My Daily Emails

Halloween is one night when strangers still open doors for each other. My wife and I still take our girls trick-or-treating. We know these years are numbered: soon they’ll be

In 2026, your product may talk — not via voice, but via persuasion cues. Conversational AI uses framing and nudges to steer choices. Increasingly, physical products are borrowing those same tactics.

For humans surrounded by constant pings and alerts, calm is the new luxury. Calm technology (design that stays in the background until it’s truly needed) is quietly coming back into style.

Reader Veronica from San Francisco asked: does “premium” wording work for software too? It does, with a few extra levers. The same psychology I wrote about a couple days ago

Simply asking “Hey, how likely are you to buy this?” raises the odds someone actually WILL. In behavioral psychology, the mere-measurement effect describes how measuring a person’s intention influences their subsequent behavior.

The words you use can change how your product feels. And how it sells. A blind-test study found that when two identical orange juices were labeled differently (one “Regular,” the

Sometimes when I’m stuck on a project, I realize I’m looping the same thoughts. That’s usually my signal to step away, because instead of solving the problem, I’m worsening it.

WD-40 didn’t just listen to customers — they solved their own frustration. For decades, the biggest problem with WD-40 wasn’t what was inside the can. It was that darned little red straw.

Your first 10 reviews may matter more than your 1,000th. A stack of glowing reviews does something bigger than reassure buyers. It creates a bandwagon. Researchers Xiao & Myers call it the bandwagon

Imagine a product that quietly (but verifiably) shifts your mood while you use it. Unilever is deeply exploring neurosignalling. Engineering products to trigger emotional states through subtle sensory cues. A lotion