In the competitive AT market, what products might stick, and why? How can AT entrepreneurs make their visions more concrete and real for users? What concepts might increase the adoption rate of technologies with schools, teachers, and students? For insights, read on… then read the book!

A ‘Sticky’ Book

Dan Heath and his brother Chip have written an electrifying book impacting diverse fields from marketing to engineering to politics. Featured by Time Magazine, U.S. News and World Report, National Public Radio, the Heath’s publication provides a new framework to explain why some ideas may succeed, or “stick” with people, even as other ostensibly powerful ones fail.

This profile presents the opportunity to explore both general concepts and specific advice for the AT community through a special, AT-focused conversation with Dan Heath. While Dan is quick to point out his expertise is greatest in mainstream technology markets, he ventures to offer some unflinching advice and concepts for evaluating the evolving state of the AT industry.

Reverse Engineering of Ideas That “Stuck”

Dan summarizes the fundamental social science inquiry he undertook by saying,

What my brother and I did was investigate a spectrum of ideas—ranging from urban legends to folk tales to political ideas to marketing campaigns—and we tried to reverse engineer why certain ideas were successful and others faded away. What we found after studying many successful ideas of different kinds was that they had six specific traits in common. There was something about the ways that ideas were designed or constructed that seemed to predispose them to succeed. One of the traits was ‘unexpectedness.’ A sticky idea usually has some element that is surprising or that violates expectations. If you think about most urban legends, they have some unexpected component.

This notion of something that is unexpected involves the violation of what psychologists refer to as “schemas,” or richly interactive frameworks of concepts and information in our brains that relate to learning and realization. Dan cites the best science lessons that people remember, such as the putting-together of seemingly routine ingredients to create an erupting volcano:

The teacher gets the students to commit to their flawed schema so that he can pull the rug out from under them and show them a flash of insight about the subject.

Taking this notion to the technology developer, the ‘Made To Stick’ framework suggests framing a product or idea conceptually in a manner flouts conventional expectations as a primary method for giving it ’stickiness.’ Something that yields too easily to common-sense recognition is unlikely to generate adhesion. Dan explains,

More broadly, what this says to us is that anytime you’re going to be communicating with an audience, most likely there’s some part of their mental model of the world that you’re trying to change. If there wasn’t, why would you be communicating? From the perspective of effective communication, your strategy should be to zoom in on that aspect of their schema, in whatever domain you’re operating in, that you find faulty. Then shatter it as dramatically as the situation allows.

The Six Traits

The remaining traits involve simplicity, concreteness, credibility, emotions, and very importantly, stories. Dan explains that the well-known “Jared” campaign used by the Subway restaurant company (now celebrating its tenth anniversary) incorporated all six traits. It was a simple and concrete story—one that offered an emotional but believable connection to human wants with completely novel elements. He continues,

I think what we can learn from Jared is that often the stickiest ideas aren’t ones we create, they’re ones that we spot. The world is always going to create stickier ideas than you are—it’s a numbers game. So the brilliance of the Jared campaign had nothing to do with Jared. It had to do with the store manager of the Subway in Indiana who spotted a wonderful story in the making. He had been told that selling Subway’s new line of low-fat sandwiches was a core strategic idea. What he spotted was right there happening in this human being named Jared Fogel. It was mesmerizing to watch and perfectly encapsulated what they were trying to communicate to their audience—when superimposed that anecdote over the core value, that’s when the magic happened! Much of the art of communicating sticky ideas is learning to be alert when you spot them. Sticky ideas are often told as stories; we have an innate appetite for them.

Despite the fact that our psychology is seemingly configured to resonate in the presence of these traits, this ability to spot (or capture and apply) the compelling story is far from automatic:

I’ve seen lots of organizations, both for profit and nonprofit, and rarely do I come across one where I feel confident that if someone in their organization spotted a ‘Jared,’ they would know what to do with it.

Moreover, Dan is emphatic that the production of ideas within this framework is also, unfortunately, far from innate, and good technical concepts are insufficient to communicate their own merits. Moving to those stages requires deliberative attention and ‘engineering’ in psycho-social domains. He continues,

My brother and I encourage most businesses to carry around that core idea all the time—like a pair of glasses with tinted lenses. Can you look at what you’re seeing around you, can you look at the stories that are unfolding through the lens of the core idea that you’re trying to communicate?

