and more service industries are beginning to tap the personal potential of employees, and services are becoming more and more innovative, but this has also caused some controversy, because there are always "i" type people who cannot accept this high profile.

One time, I went to dinner with a friend. When the food was served, my friend said jokingly, "Isn't your birthday two days away?". When the waiter heard this, I got very angry.

At first, I was very happy to be given a bowl of clear soup noodles with eggs. After a while, a group of people came forward to sing, which was a bit too much. Although I am not that sociophobic, but when a group of people stand in front of you, you can't I moved my chopsticks and listened to them finish singing in embarrassment. It was really a bit of a social scene.

Another time, I went to "Oriental Famous Haircut" to get my hair cut.

Just in time for their 10th anniversary celebration, the "Thanks for You" event. At two o'clock in the afternoon, all the staff suddenly stopped what they were doing and began to sing songs around the customers.

I had just cut half of my hair, and I couldn’t stand up even while I was sitting there. As a result, my stylist also went to sing. A group of people gathered around you and sang "Thank you for having you". It was really drunk. I don’t know how other people feel about this sudden style of painting. At least, it seems to me to be a disturbance.

3. Value-added services

From the perspective of business strategy, Haidilao is obsessed with providing services and continues to practice it. It is indeed of great significance in promoting industry service innovation and development. Moreover, value-added services actually extend the business scope vertically and help improve the brand. Visibility and competitiveness.

for example:

Manicures, birthday celebrations, shoe shines, and live dance performances are all based on in-depth exploration of consumer needs, enriching the experience while increasing sales and traffic.

If a company provides good services, it will definitely have an impact on the industry. Just like the "cowardly" hotpot owned by Jiumaojiu Group, everyone is scrambling to imitate it.

When you go to have a meal, you can see "Who cares how old he is, long live happiness, who can be a normal person to encourage you to eat," and there are also two-dimensional waiters who come to the station and sing, dance, and dance in unison, and they are serving you food just a second ago Little brother, I will transform into a Dancing King next to you.

This is not cowardice, this is social bullish syndrome.

If a person over 35 years old eats it, it will be a life-changing experience. The most important thing is that the dance has become the unique cultural label for their hot pot to be recognized, just like a super symbol that distinguishes them from other brands.

But have you ever thought that such high requirements for employees in the service industry, especially in an environment like Haidilao, may conflict with certain values ​​of the company.

On the one hand, the company emphasizes team spirit and employee personal development, but on the other hand, the constant increase in performance pressure and talent display will crowd out those employees with average abilities but hard work.

In the service industry, employees have different cultures and educational backgrounds, and their main task is to provide good services rather than display talents. If too much emphasis is placed on performance and entertainment elements, employees who have solid work abilities but are not good at performing will inevitably feel marginalized, causing stress and psychological burden.

From a customer perspective, I have a different perspective.

When I visited Hainan before, the catering services and barber shops there never offered value-added services. What did they offer? The answer is "professional".

Similar to, if you want to get a haircut, the store will not do anything fancy, they will just massage your head and neck for 40 minutes, free of charge, no sales. You go to eat and feel satisfied, and they will give you a dish directly. If you can't eat it, they will make a membership record, and if you have a dish in your name, you can eat it for free next time.

Presumably these are what people need.

The reason why Haidilao founder Zhang Yong emphasizes service is to treat people as human beings, give trust and respect, and first improve employee satisfaction, which will naturally lead to customer satisfaction.

Beike Zuohui once studied Haidilao's high-quality reproduction capabilities. Later, Beike's own mission was formulated as "a dignified service provider, a better life." I think he was probably inspired by this.

In my opinion, these so-called services are just marketing disguises.

And it is a marketing strategy centered on emotions. In any case, Haidilao can achieve the best mid-term net profit since its listing within one year, and can continue to grow in the second half of the year, which undoubtedly proves that its approach has merit. .

[josnashak69]

Haidilao makes money through “marketing”

Haidilao has always won with service and has set a track for service involution. After being hit by the black swan incident, how did Haidilao survive the desperate situation and rebound from the bottom? Recommended HE Tuber reading to friends who are interested in marketing~

Originally, it originated from Huang Tieying's book "Haidilao, You Can't Learn". After reading it, I found that everything written was correct, but it was indeed impossible to learn. People sell services, and services are sublimated to a group of people and become cultural concepts. How can you learn concepts from a book? Later, I was curious about this company. It was due to the strong resilience of this brand after the black swan incident in the past two years when people were unable to go out and had a severe impact on offline catering.

