Irrational Labs

At Irrational Labs, we spend each workday thinking about behavior change. But what about when we head home? While there’s no “OFF” switch for behavioral science, it turns out we still need help (and nudges!) to change our behavior and make new habits stick. That means we’re always hunting for well-designed apps that can simplify our lives and help us meet our goals. 📱 💪 So we’re sharing some of the apps we use in our daily lives—and why we think they work so well. Snapshots below: 👇 🧑🍳 Cook at home more with “NYT Cooking” (from The New York Times). 👉 Why we love it: There’s no scrolling through ads & backstories to get to the actual recipes. You can also save faves to your “recipe box”—and avoid searching Google for *THAT* cookie recipe the next time around. 👉 Why it works: It makes it easy to find, save, and cook good recipes. And when something is easy? We’re more likely to do it. 🚘 Spend less time commuting with Waze. 👉 Why we love it: It offers real-time, user-reported traffic data—and even lets you know when there’s a speed cam or police officer ahead. You can set the voice to something fun, too (think: Elvis 🎤). 👉 Why it works: If someone helps you, you help them. That’s reciprocity—and Waze’s user reporting feature inspires it big-time. 📒 Make that baby book you don’t have time to make with “The Short Years” app. 👉 Why we love it: It streamlines scrapbooking by letting you upload photos and answer prompts from your phone. For tired and busy new parents, this one is a gem. 👉 Why it works: It solves for the planning fallacy and optimism bias of new parenthood. Check out the rest of our list at the link in comments 👇 #BehavioralEconomics #BehavioralScience

🔎 Research has long shown that gender stereotypes persist in household money management—so it’s more crucial than ever that we find ways to empower women financially within their homes, relationships, and lives. The good news? Behavioral science is here to help. 💪 Here are 3 ideas for advancing gender equity in financial decision-making among couples—along with suggestions for how to make them happen: 1️⃣ Clarify each person’s full contribution to the household, financial or otherwise. 🧐 We struggle to assign value to tasks with no going rate, like child-rearing and other unpaid household responsibilities—tasks that often fall to women. But when we increase the salience of each partner’s contributions, the financial “balance of power” begins to equalize. 💡 Suggestion: Prior to financial planning, couples should list out all of their household contributions—and share the list with their partner. 👉 Benefit: Each partner is often biased in thinking they bring more to the relationship or household—but this bias decreases with more awareness of each other’s contributions. 2️⃣ Reduce power disparities in the financial decision-making process. ⚖️ Studies reveal a finance-related household power hierarchy: unless decisions are particularly consequential, men often make them on their own. This isn’t just harmful from a gender perspective. It can hurt couples’ bank accounts, too—because people are more error-prone when making decisions alone. 💡 Suggestion: Couples should get incentives for engaging in joint financial decisions, and financial tools should include requirements for joint decision-making. 👉 Benefit: Couples are more likely to act in their own best interest and consider financial decisions carefully when they make them together. Joint financial tools can also incentivize and empower women to take a greater role in the process! 3️⃣ Increase financial transparency between partners. 🤝 More frequent self-disclosure between partners has been linked to higher marital satisfaction—and this satisfaction rises dramatically when partners share thoughts and concerns about decisions to be made. This directly impacts financial decision-making because partners can often be dishonest about their finances. 💡 Suggestion: Aim to create an environment where partners feels comfortable disclosing their financial information—for example, by making self-disclosure into a game or pairing financial self-disclosure with problem-solving. 👉 Benefit: When couples are comfortable sharing  and being open, they’re more likely to be honest about their finances—and also to work together toward better financial decisions. These aren’t magic bullets—but they can help to guide us in the right direction in our journey toward increasing gender equity. And while there’s still lots of work to be done? Together, we know we’ll get there. ⚡ #BehavioralScience #GenderEquity #Finance

Starting in just a few hours, at 9am PT / 10am MT / 11am CT / 12pm ET 📆—don't miss out! 🥳 Join our own Monica Zhang as she walks us through how designers can effectively utilize users’ emotions as both inputs and outcomes to create better product experiences. 🙂 You’ll learn: ✅ The different pathways of how emotions influence decision making ✅ How to contextualize users' emotions to better understand your product design challenges ✅ A behavioral science toolkit to help your team design for emotion ✅ Tactics to influence user emotions to both of your advantage … and more. Are you a PM, designer, marketer, or on a growth team working with users at scale? This is for you. Come get emotional with us 😭😍! Link in comments 👇 #Product #emotion #UserEngagement #BehavioralScience

Happening today! 🔔 🚨 Don't miss Monica Zhang's talk "From Feelings to Features: The Science of Building Emotional Connections in Design" today at 🕘 9am PT (10am MT/11am CT/12pm ET)! 👀🫀🧠 Click the link below to RSVP! 👇 https://lu.ma/4lprs5l5

