Advance Without Alienating: How MAYA Drives Adoption

What is the sweet spot between new and familiar, and how do you design for it?

Create products that feel groundbreaking and instantly intuitive by applying the psychology of the MAYA Principle.

By unpacking how humans respond to familiarity and novelty, you’ll gain practical guidance for designing experiences that spark excitement without overwhelming users.

WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE

• What is the MAYA Principle, and why does it matter for product and experience design?
• How do familiarity and novelty interact to shape user adoption?
• Why did products like the iPad feel revolutionary and intuitive to use?
• When should you release a big innovation versus gradually introducing features?
• How psychological barriers like loss aversion affect how people receive new ideas.
• How designers can pace innovation to keep users comfortable and engaged.
  
  
  

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The MAYA Principle stands for "Most Advanced Yet Acceptable"—a formula for balancing innovation with usability.
• People adopt new ideas more readily when they resemble something they already understand.
• Successful products often anchor new concepts in familiar mental models (e.g., Uber reimagined the taxi).
• Understand your audience: tech-savvy users tolerate faster change than general users.
• Manage the speed of innovation—disruptive or incremental—based on what your users can handle.
• Incorporate user feedback early and often to gauge readiness and reduce risk.
• Frame change as a gain, not a loss, to overcome psychological resistance like loss aversion.
• Design psychology empowers us to bridge users into the future—delighting without alienating them.

Transcript

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Think of the last time you were excited about something new.

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Maybe it was a TV show you couldn't stop telling your friends about.

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You might have said something like, it's kind of like that show you loved,

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except the story goes in a totally unexpected direction.

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Or maybe you're hooked on a new app. It has the type of features you recognize

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from your other favorite apps, except with a new, fresh twist.

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The app takes a familiar idea and it gives it a bold new spin.

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That sweet spot where something feels fresh yet not intimidatingly new is exactly

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what today's episode is about.

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It's called the Maya Principle, most advanced yet acceptable.

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And it's the secret behind some of the world's most iconic designs.

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By understanding this principle, you'll learn how to design products that are

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very innovative, but not so innovative that they confuse people.

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Some of the topics we'll touch on here are how understanding the psychology

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of familiarity and novelty can transform your whole design approach.

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Why is it that when some products like the iPad are introduced,

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they seem revolutionary but somehow familiar?

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How do you decide whether to introduce totally innovative design versus whether

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to introduce features bit by bit?

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And what are the hidden psychological triggers, like loss aversion,

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that influence user adoption?

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In this episode, we'll break down these questions and we'll explore the fascinating

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research about how to craft experiences that feel both groundbreaking and familiar.

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So, imagine this scene. It's 1968 in a research laboratory at the well-known company 3M.

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A young scientist by the name of Spencer Silver is working as part of a team

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tasked with trying to create a powerful adhesive.

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This adhesive is required to be so strong that it can help hold airplanes together.

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But when they tested Silver's new adhesive, it turned out to be very weak.

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He had effectively failed to create the super strong adhesive that he was supposed

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to create. But he observed something very interesting.

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This glue would stick to things, but it could also be pulled away.

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And it didn't leave a mess, and it didn't leave any damage to the surface it was stuck to.

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Even if it was stuck to something as delicate as paper.

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Essentially, this new substance seemed optimized for repeatedly sticking things

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together and removing them.

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This later would become widely known as a low-tech adhesive.

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Silver was excited about this new low-tech glue and started evangelizing this

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new invention internally at 3M doing seminars.

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He tried convincing his colleagues of the value of this kind of adhesive properties,

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but he didn't have any great examples of how to apply this invention for a very

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compelling, valuable purpose.

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So one day, six years later, Silver was presenting one of his seminars,

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and a colleague from another department, who was a chemical engineer named Arthur

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Fry, heard what Silver had to say.

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It reminded him of this problem he had encountered while in church.

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He would sing hymns and he would use these little bookmarks to keep his place in the hymn book.

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The trouble with these bookmarks is that they would keep sliding out and it

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would be really annoying and hard to keep track of his hymns.

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So Fry thought to himself, I wonder if these adhesives could be used for that.

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I could make bookmarks that are sticky and stay in place and I can take them

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away without damaging the page.