Let’s look at a set of data: According to Haidilao’s official 6-year mid-year report, from 2018 to 2023, the net profit in the first half of the year (including Tehai International business) was 646 million yuan, 911 million yuan, -965 million yuan, 94.53 million yuan, -267 million yuan. billion, 2.2 billion yuan.

In other words, all the money earned based on strength was lost. In the first half of the sixth year, the company made a comeback and earned another 2.2 billion in one go. There is no doubt that Haidilao will become more popular in 2023. There are many success factors behind this, such as profit margin and labor cost optimization, which have brought stable efficiency improvements to the company. However, in addition to these macro-operation factors, I think there is another aspect that cannot be ignored, and that is the variable "marketing" of services.

1. Efficient service

In the 1960s, Professor Jerome McCarthy of Michigan State University in the United States summarized marketing as The Marketing Theory of 4Ps in his "Basic Marketing".

We might as well start with it.

Think about it, when a restaurant group company has standardized stores, products, and prices, how can it improve its profit-making efficiency? The answer lies in "table turnover rate and passenger flow".

What is table turnover rate?

The number of times each table is used (customers finish their meal and leave) in a day or a period of time. In other words, it measures how many customers a restaurant can serve in a given period of time.

for example:

If there are 10 tables in a restaurant, and each table is used by two groups of people on average during dinner time (assuming 4 hours), then the table turnover rate is 2.

A high table turnover rate means that the restaurant can serve more customers more efficiently, thereby increasing revenue. So, what was Haidilao's table turnover rate in the past few years? Let’s make a less rigorous but very interesting comparison:

Assuming that Haidilao's turnover rate in a certain fiscal year is compared with Haidilao's stock price in the following year, it is not difficult to find that to a certain extent,

 the turnover rate can be regarded as an "important indicator" of its stock price.

Taking 2018 as an example, the turnover rate reached 5. Then in 2019, Haidilao's stock price rose by approximately 83% . Entering 2019, the turnover rate has dropped slightly to 4.8 , but the stock price increase in 2020 is still as high as 93% .

However, by 2020, the turnover rate dropped to 3.5 , followed by a more than 70% share price drop in 2021 . The turnover rate will further drop to 3.1 in 2021 , while the stock price will increase by approximately 26% in 2022 .

By 2022, the turnover rate will remain at 3.0 , but within two months at the end of the year, Haidilao's stock price rose sharply by 92% . By the beginning of 2023, the turnover rate in the first half of the year had rebounded to 3.3 , and it is still rising.

The comparative figures are obvious. Only when the turnover rate goes up can you make money back. You see, the turnover rate reached 5 in 2018, and it made 600 million in the middle of that year. This leads to a key question: How to increase the turnover rate?

You might say that the waiters move faster, ordering and paying for food can be completed quickly; the tables and chairs are arranged properly, so that both adults and children can sit down comfortably; guests can make reservations online, eliminating the need to wait on site; and even the dishes are cooked quickly .

However, to put these ideas together, there are basically two key points:

attract more customers

Let them eat efficiently without being sloppy, forming a cycle. Only in this way can the restaurant's table turnover rate increase.

After the black swan incident in 2022, people began to go out more and relax, but it is still a big problem to get everyone to swarm into the restaurant at this time.

Zhang Yong once said that when eating hot pot, people quickly cannot tell whether the taste is good or bad, but they know clearly whether the service is good or not. Therefore, if you want to attract customers, you must provide good service.

Just thinking about service, what if there is no one?

In the first half of 2023, they saw an opportunity. Concerts were held one after another across the country. Once the concert was over, fans wanted to continue the excitement. After the evening, there was a lot of demand for meals and taxis.

Moreover, data from the China Performance Association also pointed out that the number of commercial performances in the first half of the year increased five times compared with the same period last year; the number of audiences increased 10 times. There were more than 500 large-scale concerts and music festivals with more than 5.5 million viewers.

You have to catch this.

Therefore, Haidilao set up dozens of buses to play the stars' songs after the stars' concerts to help fans maintain their emotional value. When these fans arrive at the restaurant, the store prepares speakers, microphones, banners, posters, and a special carnival area for fans.