Breaking Down Barriers to Stickiness

A major confounding barrier the Heaths identify is a particular hazard for dedicated, immersed AT developers called the Curse of Knowledge, a term coined by a psychologist. Dan clarifies,

The Curse of Knowledge is this phenomenon where the more we know about something—the more expertise we have—the harder it is for us to imagine what it’s like for somebody to lack that knowledge. It becomes increasingly difficult to put ourselves in the shoes of our audience—and the consequences are that we begin to speak in abstractions, to use jargon, and to make assumptions about what the audience knows that aren’t warranted. So it’s this paradox of sorts that the more you know about something, the worse you are at communicating it. It’s unfair, but that’s our reality.

Dan indicates that one of the major ways to overcome this paradox is through pure, consistent feedback that can be used to change course—but which often is not available to managers or developers, “Managers will go for years with ineffective communication patterns. Part of our mission in writing the book was to create a playbook for people who are experts and want their ideas to have an impact.”

Further, the very brilliance that leads to the creation of a technological artifact that otherwise would not have existed can, in effect, be its own worst enemy when it comes to moving it to adoption. Incorporating the very notion of physical and cognitive diversity that underpin the AT industry’s existence, Dan elaborates:

You can’t just open your mouth and let the thoughts tumble out the way that they sound good to you. Other people’s brains don’t look like yours! But the things that everyone can appreciate about an idea are similar—you know, we all thrive on concreteness. If you describe something that I can see or touch or imagine in my mind’s eye, the chances are much better that you communicate it with me. If you tell me a story, chances are that I’m going to experience that in the same way as someone next to me in the audience. Keep it simple—tell me one important thing rather than twelve—the chances are better that I’m going to cling to that and be able to act on it.

Sticky, but not Moving Forward?

Recognizing that markets sometimes have specialized facets and trajectories (in the AT market examples might include building essential collaborations, connections with other industries, or marketing that engenders direct links with legislation) Dan admits, ‘Sometimes you don’t have a sticky idea problem, you have a ‘next action’ problem.’ This implies that some linkage in a chain of necessary actions has to be identified and taken in order to move the concept forward for adoption. Research and case studies may be helpful in identifying that next strategic move.

Road to Technology Transfer Versus Feature Richness

The tension between having a technology be ‘feature rich’ against being easy to operate for a very direct and obvious use has been explored extensively in NCTI profiles. Referencing the ‘Make It Stick’ paradigm, Dan offers this advice:

My gut instinct, especially in software and electronics, is that (developers) are rarely ill advised to get simpler. When you talk about norms in this industry for people to pull out their features lists and compare, that’s usually the road to nowhere. In the book we talk about the creation of the Palm Pilot which was launched at time when every other PDA had been a disaster, very feature-heavy, including the one that Apple built that was mocked even in Doonsbury.

He explains that the project leader for the Palm Pilot committed to “doing a couple of things extremely well.” As Dan explains it,

He carried around a block of wood in the shape of the eventual Palm Pilot. Whenever he would have meetings with his team, someone would start brainstorming about a new feature, and he would pull out the block of wood and say, ‘Look, where’s it going to go? What are we going to give up to make that new feature? What is that going to do to the user experience?’ He would carry the block of wood around with him in his shirt pocket to remind himself that this thing’s got to be simple above everything else. It sounds like that there may be some areas of over-indulgence in complexity in the (AT) industry.

Straight Talk on the Double-Edged Sword of Early Adopters

Continuing with the traits of simplicity and concreteness, Dan specifically addresses potential hazards with early technology adopters:

It reminds me of Geoffrey Moore’s work in Crossing the Chasm. He said that when you’ve got new technologies, often tech companies make the mistake of getting in bed too closely with the early adopters. You must have the early adopter—they’re the only ones who are crazy enough to give your new product a whirl. But if you do nothing but listen to them, you’ll never cross the chasm and make it to the wider audience. The early adopters will lead you down the path of more features, more complexity, and more customization. What the mass audience wants is an IPod, a Palm Pilot. With (my brief overview of issues) in the industry, it sounds like there may be an over-sampling of the people who want more complexity which may be deterring that crossover appeal of some of these things.

