Brooklyn-based software developer Josh Wardle created it last year as a gift for his partner, who was obsessed with word games like the New York Times’ “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/puzzles/spelling-bee">Spelling Bee</a>”. Wardle put the game up for free online in October, and it quickly went all hockey-stick. There were <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2022/01/20/millennials-are-driving-force-behind-wordles-success-poll-suggests/?sh=70b6e76c6e72">90 people people playing it in November, 300,000 by early January, and only a few weeks later, about 2 million a week.</a> One survey estimates that 14% of American adults are playing Wordle.

The Word About Wordle

Most successful ideas do not arrive out of nowhere; they’re extensions or riffs on existing ones.This is particularly true with games, where tinkering with an existing form of play can create something that’s i) delightfully new while ii) also being familiar. That combo of “new” yet “familiar” is pure gold. Do something too derivative and people yawn; do something too novel and they’re baffled. The path to wild success is hitting that midpoint.

Six Design Lessons from the Success of Wordle: No Need To Reinvent The Wheel

Living as we do in a capitalist society, it’s easy to assume the only reason people would engage in creative labour is for profit. But the world of culture doesn’t work that way. It’s always been full of creators who are<ol><li>astonishingly productive and</li><li>propelled by desires other than money.</li></ol>The sheer uncommerciality of the venture is weirdly refreshing. It stands in total contrast to the just-add-water hucksterism of today’s influencers and tech firms, who are constantly trying to shove sponsorships into their work or shake their audience upside down to see what loose change rattles out.

Six Design Lessons from the Success of Wordle: Making Something As a Gift is a Powerful Motivation

When we’re creating things, it’s normal to start worrying about how our audience will react. All those different people, with different aesthetics! Some of them are gonna love this part of what you’re doing, but hate this other part. Worrying about this can lead you into a rathole of self-censorship, where you try to satisfy everyone and wind up satisfying no one.Wardle was making his game for just one person. When you’re in a mental dialogue with a single person, your creative decisions are sharpened.

Six Design Lessons from the Success of Wordle: Make Things For An Audience of One

It’s frequently very valuable to pay attention how your audience is interacting with your work. They see things you don’t, and come up with ideas you can’t. In the early days of Twitter, it was clever users who invented the retweet and the at-reply. To their credit, Twitter’s engineers spotted the behavior and adopted them as native features, and they helped catalyze Twitter’s explosive growth.

Six Design Lessons from the Success of Wordle: Observe What Your Fans Are Doing

Anyone can play Wordle, in any browser. You don’t need to create an account or log in. You don’t need an app store. Wardle avoided every single digital walled garden, and instead went with the most wide-open field available: The web.﻿People are especially enthusiastic about things they can share without having to go through an App Store, or without being bogged down by having lots of their data captured during the experience.

Six Design Lessons from the Success of Wordle: Make Stuff On The Open Web

Wordle offers up only one new word everyday. That’s it. Once you’ve solved the day’s word, you…stop playing. You go do other stuff, like your job or hanging out with your loved ones. Sure, you might hanker to play more Wordle, but you can’t. You gotta wait until tomorrow.Unlike nearly all social media (and most video games), Wordle is not trying to get you narcotically addicted to reopening the app again and again, all day long, in an eye-glazed trance.

Six Design Lessons from the Success of Wordle: Don't Engineer For Addiction

Made me play the game! It's online on the web and free to play!

Brooklyn-based software developer Josh Wardle created it last year as a gift for his partner, who was obsessed with word games like the New York Times’ “Spelling Bee”. Wardle put the game up for free…

Stashed ideas

Six Lessons From the Success of Wordle

The boomerang effect happens when you deliver a message hoping to produce a certain response or reaction, but the reaction turns out to be the opposite of what you had hoped it would be.Some of it stems from a natural desire not to conform. For those who have a stronger natural inclination to assert their autonomy and independence, doing the opposite of what you are asked or told is a way to communicate that you are in control. The boomerang effect is also sometimes called the psychological reactance theory.