In this way, fans can cook hot pot, hold a party, and make money, killing three birds with one stone.

[josnashak69]

The effect of high price and good quality

The anchoring effect sends the first signal, and the subsequent contrasting effect sends the second signal. Peloton CEO John Foley discovered the third signal through trial and error when pricing new exercise bikes: "In the early days, we priced the Peloton bike at $1,200. As a result, we learned HE Tuber from customers that if you ask for $1,200, then The bike must be of poor quality. So we raised the price to $2,000, and sales suddenly increased because people said, 'Oh, look at the price, this must be a quality bike.'"

We often hear that good quality is cheap, but price is also a signal of quality, so make sure you make the right impression.

For example, if you reduce the price significantly ($750,000) in order to sell your house quickly, it will give buyers a confusing signal: is there any defect in the house? Making a buyer think the product (your house) is more expensive can change her perception of her budget and may even make her get more enjoyment out of her new purchase.

To extend: today is your birthday, and you want to bring a bottle of wine home to celebrate. Normally, the wine you drink costs around $20 a bottle, but thinking of a special occasion, you decide to buy wine with a price tag of $50. You don't have a specific wine in mind; you just assume that the $50 wine tastes better than the $20 wine. Just like the phenomenon of higher sales after the price of luxury goods increases...

Principle of reciprocity

Your first asking price anchors the buyer, and subsequent offers take advantage of the contrast effect and signal high quality. Here, we discuss the final psychological factor: reciprocity, the natural tendency of humans to return favors to others.

Reciprocity is a powerful force. Keep this in mind when negotiating with buyers. If you start the negotiation with a high enough first offer, you leave yourself plenty of room to be "nice" to the buyer - by pretending to make a big concession (going from an offer of $900,000 to $87 million (the actual reserve price was US$850,000), the buyer gradually made concessions, and finally the transaction was completed at no less than the reserve price.

To expand a bit: Successful salespeople have long used the principle of reciprocity to generate higher sales. Robert Cialdini of Arizona State University points out in his classic book "Influence" that the principle of reciprocity can induce goodwill even if the original kindness is not genuine but is artificially created specifically to induce reciprocation. One example he gave was Hare Krishna's charity, which distributed free flowers to passers-by and within seconds asked for donations (with a high success rate).

Write at the end

Change is difficult, but knowing the right incentives can skillfully leverage the fulcrum.

Through several African legends, we realize that the power of inspiration is far greater than imagined;

By identifying the costs of mixed signals, we can set correct and effective signals from a psychological perspective to ensure incentive success;

In order to maintain the long-term effect of incentives, strategies such as external incentives, commitment, social networking, and temptation bundling are used in turn, each with its own merits;

Finally, taking negotiation as an example, motivation can help us identify problems, improve actions, and achieve the goal of a better life.

The above is the entire content of the "Underlying Logic Analysis of the Incentive System". The reference comes from Uri Gneezy's new book, Growth Work Practice & Research. If you have different opinions, please leave a message in the comment area below for discussion.

*Reference: Uri Gneezy's "Mixed Signals: How Incentives Really Work"

columnist

Add fish and meat, official account: Notes on adding fish and meat, everyone is a product manager columnist. Internet growth operation, trans from mini program-App-platform.

This article was originally published on Everyone is a Product Manager and may not be reproduced without permission.

The title picture comes from Unsplash, based on the CC0 agreement

The opinions in this article represent only the author's own. The Renren Product Manager platform only provides information storage space services.

[josnashak69]

Temptation bundling: combining what you want to do with what you should do

The positive benefits brought about by good habits often take a long time to reap. So the hardest problem in behavior change is this: the costs often occur in the present, while the benefits are far in the future. For example, the benefits of exercise are intangible and take a long time to HE Tuber show up, but the gratification of sitting around eating junk food is immediate.

Imagine it’s two o’clock in the afternoon on a Saturday, you’re lying on the couch, you’ve finished watching an episode of your favorite TV series on Aiyou Teng Mang, and you’re about to click “continue watching,” but you remember you’re supposed to go to the gym today— — Complete a physical exercise program at least 2 times a week. What would you do in this situation?

Temptations fill our daily lives, such as playing mobile phones, playing games, and eating sweets. When faced with the difficult choice between "what to do" and "should do", we usually choose the former.