Build it and they will come? 🤔 When product teams launch a highly-requested feature, they tend to expect users to engage with it. But things don’t always work out that way. 😬 This is what Lyft discovered when they launched Women Connect. Despite the clear benefits and the demand for the feature, not all drivers who were eligible were opting into it. 🔍 The challenge? Simply telling users about a feature isn’t always enough to drive action. When Irrational Labs partnered with Lyft, here’s what our brilliant behavioral scientist Isabel Macdonald, PhD and team learned, working closely with Robyn Bald and Kirsten M.: 🚀 A simple shift in messaging—based on behavioral science—can massively impact feature engagement. Irrational Labs tested several behaviorally-informed messages and all outperformed the control. The winning message? “Just checking. Looks like you are not opted into Women Connect. Is this correct? Tap to review.” What this does: The question creates a desire for resolution and nudges the driver to take action (versus do nothing). The result? Compared to the control group, this approach got 173% more opt-ins from new drivers. 📈 So, what’s the takeaway for product teams? 👉🏼 Product success doesn’t come just from building great features. You have to frame them in ways that resonate with your users, capture their attention, and motivate them to act. 💡 Curious to see how small changes can lead to massive impact? Check out the link in the comments to learn how we helped Lyft get great engagement with a great feature. 👇🏼 #BehavioralScience #ProductManagement #UserEngagement #WomenInTech #IrrationalLabs #Lyft

🚨 Applied research alert! 🚨 Irrational Labs partnered with Lyft to take on a common challenge: uptake of new features. Earlier this year, Lyft launched a cool new feature aimed at improving the experience for female drivers. Qual research showed that drivers loved it. But only half had opted in to use it. Irrational Labs worked with Lyft to test new behaviorally-informed messages that aimed to capture drivers’ attention for the new feature. The winning treatment drove a 173% increase in new opt-ins. Not bad for a messaging campaign!! BUT there’s a twist - a different treatment with lower feature opt-ins was the only one that increased driver hours overall. Changing labor supply is even harder than boosting take up, but this message led to an average increase of one driving shift per week. This finding speaks to a potential trade-off between capturing attention and changing overall product engagement - a crucial consideration for product teams launching new features. Read more about the experiment and the behavioral science behind it in the case study linked below. Huge shout out to Kirsten M., Robyn Bald, and the Lyft team for making this research possible. Love to see applied besci making a difference for Lyft drivers and riders!

Going to INDUSTRY: The Product Conference in Cleveland today? Don't miss Irrational Labs' own Katie Dove on the main stage at 3:40pm ET! 🎊⏱️🎤 Katie will share behavioral science insights on 3 of the top mistakes in personalization that products make—and strategies for creating experiences that truly resonate with users. 📈 Can’t make it? Follow Katie and stay tuned for key takeaways and recaps. 📣 #INDUSTRYConf #ProductManagement #BehavioralScience #personalization #ProductDesign

Behavioral Science for the win! 🏆 Was fun to partner with our friends at Irrational Labs to drive adoption for Women Connect, which helps women and non-binary riders and drivers ride together more often. Check out the case study, and think about how you can leverage behavioral science to drive impact. https://lnkd.in/efU64DQ2 At Lyft, we continuously test how to frame our messages to drive behavior, and this is a great example of how that makes a difference, both to upstream and downstream metrics. 👏 Big thanks to those who help bring this to life Kirsten M. Evelyn Gosnell Isabel Macdonald, PhD Juan Cruz Loureiro 👏

When was the last time you felt a strong affinity or aversion to something, and couldn’t logically explain why? 👀🫀🧠 As rational as we may like to think we are, emotions are at the heart of how we interpret reality. They shape our—and our users’—experiences, preferences, and behavior. Join Irrational Labs behavioral scientist Monica Zhang as she walks us through how designers can effectively utilize users’ emotions as both inputs and outcomes to create better product experiences. You’ll learn:  ✅ The different pathways of how emotions influence decision making ✅ How to contextualize users' emotions to better understand your product design challenges ✅ A behavioral science toolkit to help your team design for emotion ✅ Tactics to influence user emotions to both of your advantage … And more! This talk is perfect for product managers, designers, engineers, data analysts, entrepreneurs, and anyone else who is working with users at scale. Come get emotional with us 😭😍!

More and more people say they’re feeling lonely. Why aren’t they taking action to change this? In behavioral science, we look for ways to close the intention-action gap — the difference between our desire to do something and us actually doing it. When it comes to the challenge of fighting loneliness, an important question therefore becomes: At a time when we’re all craving connection, why don’t we take more steps to change our situation? We conducted an experiment that revealed why you shouldn’t lead with loneliness if you want people to feel more connected, and what you can do instead. Read the full case study (in the comments below) to learn: 🧑🤝🧑 What drives and limits people’s desire to seek or offer help. 🧑🤝🧑 The role of volunteering in increasing social connectedness. 🧑🤝🧑 How to increase adoption of services that alleviate loneliness, using behavioral design.