Essays
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How Headspace Hacked Social Proof
Examples of what they’ve done exceptionally well — and the one flaw I’d change.
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Designing for User Confidence: Foursquare Case Study
I’ve recently started using Foursquare as my default restaurant discovery app, but I couldn’t figure out why. Picking a restaurant is a hard problem, but what had Foursquare done so well? After reflecting on the user experience, I’ve noticed several key design choices that help Foursquare users feel more confident and make faster decisions. Below…
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A Behavioral Lens on Being Mortal
What would you be willing to trade to live for two more months? Would you risk paralysis of your lower body? Would you go on a feeding tube? Or would you rather accept death? These are the difficult choices that face many patients and their caregivers. In Being Mortal, Dr. Atul Gawande argues…
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Everything You Thought About Behavioral Economics Is Wrong
The well-known story of how the Economist magazine’s clever pricing led to a dramatic increase in premium subscriptions – an example of the asymmetric dominance or decoy effect1 – is probably incorrect. And it doesn’t really matter. Two separate journal articles published this year have failed to replicate this classic finding after multiple…
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A First Look at Competition and Price on the Federal Health Exchange Marketplace
The federal health insurance exchanges launched in 2013 to a modestly encouraging but tepid insurer response. Anxious at the prospect of developing consumer insurance products to be sold through a relatively untested channel and targeted at a challenging demographic, many large insurers adopted a wait and see approach. While the marketplaces exceeded enrollment targets and…