Are there ways you can develop good habits while reducing the guilt and wasted time associated with tempting activities? Researchers such as Katy Milkman of Wharton Business School and Julia Minson of Harvard University have proposed an ingenious method - they call it "temptation bundling . " This concept bundles "want" activities that are immediately satisfying (watching the next episode of your favorite show) with "should" activities that have delayed benefits and require willpower (going to the gym).

To bolster their theory, they also conducted motivational experiments: using engaging audio novels (a "want" activity) coupled with exercise (a "should" behavior). Participants were randomly divided into three groups:

Control group: Participants received a $25 gift card;

Experimental Group 1: Participants had access to an iPod containing four audio novels of their choice, but they could only listen to them in the gym;

Experimental Group 2: Participants had access to an iPod containing four audio novels of their choice, but they could listen to them at any time.

As predicted by the temptation bundling insights, participants in Experimental Group 2 went to the gym 29% more frequently than participants in the control group, and participants in Experimental Group 1 went to the gym 51% more frequently than participants in the control group. This increase highlights the effectiveness of the commitment mechanism, which completely limits what you "want to do" to what you "should do".

Understanding the power of temptation bundling, we can use it to promote a variety of beneficial behaviors, not just exercise.

 For example, if you realize that you lack the willpower to eat healthily, you can make it a rule that you can only watch your favorite shows while eating healthy foods; if you always procrastinate on housework, make it a rule that you can only listen to your favorite shows while doing the dishes or laundry. Audiobooks. If you realize you lack the willpower to do something beneficial, create your own "temptation bundle" by pairing it with a complementary thing you want to do.

Similarly, we often see this strategy in business, such as the point malls of various apps. After completing tasks to earn points, the points can be exchanged for attractive physical goods.

4. Remove barriers: Make action without resistance

There is a common and easy-to-understand formula: Action = Momentum – Resistance. In addition to the above three incentives to continuously increase motivation, we can also reduce resistance to action and make action smoother and longer-lasting.

Not only are you lazy if you don’t want to go to the gym, but it’s also expensive to get a card? By providing free gym benefits to employees, employees’ exercise frequency increases, their living conditions improve, and their work efficiency improves.

Energy conservation and emission reduction are always slogans, but household energy consumption remains high? Energy bills and energy saving and emission reduction tips are regularly provided to every household, making it easier for ordinary people to participate.

Is it too cumbersome to confirm your address and credit card account number when ordering online? Decades ago, the father of Amazon e-commerce innovated the "one-click input" of last information. Customers only need one operation to make subsequent shopping smoothly. This method is also widely used in up-and-coming e-commerce platforms.

4. Example application: Understand incentives to make negotiations easier

Negotiation is an important form of interpersonal communication, and psychological tactics play an important role in the negotiation process. Incentives are a means of motivating the other party to actively participate in negotiations. By giving the other party certain benefits and rewards, we encourage them to cooperate more actively with us.

Imagine that you are about to change your job in another city and urgently need to sell a house ($850,000) you own . During the negotiation process with buyers, how can you master motivational skills to achieve negotiation success rates and pricing goals?

1. Anchoring and Adjustment

Before and after a suitable buyer comes along, the first step in selling your home is to make an offer. That puts an anchor on the negotiating table: a price that’s high enough to surprise the buyer ($900,000), but reasonable enough to give the buyer a chance to make a counteroffer adjustment.

By extension, the same applies when negotiating with HR on salary: it should not be too low, which would appear to indicate a low sense of value; nor should it be too high, which would end the negotiation directly. It is best to base it on the market price, with a floating range.

2. Contrast effect

A sufficiently high and optimistic first offer not only serves as an anchor for buyers, but also serves as a reference point for every subsequent offer and the final sale price. It’s the gift that keeps on giving, and everything that comes later in the negotiation will be compared and contrasted with your first offer. We call this automatic comparison the contrast effect.

To demonstrate this effect in action, let’s look at another example from the real estate world – renting a home.

This is a common technique: After hearing the renters' needs and budget, the housing agent will first show them houses with poor conditions within the budget, which the renters are very dissatisfied with; then they will show them houses with good conditions that are far beyond the budget. The renter likes the house, but the price is not suitable; in the end, he will show him a house that is a little over the budget, but the conditions are in the middle. At this time, the renter often agrees to increase the budget, accepts the house and signs the contract.