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So Art Fry had found a practical purpose for Spencer Silver's invention, sticky bookmarks.

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The two began discussing this idea, and Silver and Fry's combined insights evolved

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through iteration, and it ended

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up leading to one of 3M's most successful products ever, the Post-it Note.

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Post-it Notes have something very advanced about them. The low-tech stickiness

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enables you to stick it anywhere, but it's also totally familiar.

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It's just a piece of paper that you write on.

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So this all relates to this concept of the Maya principle, which was introduced by Raymond Lowy.

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Raymond Lowy was one of the most important designers of the 20th century and

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is considered to be the father of industrial design.

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He was known for streamlining designs, and a few examples of his work were redesigning

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the Coca-Cola bottle to have that beautiful iconic shape that we've all seen.

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He made railroad trains more aerodynamic and futuristic-looking for the time.

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He redesigned all kinds of cars and buses.

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He modernized multiple famous logos like Shell, Exxon, BP, and the U.S. Postal Service.

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He even designed the NASA Skylab space station.

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Raymond Lowy also spent a great deal of time thinking about consumer psychology.

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He was trained as an engineer, but he was influenced by multiple movements that

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tended to emphasize minimalism, like the functionalist movement or the modernist movement.

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He thought a lot about what people want and need aesthetically and psychologically.

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He arrived at this idea of the Maya principle based on decades of experience

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across a multitude of industries and use cases.

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So the idea is that you've got an innovative direction to advance in and you

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need to control the speed that it's introduced to the audience.

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And it's based on the idea that people are excited by novelty,

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but can also be afraid of it.

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And they are anchored by familiar experiences.

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So let's take a look at familiarity versus novelty in everyday examples,

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and also see what the research has to say.

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So let's start with familiarity. Think about everyday examples where you prefer familiarity.

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Maybe your go-to comfort cuisine tonight might outweigh the curiosity of trying something new.

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Or maybe re-watching a favorite TV show or movie can offer a predictable yet

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still enjoyable experience.

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We often don't feel like driving a new route, we just want to get to our destination.

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And the research is consistent with this observation.

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Psychologist Robert Zayance, in a series of experiments, showed people random

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Chinese characters, or in some cases they saw random faces or nonsense words.

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So they were shown things that they had no familiarity with,

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but as the trials continued, they saw some characters more than others.

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So they might see some of them 25 times, or others 10 times, and still others once.

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It turns out that whether it was a face or a foreign character or whatever,

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the more often they saw it, the more they preferred it.

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This became known as the mere exposure effect, where just merely being exposed

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to something makes it more acceptable to you.

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Studies went on to find similar effects with brand loyalty, music tastes, and so on.

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Now let's think about situations where we might prefer novelty.

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Maybe it could be traveling to new places for the adventure of it.

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Or maybe buying some new gadget or device that's cutting edge and has some new

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capabilities you're playing with.

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Or even trying a new fashion trend can provide this kind of feeling.

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Now with the research around novelty, there's a lot out there,

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so we'll only touch on a few points here.

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Studies on infants show that they react a lot to novelty.

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The whole world is new to them, so it's very easy to study things like habituation

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in infants because they switch their attention very reliably to find new things in their environment.

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And beyond childhood, this basic effect continues.

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One study in 2015 by Shoemaker and Meter explored the way that novelty triggers

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brain reward systems through dopamine.

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And that study was a follow-up on many others that showed that we enjoy novelty.

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For perhaps a more applied research study, in 1980, Elizabeth Hirschman showed

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that simply putting the label new or improved on a product made it seem more desirable to people.

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Now, let's think about the balance between these two psychological forces of

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familiarity and novelty, starting with some everyday examples.

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Think about something like a fusion food, which takes familiar elements and

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mixes them together in a novel way, like Korean barbecue tacos or Tex-Mex.

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Or imagine that you attend a show that has familiar things like a movie you've

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seen before but it's got an orchestra right there playing the soundtrack live

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and it seems really cool and exciting.

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And speaking of music, think about the musicians and bands that arguably did

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something similar to the Maya principle by creating great mixes of old and new elements.

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The Beatles famously mixed familiar rock and roll elements with more pop and experimental sounds.

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Daft Punk mixes funk with disco and house and makes it all sound futuristic and electronic.

