TechExec 2: Lamborghini vs Ferrari, Hedonic Treadmill, and Friction in User Experiences

(Total read time: 6 minutes)

Hey there,

Welcome to the 2nd edition of TechExec - the newsletter that turbocharges your growth to become a Tech Executive!

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Now to the main content …

As promised, here are this week’s BLTs:

💼 B - a Business concept/theory/story

💝 L - a lifestyle advice

🤖 T - a Tech explainer

💼 B - When customer became competitor: Lamborghini vs Ferrari

Ferruccio Lamborghini was an Italian tractor maker who just happened to own a Ferrari. Mr. Lamborghini hated the clutches on his Ferrari; they would break too easily. The year was 1963, and things were simple back then—no Google reviews, no Twitter bashing. He just showed up at the doors of Enzo Ferrari and laid out his frustrations. He went a step ahead and made recommendations on how to build longer-lasting clutches. Mr. Ferrari couldn’t handle the constructive criticism and famously replied back

Feeling insulted, Mr. Lamborghini drove back home and vowed to make sports cars better than those at Ferrari. He was in luck, as he came across a group of five former Ferrari engineers who got fired because they complained about Mrs. Ferrari (Enzo’s wife) meddling too much on the production floor. Within four months, a factory was built, and the first model that came out was called Lamborghini 350 GT.

💝 L - Hedonic Treadmill

Are you tired of constantly chasing happiness, only to find yourself back at square one? For the majority of the population, this can be a never-ending cycle. You buy a new car, but soon it loses its shine. You get a promotion, but the thrill fades fast. It’s as if we are running on something that is already moving😉😉, like a treadmill.

The Hedonic Treadmill is the idea that no matter what positive changes happen in our lives, we eventually return to our baseline level of happiness. This can be a frustrating concept, especially for those of us who are constantly striving for more. It can leave us feeling unfulfilled and dissatisfied. But there's good news!

Understanding the hedonic treadmill can actually help us appreciate and savor the good moments in life, rather than constantly chasing the next high. Let's focus on finding joy in the present rather than always looking towards the future.

🤖 T - Bad Friction / Good Friction

Imagine a product landing page that asks too many questions, some totally irrelevant, before you can sign up. How about a service whose pricing model is so complicated that you can’t estimate your monthly expenses without using the product? These are examples of bad friction in the product experience. The first example is considered physical friction, as it forces you to spend extra time and energy unnecessarily. The latter example is considered a cognitive friction, as it tests your mental capacity to estimate ROI. As a product manager, your goal should be to limit the bad friction. But can you also take advantage of good friction?

Good friction can reduce churn by prolonging the account cancellation process. Have you tried leaving a platform and noticed how they want to know the reasons behind your dissatisfaction before making an offer you can’t refuse? Good friction can also prevent your users from taking actions that they might regret later. For example, if you try to delete a Github repository, the platform asks you to write down the name of the repository to confirm the deletion. Similarly, AWS S3 wants you to spell out “permanently delete” before you delete a bucket. Good friction can also improve adoption, especially for platforms that employ recommendation systems, like video streaming services or e-book reader apps. In the initial sign-up process, these systems ask you to rate a few titles. The initial ratings are then fed into the recommendation system which spits out a list of titles to watch or read. Forcing users to spend time upfront may sound unintuitive, but it prevents users from leaving the platform later in case they don’t like the recommendations.

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Until next time!

Gaurav