Why didn’t the agent show the third type of house at the beginning? In fact, the main reason is the contrasting effect of price and conditions. In contrast, the third type of house has become the best choice in a relative sense, regardless of whether it is the best choice in an absolute sense.

[josnashak69]

External motivation: the first step to opening up a new situation

People generally believe that fear is more effective than profit induction and can quickly prompt people to take action to make changes. This may sound like a reasonable explanation, but scientific research HE Tuber shows that warnings have very limited impact on behavior.

Just like a large number of diabetic patients who are advised by doctors to diet, abstain from alcohol and exercise more, they still cannot help but overeat, drink alcohol and are too lazy to exercise.

Is it a mistake for people to fail to change their behavior? Is it self-inflicted? In fact, it is human nature. Everything is always difficult at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end. Abraham Lincoln also said the following:

How to change? Professor Uri Gneezy proposed in "Mixed Signals" that when people are very motivated to change, behavioral scientists usually try to introduce external incentives as the first step to break the impasse.

Just imagine, when you plan to exercise for 1 hour every day, it may be painful the first time you go to the gym, only exercise for 10 minutes, and come home sweaty and exhausted. When I woke up the next day, I was sore all over and had no fat loss at all. But if you stick to it, you can accumulate exercise practice and experience.

 The fashionable saying is to build your own "habit stock."

Working out is more enjoyable (or at least less painful) when your fitness results are clear. For example, when you lose a few pounds and your leg muscles are vaguely visible, this will make you feel better in your daily life, healthier, and better able to balance life and work.

Exercise is indeed anti-human, and researchers have also conducted incentive experiments to test their conjecture: whether providing incentives for college students to join campus gyms can encourage them to develop long-term exercise habits.

First, commit $25 to all students to go to the gym at least once during the week. Then, after the students completed the tasks and received their rewards, they were randomly divided into two groups:

Incentive group: If you go to the gym at least 8 times in the next four weeks, you will get an extra $100;

Control group: verbally encouraged to continue going to the gym, but no reward provided.

As expected, the researchers found a significant increase in gym visits in the incentive group that continued into week five (for the $100 effort).

Then the researchers stopped the incentives, and interestingly: Over the next few months, the incentive group was on average twice as likely to go to the gym. The increase in gym attendance was entirely driven by changes in people who did not go to the gym frequently before.

Experiments show that it is indeed possible to promote the formation of good habits by providing incentive compensation for a sufficient number of events.

How do we apply this principle in reality? Commit to giving yourself a little extra reward after each workout (after changing it up). Or, just as Nintendo released the game "Ring Fit Adventure" to great acclaim, by combining game rewards with exercise rewards, our rejection of fitness and the initial difficulty will be reduced a lot.

2. Commitment mechanisms and social networks: making it harder to give up

Although initial external motivation can help us develop short-term habits and get you started taking action. But in terms of long-term effects, it may not be ideal.

Just like the student fitness motivation experiment mentioned above, after extending the observation time to half a year, it was found that after a winter vacation, the exercise frequency of the students in the motivation group returned to a low level.

In order to enhance motivation and maintain habits, if possible, we can also add other psychological strategies, such as commitment mechanisms and social networks, which use social signals and self-signals to increase the cost of "giving up".

(1) Commitment mechanism

Given the issue of self-control, how do we ensure that people follow through on an incentive program? One way is to use the commitment mechanism: lock yourself into a plan that would otherwise be difficult to achieve through willpower alone.

One of the oldest examples comes from Greek mythology: sirens were dangerous creatures of the sea that lured nearby sailors with their enchanting songs. Legend has it that King Odysseus of Ithaca came up with a strategy to avert disaster: He tied himself to the mast of his ship to prevent him from being confused and jumping overboard after hearing the siren's song.

The researchers also conducted incentive experiments to verify the commitment mechanism: correcting the self-control problem of bodybuilders.

Incentive group: Subjects will receive a $10 reward for visiting the company gym three times a week. After the incentive period ends, half of the people are required to pay a deposit and promise to go to the company's gym in the next two months and not exercise for more than 14 days in a row, otherwise the deposit will be donated to charity.

Control group: no incentives.

Is the commitment mechanism effective? The answer is yes. It helps form habits and enhances their long-term effects. Two months after the initial incentive ended, the experimental group that received the commitment contract maintained half of the increase in physical activity caused by the incentive.

