Luring Users Back In

There’s a toy in our house that plays Russian songs. You press the blue button and then you can select a song. But it does something interesting.

After a minute of not using it, it plays a little tune. Somethings, if I’ve focused on something new, it’s shocking. For my daughter, it reminders her to pick it up and play with it again.

It made me think about how apps try to lure us back to interact with them. You left something in a shopping cart, there’s a new post by your friend you should check out, shoes are half off, watch so-and-so stream live. Lures are soon going away. We’re going to be in a post-notification world soon and we’d better start to think about what happens when users have to come to our services / apps because of the genuine value we provide, not tricks.