The Human Code: Why Logic Alone Will Fail Your Product (And How to Succeed Anyway)

 

The Human Code: Why Logic Alone Will Fail Your Product (And How to Succeed Anyway)

We’re often taught that business is a rational game. Find a gap in the market, build the most efficient solution, price it competitively, and tell everyone about its brilliant features. If only it were that simple. The sources we're drawing upon suggest that relying solely on pure logic is like trying to see the whole picture through "broken binoculars". One lens is faulty market research – because people often don't know or can't articulate their real motivations. The other is standard economic theory, which assumes an overly rational view of human behaviour.

The truth is, humans are not perfectly rational machines constantly calculating the optimal outcome. We operate on a different system – let's call it psycho-logic. Psycho-logic isn't wrong; it just cares about different things than pure logic does, and works in a different way.

We Don't Always Aim for 'Best', We Aim for 'Good Enough'

One key principle of psycho-logic is that we often "satisfice" rather than maximise. In a complex world with too many choices and too little information, seeking the single, objectively "best" option is exhausting and often impossible. Instead, we look for a satisfactory solution.

This is where brands become vital. We often buy brands not because we think they are definitively "better" than unbranded alternatives, but because we are more certain that they are good. A brand acts as a signal of trustworthiness, a guarantee of "non-crapness". It tells us that the company has a reputation to protect and is less likely to let us down. This reduces our anxiety and effort in decision-making.

Signalling: What You Do Matters More Than What You Say

Building on trust, the idea of signalling is crucial. Humans have evolved complex ways to send reliable indications of commitment and intent. Sometimes, this requires costly signalling – behaviour that might seem inefficient or even wasteful from a purely logical standpoint, but which serves to prove genuine intent because it's expensive or difficult to fake. Spending a lot on advertising, for example, isn't just about informing people; it signals confidence that the product will be popular enough to justify the expense. Receiving a software invitation on expensive, glossy card conveys its significance far better than a cheap email could. The care an airline puts into cucumber sandwiches can signal the care it puts into flying the plane. Even seemingly trivial details like the cleanliness of a hospital reception area or the attentiveness of a nurse can signal the overall quality of care.

Perception Isn't Always Reality (But It's What Matters)

Our experience of the world is heavily influenced by psychophysics – the gap between objective reality and subjective perception. The sources provide numerous examples:

• Adding "ethnic" labels or evocative adjectives to menu items makes food taste better to people.
• Announcing a change in a product's ingredients can make people perceive a change in taste, even if they don't objectively notice it when the change is made silently.
• Adding arbitrary details like coloured flecks to washing powder or making a concentrated product require mixing can make people believe it is more effective.
• The packaging is the product in how it influences perception.
• Even renaming a tax can influence people's willingness to accept it.

This means focusing solely on the objective quality or function of your product isn't enough. How it is presented, described, and perceived is equally, if not more, important.

Innovation Often Comes from Counter-Intuition

If logic were the only driver, everyone trying to compete with a dominant player would simply make something cheaper and better. But as the sources show, sometimes the opposite of a good idea is also a good idea. A hugely successful competitor to a global soft drink giant launched an expensive drink in a tiny can that tasted distinctive (not universally pleasant). This defied logical assumptions but worked.

Similarly, removing features can sometimes lead to breakthrough innovation. The success of a well-known search engine came from removing clutter compared to its competitor. A popular social media platform's distinctiveness came from an arbitrary character limit. Fast-food success often relies on offering a limited menu. This isn't logical in terms of offering maximum choice, but it reduces complexity and makes decisions easier.

Adding a small amount of effort can also make a product more appealing, not less (the "Ikea effect"). Making instant cake mix require adding a fresh egg increased sales. Making a water-saving detergent require a slightly more complicated rinsing process made it more believable. This defies the logical drive for maximum convenience but taps into psychological needs like feeling a sense of contribution.

Naming Creates Reality

The power of naming is profound. Renaming an invasive, unpleasant fish as "Terribly Delicious" helped create a market for eating it. Coining the term "designated driver" didn't just name a behaviour; it helped create a social norm around it. Giving people a name for a behaviour makes it easier to adopt and defend.

Beyond Strategy: The Power of Ideals and Devices

For long-term success, particularly with brands, a rigid, logical strategy can be a weakness. Strategies are often easily changed or discarded by new management. More enduring brands often have a "big ideal" (a higher purpose) or a distinctive "executional device" (a memorable character, design element, or sound). These are much harder to abandon and can accommodate a great deal of variation over time. Killing a beloved brand character is harder than changing a strategic document.

Don't Be Afraid of "Non-Sense" or Trivia

Much successful communication contains an element of "non-sense" – things that don't make immediate logical sense but work on a different level. Advertising featuring cute animals, for example, is often more successful than purely rational appeals, even though it sounds like "nonsense". These elements can make advertising feel less like a transparent sales pitch.

Furthermore, sometimes the most impactful insights come from focusing on trivial or seemingly insignificant things. Solving small but deeply felt irritations can be more effective than tackling major, abstract problems. The discomfort of awkward changing rooms or annoying software glitches can ruin a day just as much as larger issues. Paying attention to these "trivial" surfaces of things can be surprisingly insightful.

Embrace the Messy, Human Reality

The sources suggest that relying on pure logic, quantifiable metrics, and stated preferences from research can lead us down the wrong path. Not everything important can be measured. We often create reasons to justify actions we've already taken based on instinct or emotion – our conscious mind is the "press office," not the "Oval Office".

Instead of fearing things that seem illogical or can't be neatly quantified, learn to identify and leverage psycho-logical drivers. Be open to experimentation, even with ideas that seem counter-intuitive. Understand that behaviour often precedes attitude – sometimes, making a desired behaviour easier to perform is more effective than trying to change people's beliefs first.

The power lies in understanding the complex, often hidden, motivations that truly drive human action. It's time to move beyond the limitations of pure logic and embrace the "dark art" of understanding the human code.