In business, we also often see such strategies, such as "Punch in for xx days and you can purchase for 0 yuan", "Punch in to learn vocabulary for free"...

This strategy takes advantage of loss aversion . In addition, participants experienced the power of self-signals : breaking commitments to achieve goals sends negative self-signals that indicate weakness of will and undermines self-image. On the contrary, keeping a promise sends a positive signal and shows that you are determined, thereby improving your self-image and prompting you to persist in action.

(2) Social networks

In addition to this, meeting more people who are motivated to do it will also increase your motivation.

Imagine two scenarios, both taking place on a lazy Sunday afternoon: In the first scenario, even though you promised yourself to go to the gym today, your couch feels extra comfy. Another scenario is that you're also relaxing on the couch, but suddenly you get a text from a friend saying she's on her way to the gym. You remember you and her talking about working out together. Under what circumstances are you more likely to get up from the couch?

Researchers have also conducted related motivation experiments and found that if people who are motivated to exercise have more friends who are also motivated to exercise, then the number of times they go to the gym will increase. Conversely, the more unmotivated control group friends the experimental group students had, the less often they went to the gym. People's exercise behavior seems to be heavily influenced by their friends.

Also in business, such strategies are not uncommon: WeChat Reading’s design of team reading to earn points/draw experience cards is a good combination of WeChat’s strong social advantages; the “collaboration culture” that became popular this summer also uses social partnering The plan will be carried forward - travel companionship, meal companionship, study companionship, photo-taking companionship...

This commitment to not letting your friends down exemplifies the power of social signaling. If you cancel plans with friends at the last minute, you send a signal to your friends that you are unreliable, which can hurt your social image. On the other hand, consistently keeping your promises and sticking to your plans can improve your social profile and thus inspire continued action.

[josnashak69]

Loss aversion incentives will be more effective than gain incentives

In Chicago's minority neighborhoods, students generally perform poorly academically. In order to motivate teachers to improve teaching effectiveness, some people have conducted different types HE Tuber of motivation experiments:

Positive (gain) incentives: Teachers can receive up to $8,000 at the end of the year if your students' performance improves during the school year.

Reverse (loss aversion) incentives: Give teachers an $8,000 reward at the beginning of the year. At the end of the year, if your students' performance improves during the school year, you can keep it. If not, you need to give it back.

Take a guess, will people work harder to avoid returning the money they deposited into their accounts at the beginning of the year, or would they prefer to be rewarded at the end of the year?

The final results showed that compared with students from teachers who did not receive any rewards, the performance of students who received gain incentives did not improve, but the performance of students who received loss-aversion incentives improved by ten percent.

This is a good example of how using earnings incentives can lead you to conclude that incentives don't work; after all, student performance isn't improving as a result of being motivated by a earnings framework. The correct conclusion, however, is that you need to understand the psychology behind incentives to make them work.

The same principle has also been verified in other cases: 

when the company's 5,000 employees are encouraged to choose green travel methods to go to work and not drive, there are also 3 group incentive methods:

Those who do not drive every day will receive a daily reward of $5;

For those who don't drive every day, there will be a drawing on Friday, and the winner will be awarded $500.

There will be a draw for everyone on Friday, regardless of whether they have driven or not, and the winner will be awarded $500. However, if the winner is found not to insist on traveling green during the draw, the winner will be disqualified and the draw will continue.

The final results showed that compared with the control group, the first group reduced the number of drivers by 10%, the second group reduced by 18%, but the third group reduced by 26%, which was the best effect.

This is what “loss aversion” does, a psychological principle proposed by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman: rewards are evaluated relative to a reference point, so the outcome is encoded in our brains as Gain or loss, and the loss is greater than the equivalent gain. That is, people are more affected by trying to prevent losses than by trying to gain.

(3) Low incentives are suitable for social value, and high incentives are suitable for self-interested incentives.

Most of the incentive programs we've discussed so far use direct compensation to motivate people's efforts. However, sometimes our actions are driven by other reasons, such as helping others (generating social value).

For example, if a company wants to motivate employees to quit smoking, there are two incentive programs:

An employee who smokes will receive a $5 reward for each week he or she quits smoking.

Every week an employee who smokes quits can donate $5 to a local charity.

Which incentive design do you think is more effective in motivating employees to quit smoking? Note that the incentive value in both cases is low.