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Bruno Mars does this a lot. He mixes funk with R&B and contemporary pop.

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So this happens a lot in pop culture with music and food. But we can also see

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this reflected in the products that we love.

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And with products, they really had to be intentionally designed and positioned for mass adoption.

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One famous legend tells us that the iPad was invented long before its release.

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A computer as a glass rectangle was thought to be too revolutionary for the

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early 2000s market, which is when iPad prototypes were reportedly first being created.

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After releasing first the iPod, Apple then lined up the iPhone to be released in 2007.

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And now the market was familiar with touchscreen smart devices,

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and maybe now a tablet computer that looks like a single slice of glass wouldn't seem so bizarre.

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Now, the extent to which this legend is true means that Steve Jobs consciously

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used the Maya principle to steer his audience into a direction where the iPad

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could be both advanced and acceptable.

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And of course, it was a huge hit. So we see this a lot with what's referred

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to as disruptive technology.

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It's addressing a need that's familiar enough for there to be a market for the

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product, but it addresses it in such an innovative way that it can disrupt the

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way the current markets even operate.

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We've seen this with a lot of companies.

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With Netflix, renting movies was already familiar, but ordering them online

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and having them directly mailed to you almost felt like a cheat code for movie rentals.

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Airbnb leveraged the familiar experience of staying as a guest in a cozy home,

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but then mixed it with the convenience of online hotel booking.

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Nintendo Switch made a seamless link between portable and at-home gaming.

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Instant Pot artfully fused together a bunch of kitchen appliances,

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including the pressure cooker, the slow cooker, rice cooker,

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and made it all into one multifunctional device.

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Slack took the old stodgy concept of a workplace communication platform,

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but formed it in the image of a streamlined, instant messenger,

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social channel kind of an interface.

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Now, achieving the Maya principle and building a hit product is of course a

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very intensive and nuanced process. But here are some patterns among successful

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products that may be applicable to your own design work.

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One is understanding the core familiarity that is functionally necessary for your product.

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Realizing something like this will help you make informed strategic decisions

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on what not to throw away.

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A second point is consider whether to lean toward a incremental versus a disruptive speed.

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Depending on your audience, managing that speed can be different.

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And that leads into the next point, which is know your audience.

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Different segments will respond differently to different levels of technology advancement.

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For example, a tech enthusiast versus a general consumer will have two different

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definitions of what advanced is.

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Another point is include feedback loops. Iterate through multiple versions of

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your product to gauge comfort levels with actual users if possible.

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A fifth point is anchor new ideas in existing mental models.

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What you're creating is new, but you still want people to understand it.

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For example, Uber was new, but we already understood the taxicab experience.

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And a final point I'll make here is manage the feeling of loss aversion.

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Kahneman and Tversky famously demonstrated that if people feel like they're

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losing something, they're not going to be very happy.

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So position whatever change you're making as an ultimate gain.

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And by the way, make sure that it's actually a gain.

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And as a caveat, keep in mind that creating great things is,

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of course, a richer process than identifying something old and new and smashing them together.

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We don't want to oversimplify the design process, but the Maya principle offers

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an interesting dimension to consider when creating something new.

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So that's a little bit about the Maya principle, most advanced yet acceptable.

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It's all about balancing innovation and familiarity to craft experiences that

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feel exciting without being overwhelmingly new.

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It's why products like the iPad, for example, felt groundbreaking yet easy to use.

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The design of products like that are built on what we already know,

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making the leap into something new feel more natural.

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So as you design, you want to ask yourself, should I immediately introduce something

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bold and disruptive, or should I guide users there step-by-step using smaller changes?

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Remember, pacing matters. Introducing new features gradually can ease users into your innovation.

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Sudden drastic changes may cause confusion or rejection.

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Also, don't forget that there are hidden forces behind user behavior like loss aversion.

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People are more likely to resist change if it feels like they're losing something familiar.

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So consider framing your innovations as a gain, showing users why they'll benefit

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from the new features without sacrificing what they love.

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So one final thought here is that as design psychologists, we actually have

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the power to bridge people into the future through the products and services that we design.

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And with tools like the Maya Principle, our work can shape how people embrace

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innovation, not by forcing change, but by making it feel delightfully inevitable.