In theory, people maximize their lives by weighing costs and perceived utility for goods and services. What this chart presupposes is…maybe they do the same when it comes to (a) Sex and (b) Digital Things?
This isn’t groundbreaking stuff, but it was worth a quick discussion yesterday at work and (as usual) a quick whiteboard diagram. So if you’re faced with a scenario where you have the opportunity to cheat (on your wife or on your favorite digital service), use these handy charts.
High barrier, low utility? Don’t cheat. This is why VIRB never became a serious part of my life, and Facebook continues to be my leading lady. It would take too much effort to recreate all my connections elsewhere, so it’s very hard to tempt me with beautiful design and cool features. Sorry, VIRB. You’re hot, but not hot enough. However, it’s my position that creating artificially high barriers to cheating is actually a bad thing when it comes to digital experience.
Barrier-Utility Equilibrium is the likely source of many marital problems. In the case of Tiger, the barrier should have been high: gorgeous wife, child, potential multi-billion-dollar losses due to a tarnished image, etc. But his perceived utility was able to overcome any mental barrier, and the rest is history. This equilibrium, I imagine, occurs mostly with new services, where both the barrier and utility is low. Why not try Gowalla AND Foursquare, if the winner in location-based services is unclear?
High utility, low barrier? Definitely cheat. If it were easy for me to move everything to a brand-new and clearly better system – including connections, photos, permalinks, etc. – that would be pretty attractive, right?
Interestingly, WordPress and the 37signals services encourage cheating: they allow users to easily take their data and migrate it to new platforms. But as far as I can tell, they don’t suffer much churn because the alternative services don’t provide enough utility. It’s also my belief that the creation of a barrier-less platform actually reduces the perceived utility of other services.
But perhaps I’m not thinking straight. Happy Friday!
2 Comments
Not sure what’s meant by cheat here - trial, perhaps? disloyalty?
I think what’s interesting, since this week includes tax day, is how easier it is to cheat when we play in abstracted systems. Example: people look at cheating on taxes as fibbing on deductions, not stealing money - but ultimately, yeah, they’re stealing money. Capital markets are even more interesting: you’re not stealing money or defrauding investors, you’re simply packaging and manipulating ‘instruments.’ Abstractions vs likelihood to cheat would be an interesting model to chart around different scenarios.
Good economic analysis of cheating. Your next post should consider options where the barrier line (or utility line) is nearly flat (or extremely steep). For example, online file storage systems. A gigabyte is free and it’s easy to “cheat” by moving between services or using multiple services at the same time. However, your utility is limited by your “freewheeling” lifestyle: you must remember whether File A is on System A or System B.
The low barrier (free service) essentially constrains your available utility. By voluntarily moving yourself to a higher barrier line, you also allow yourself to achieve a higher utility line.
I’d categorize this as a flat utility line with a sharp spike at the end that intersects twice with the barrier line.