The results showed that compared with the control group, the number of quitters in the cash reward group only increased by 1%, but the number of quitters in the charity reward group increased by 10%.

Why are social value incentives better? Jim Andreoni of the University of California, San Diego, calls it the “warm glow” effect: the joy and satisfaction that comes from doing what you can to help others.

Just like donating blood or being a firefighter, it's always a matter of volunteering, not a high-paying reward. This sense of pride in volunteering is a commodity a community cannot put a price on, a personal reward that belongs to those who care deeply.

So, does that mean social value incentives are always better than cash incentives? Under what circumstances should we use them respectively? The researchers designed an ingenious experiment to test this problem: recruiting college students into groups to test manual force counting values, and giving different levels of cash incentives and charitable donation incentives.

In the first group, those with higher dynamometer values ​​will receive $5;

In the second group, those with higher dynamometer scores received $5 but donated it to charity;

In the third group, those with higher dynamometer values ​​will receive $100;

In the fourth group, those with higher ergometer scores received $100, but donated it to charity.

Results showed that when the incentive was low ($5), students exerted more effort when working for charity than when working for themselves. However, when the incentive was high ($100), students under the social value incentive no longer worked harder than students under the cash incentive.

This finding tells us that social value incentive designs work better when rewards are smaller , because we are generally insensitive to the size of charitable donations and more concerned about the fact that we contributed. On the other hand, self-serving incentive designs work better when the rewards are large , because while small monetary rewards crowd out our motivation, we are very sensitive to large amounts of money.

(4) Elements of honor incentives: audience, scarcity, awarding organization, selection process

Honor incentives, also known as awards and medals. How to use honor to motivate people to make a difference? How can signals be used to enhance honor incentives and shape the stories the incentives convey?

Honor incentives are multifaceted, and different aspects of it can alter the self- and social signals sent. Therefore, its success also depends on these design details.

The first key to honor incentives is audience: Part of the value of the Oscars is having a lot of people watching. The social signal value of winning a prize privately, when only a few people know about it, is less valuable. However, sometimes the audience does not have to be present at the award ceremony for the award to have social signaling value; it is enough for them to see the plaque or statuette on their office shelf.

Another important aspect of honor incentives is its scarcity: the scarcer the award, the greater its social and self-signaling value, which would otherwise serve as a distraction. The Nobel Prize attracts attention partly because of the rarity of the event. If the award were given out weekly instead of annually, its prestige and reputation would be damaged.

The third key to honor motivation is the award-winning organization: Marlon Brando, the legendary actor and film director, won the 45th Academy Award for Best Actor through the "Godfather" series of movies. But at the award ceremony, he refused to accept it and arranged for an Indian to speak on stage. The reason is that as a member of the Indigenous Equal Rights Image Committee, he condemned the Academy Awards organization's frequent discrimination against indigenous peoples. Brando's boycott shows what happens when the values ​​of the award giver are at odds with those of the recipient.

The fourth key to honor incentives is the fairness of the selection process: it is easy to understand that if the selection process of an honorary award is full of insider trading, then the importance of the award will continue to decline until it is forgotten.

3. Develop good habits: 4 scientific methods of long-term motivation

Don’t stay up late, have savings, keep working out, and be single successfully... At the beginning of the new year, setting a flag seems to be one of the biggest rituals for adults.

At the beginning of 2021, the "2021 Intermittent Complacency Report" released by Taobao Education showed that consumers set millions of Flags in the first week of the new year. For example: "This year, I want to get in good shape and lose at least 10 pounds." However, a few weeks later, I canceled my gym membership on the grounds that I was too busy at work and had no time.

Gym data validates this phenomenon: more gym memberships were purchased in January than any other month, accounting for about 11% of total annual membership purchases. However, approximately 50% of new fitness enthusiasts will abandon their membership by the end of January, and only 22% of them will stick with it until October.

This may be the norm for many people. It’s easy to declare a goal, and it’s easy to set ambitious long-term goals. The hard part is following through and delivering on your commitments.

So, what exactly is the problem? How should we solve it?

In fact, introducing external incentives can help us change our behavior and develop good habits. Can we understand the psychology behind people's inability to consistently change their behavior? What methods can you use to help yourself develop good habits? Or, when we want to make a change, how to make the change with minimal cost.

These methods can also be used to design incentive systems to allow target users to achieve long-term and effective incentive goals.