Designing Around Stigma with Alternate Constructions of Identity

The specter of stigma—or the constant potential for it—that surrounds disability in society means that there is a complex relationship between technologies and persons with special needs. There is the potential for flow of stigma in both directions within the human-technology interface. Aware of this, numerous developers work hard to make AT’s small, inconspicuous, or specifically resembling mainstream technologies so that technologies will not structurally add to perceptions of ‘differentness.’ Applying the book’s concepts, Dan explains that finding a way to appeal to and build a more constructive identity is a fundamental consideration:

Stigmas are, in many cases, bad ideas that have stuck—it’s really hard to unseat a stigma. Take, for instance, hearing aids for the elderly—no one wants to look like a guy with a hearing aid. In the book we discuss that identity appeals are incredibly powerful. Most hearing aid manufacturers do a couple of things wrong. Number one, they talk up features: ‘This is the most effective hearing aid ever produced. This hearing aid expands your range of audible frequencies from x to y.’ Or they may, wisely, try to shrink them down or make them less visible. Great, but you can’t fight an identity problem with an appeal to features.

Alternatively, he suggests,

The right approach is try to find a competing identity appeal. People dread the idea of looking old and looking like their body is a system that’s breaking down. What could you do to even that score? I’ve noticed that people with hearing loss have to be careful where they sit and frequently miss parts of the conversation. It makes them feel a bit isolated—wouldn’t it be better to be part of the action? That’s one of the appeals. Or could you approach it from the perspective of your closest relationships, and are you in a sense, punishing other people for your problem? You’re making it harder for the people closest to you to make themselves clearly heard. Do you owe them a better approach?

This may suggest that there are untapped ways in which AT developers could situate their technologies into new, more productive identities for administrators, teachers, and potential users of technologies: ‘There are, in fact, systematic ways to make our communication stickier, incorporating stories and unexpectedness.”

Credibility and Scientifically Based Research

Developers in this profile series have offered mixed barometers of the degree of pressure they have felt in regard to demonstrating scientifically based research, and varying degrees of importance they accord to research activity. Dan emphasizes that along with the shock to schemas that comes with something that is unexpected must come a balance of something that is concrete, understandable, and credible. Powerful advances in technology can strain credulity, and must be balanced by clear indications of demonstrable effect. Research and applications that are well-communicated are essential in establishing the necessary equilibrium.

Dan cites the Atkins diet, which was initially sticky due to the complete deconstruction of prior notions, but suffered a potential credibility-gap, as a key example. The Atkins proponents, intelligently, eschewed broad marketing until enough examples existed:

For most of us it was some relative of ours… Uncle Eddy comes to dinner and you notice he’s lost 30 pounds. All of a sudden the unexpectedness is balanced by some believability. It’s not just an absurd idea, it’s an absurd idea that happens to be true.

In discussing the case of one Assistive Technology that has existed for three decades with research published in scientific journals, yet is still struggling to find broad adoption and understanding, Dan expressed the value of the data and emphasized tenacity:

The credibility [for such a technology] does come from the research that’s been done and [the marketing story is] concrete. It’s easy to make it clear exactly how this technology is helping and how reality is different afterwards. My advice for a company [with a great product that hasn't taken off yet] is just to keep trying.

Riding the Coattails of a Good Story

The Heaths unearthed three fundamental story types that may be useful in strategic communication.

Dan describes the first in terms that seem well-suited to AT and disability arenas, saying,

One of them is what we call a Challenge Plot—there’s a protagonist that has to overcome daunting odds to succeed in the end. The classic example would be the ‘David and Goliath’ story with a protagonist who must overcome daunting odds to succeed in the end.

Also apropos is the transcendence motif of the

Connection Plot, where people who are separated by some kind of barrier—sex, age, culture, and so on—share a sudden connection. This is like the old Coca Cola ‘meet Joe Green commercial where a little white kid stops him in the tunnel and he throws his towel back—it’s consistently rated one of the favorite commercials of all time.

Lastly, Dan describes the

Creativity Plot, where you solve the puzzle or have an insight that comes in a creative or unexpected way—the ‘McGyver’ type of plot—you’re looking to inspire someone.

According to the Heaths, finding the recipe for combining a technological idea within a real, embodied story that fits one of these narrative frameworks can lead to the sort of powerful results that the Jared campaign produced—the same product with new and superior results.

Powerful Lessons for the AT Community

As Dan reminds us, developers need to be vigilant in spotting opportunities; find, translate, and share stories in concrete ways; avoid the trap of catering solely to early adopters; and be wary of becoming overly immersed in technological features, power, and jargon.

These lessons are just as essential for those who endeavor to help people use AT’s in learning and work—AT specialists, trainers, and teachers. The entire community must work together to discover and weave together the concrete applications and stories that will allow AT’s to help propel youth with disabilities toward the potential they possess.