TK PN: The ELAR framework

product management persuasion makePublic

The ELAR stands for Emotion, Action, Ease, and Reward. It's a framework that helps you understand how we make decisions. This knowledge enables you communicate more effectively which in turn makes you more persuasive. It's especially useful in the digital world – websites, blogs, apps, etc.

You can imagine persuasion (i.e., influencing someone to do something) as pushing a big ball up a hill. The hill represents how hard's it's going to be to persuade somebody. Sometimes it's going to be steep, and sometimes it's going to be like a little bump in the road. Ensuring each part of the ELER framework is right, will make the persuasion process easer.

Let's unpack the framework.

Emotion. We always start with emotion because almost all (if not all) decisions are quick intuitive judgments coming from our emotional parts of the brain (related: P: People judge mostly emotionally). There was a study done about people who had an illness that deprived them of emotions. Those people couldn't even decide what to wear or to eat). Yet we wrongly assume that decisions start with logic. How to trigger emotions? Loss or gain of a core desire results in positive or negative emotion. More about that here:

Logic. Once we've made a decision, we will look for arguments that justify that decision. In other words, we need to create a story that justifies our choice. The main vehicles for logic are features, statistics, reliability, and price.

Action. It's the function of motivation (how much we want it) and ability (how hard it is). BJ Fogg's behavioral model is of great use here. In short, we will act if the task is the more we want to do something (higher motivation), the harder it can be. Conversely tk

Reward. The reward's job is to first confirm that decision was good, and second, create a positive association with the action, so we're more likely to perform it again. The higher the reward, the higher the chance that people will repeat the action.

Let's go through an example. Let's take working out. Your younger brother is overweight but doesn't want to work out. How could you persuade her using the ELER framework.

Emotion. You could show them X to display energy,feeling alive. Or, you could show them X to

Logic. Statistics show them X. Price tell them the price of not working out.

Motivation. Buy them a gym membership. Show them similar people that do it.

Reward.

What's great about that you can test each step of the framework

Get back to it tomorrow and figure out how this model should look November 19th, 2021

btw. this underneath is real thinking done. It's the result of writing semi-individually and deconstructing a set of ideas. I am proud of myself because it's not that common for people to do true critical thinking. NoteToMyself

Let's rethink the framework.

Is this the why? Everything starts with emotion (people are unable to choose what the want to wear when they have their emotional parts of the brain removed). We need to translate the action/product/feature/etc. into emotion. Into a gain or loss of a desire.

Is this the what? Then comes logic. It wants to make sense of the emotional desire.

You know why you want it. You've satisfied your emotional brain (unconscious? elephant? system 1?) and you've satisfied your rational brain (ego? rider? system 2). You've built your story. Or, the product/service personifies the emotion and logic. Now you have to capture it. There is a reward (in a form of a product or service) that awaits you. But, there is work you have to do to get it.

Is this the how? The comes X. It's the work itself. Making it as easy, natural, flawless, automatic, as possible. Removing all obstacles. Removing all doubts. Making it a flow.

The reward is the emotion and logic personified in your product or service. It's what awaits you. It's what motivates you. It's what pushes you up the hill. It's what you want to capture. Because it will reward

Or maybe motivation is the combination of emotion and logic? It's the promise. What's in between is the how. What about the reward.

We will do something if we have sufficient motivation and ability.

Besides we need a trigger and reward.

What is the difference between motivation and reward?

Am I not confusing product with action?

Maybe the model should consist of two

Also have something that will confirm it was a good choce

And something that will trigger that action

Also check the CXL formula: https://medium.com/@ycoll.igg/how-to-write-a-better-copy-with-a-simple-formula-8345338f3a9a

Also remember about dopamine and cortisol

Maybe tranform this framework to 4 questions

Why the should do it motivation

How they should do it ability (is it how?)

When they should do it trigger?

Why was it a good decision reward?

or this?

Psychological motivation is different from motivation induced by chasing something. Psychological motivation is (I guess) just a pulling force like the IKEA effect. Ability is a pushing force. So my new theory is probably bullshit. I need to really rethink that. btw. publish all those thoughts and loops. on your blog so people can se the process.

I could also break it down into the simplest componenet (first principles). May it be dopamine and cortisol. Because it seems that there are many competing frameworks that talk about the same almost – Fogg, Cialdini, Hooked, CXL, ELMR, etc. Maybe this should be the article? Synthesis, break down to first principles and creating something simpler and better? Btw., I could do this to other things, not only to user psychology in tech, but with other topics. It's a great framework. Think about that. They feynmann technique is a killer do this! Internalize it. Make it your second nature.

Companies leverage two basic pulleys of human behavior to increase the likelihood of an action occurring: the ease of performing an action and the psychological motivation to do it.

Eyal, Nir. Hooked (p. 8). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

PN: How to use all principles of persuasion: Cialdini's framework that helps increase motivation