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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.