The Boomerang Effect

<ul><li>Understand what you are asking: this means understanding your message from the perspective of the audience. And then, it’s creating a targeted and effective message based on that understanding.</li><li>Soften your delivery when the content is tough: If the content is already tough, the delivery needs to be softer.</li><li> Don’t oversell or overcommunicate. You might think that more communication, more messages, a longer presentation will help you persuade the audience and assure our intended response. Research shows that’s not the case.</li></ul>

How to avoid the Boomerang Effect

We can all be better communicators and presenters and humans when we remember:<ul><li>We don’t like messages that remind us we aren’t in control.</li><li>We don’t like to feel pressure to conform.</li><li>We need tough messages to be delivered calmly.</li><li>We like to have choices.</li><li>We don’t want to be bombarded with communication.</li></ul>

Becoming better communicators

The boomerang effect theory shows that our messages can sometimes produce the opposite effect of what we had hoped. Let's learn more.

In the agrarian economy, there were commodities - the things you grow or raise or pull out of the ground, basically vegetables, animals, minerals that you then sell on the open marketplace. It's about supply and availability. But the industrial revolution changed that. Then goods became economic offerings, where we used raw materials to manufacture goods. These goods became commoditised. They are treated like a commodity, and people don't care who makes them; they only care about the price.

From the agrarian to the industrial-based economy

The antidote to commoditisation is customisation. The customisation of a good turned it into a service because it was delivered on demand for a particular person. So we moved from an industrial economy to a service-based economy. It's all about improving quality. Over the past 20odd years, services are being commoditised as well. It means that it's time to move to a new level of economic value beyond the goods and the services.

The service-based economy

What we need at this point is to customize a service. When you customise a service you turn it into a memorable experience. So, we're shifting to an experience economy, where experiences are the predominant economic offering. Experiences cannot be inauthentic, because it happens inside of us. Any authenticity is then becoming the new buying criteria for consumers.

The experience economy

No business can supply an authentic experience because all companies use machinery and are involved with money, making them inauthentic. There are two dimensions to authenticity:<ul><li>Be true to yourself, which is self-directed.</li><li>Be other-directed, which means being what you say you are to others.</li></ul> The key to being true to yourself is knowing who you are as a business and what you've done in the past.

Rendering authenticity

When it comes to being what you say you are, companies can make the mistake of advertising what they're not. That is when you are perceived as fake.To be authentic, provide places for people to experience who you are. For example, to know Starbucks, you have to go and experience them. Authenticity can be summed up into three basic rules:<ol><li>Don't say you're authentic if you're not.</li><li>It's easier to be authentic if you don't say you're authentic.</li><li>If you do say you're authentic, you have to be authentic.</li></ol>

How to be authentic

We have moved from a service-based economy into an experience-based economy. Joseph Pine explains what consumers want in this new economy and how you can provide it to them.

http://www.ted.com Customers want to feel what they buy is authentic, but "Mass Customization" author Joseph Pine says selling authenticity is tough because, well, there's no such thing. He talks about a few experiences that may be artificial but make millions anyway.  TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Watch the Top 10 TEDTalks on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

Joseph Pine: What consumers want

Brands don't normally compliment their competitors because they don't want to give their competitor free publicity, but what happened with Xbox and PlayStation generated a different result when they congratulated each other on Twitter.Apparently, compliments generate over ten times more likes and retweets for the brands than their usual content.

Complimenting Competitors

A new study explored by the Journal of Marketing on brands communicating positively towards their competitor.The study showed that when a brand compliments a competitor, they end up boosting their own reputation AND sales.

Brands Communicating Positively Towards Each Other

The study showed that brand-to-brand praise makes the viewers view the brand as "warmer" -- meaning that they're being perceived as more friendly and trustworthy, after complimenting a competitor.It is this warmth that drives favorable outcomes for the praises—outcomes that include greater brand engagement and higher sales.However, this is only effective when done in an authentic manner. Praise that appears disingenuous will not be accepted as a meaningful indicator of warmth.

Why Brand-to-Brand Praise Leads to Positive Consequences

Managers may wish to capitalize on this opportunity by utilizing brand-to-brand praise as a way to foster a warmer brand image and produce more positive downstream consequences. 

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Six Lessons From the Success of Wordle

The Boomerang Effect

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Joseph Pine: What consumers want

Befriending the Enemy: The Effects of Observing Brand-to-Brand Praise on Consumer Evaluations and Choices

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

#consumerpsychology

IDEAS ABOUT #consumerpsychology

Six Lessons From the Success of Wordle

The Boomerang Effect

It's time to

READ

LIKE

A PRO!

Joseph Pine: What consumers want

Befriending the Enemy: The Effects of Observing Brand-to-Brand Praise on Consumer Evaluations and Choices

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to upgrade
your career