PRPL @ SXSW: The Symbiosis of Brains, Marketing, and Design

The Symbiosis of
Brains,
Marketing,
and Design
PRESENTED BY
Tommy Hung
@tommyx88
UX Strategist
Caitlin Pequignot
@aveleonmusic
Digital Strategist
x

The Symbiosis
of Brains,
Marketing,
and Design
1 Who Are We
2 Our Background
3 Quest App
4 The Ecosystem
5 Workshop
Agenda

Who Are We Introductions1 —
Caitlin Pequignot
@aveleonmusic
Digital Strategist
Tommy Hung
@tommyx88
UX Strategist

Who Are We Purple, Rock Scissors1 —

Purple Rock Scissors
WHO WE ARE

PRPL
WHO WE ARE

PRPLAt we uncover insights
build software
solve problems
drive ROI
optimize performance
create content
deliver value

Who Are We Purple, Rock, Scissors1 —
Developing
innovative digital
solutions.
PRPL is an Orlando-based digital
agency serving global brands at
the intersection of technology and
humanity.
Our agile process is driven by
goals and backed by data. We
put strategy ﬁrst to uncover
insights, solve problems, and
drive results.

Clients
and Friends

Fifty Rockstars and Growing
EST. 2002

Background Synapses2 —
In Search of
Synaptic
Plasticity
Synapses are connections
between neurons.
Synaptic Plasticity is the
means by which our brains
change.
Synapses can be modulated.

Background Synaptic Plasticity in Action2 —
Synaptic Plasticity in Action

Background Why Neurometabolism?2 —
Why
Neurometabolism
?
Long-term potentiation —  
how our brains change over time.
Strengthening of synapses =
greater plasticity & memory
formation.
Fueled by long-term metabolic
changes.

Background Merging the Two2 —
Neuroscienc
e
Marketing
Strategy

Neuro-
science
Marketing
StrategyNeuroscience

Background Marketing Strategy & Behavior2 —
Marketing
Strategy &
Behavior
What motivates both users &
companies?
Where do they meet?
How can we test what works?
How do we measure it?

Background Microtubules, Memories, and Automation2 —
Microtubules,
Memories, and
Automation
Microtubules: Components of
cells that facilitate cell interaction.
Respond instantly to network
changes.
Play an integral role in
maintaining environmental
structure & ﬂuidity.
Essential to short-term memory.

Background Memory Encoding in Blobs2 —
Memory Encoding in Blobs

Background Microtubules, Memories, and Automation2 —
Helping HIV+ Kids
Forget
Mood disorders & traumatic
experiences.
Therapy: weakening of
associative long-term memory.

Neuropsychology UX Design

UX DesignNeuropsychology

The Symbiosis
of Brains,
Marketing,
and Design
1 Who We Are
2 Our Background
3 Quest App
4 The Ecosystem
5 Workshop
Agenda

Quest: For All
Your Questions
& Answers
Quest is a desktop app designed
to create questioners and
answerers out of everyone.
Quest will match you with an
expert in that topic and reward
experts for their knowledge
contributions.
Our App Quest App3 —

Quest: Value Proposition
Life is hard, and we all have both questions and answers. Quest
is designed to grow knowledge and help people live better lives.
Our App Value Proposition3 —

How It Works: Questions
• Create a proﬁle on the Quest site or ask a question as a guest.
• Submit questions using the question builder interface.
• Receive email notiﬁcations when an expert has answered. 
your question.
• Rate answers using our easy rubric.
• Continue the conversation with your favorite experts.
How It Works: QuestionsOur App3 —

How It Works: Answers
• Create a proﬁle on the Quest site.
• Choose your favorite topics.
• Browse questions to answer.
• Answer questions.
• Receive email notiﬁcations when a questioner assigns you points.
• Answer more questions, or ask one yourself!
Our App How It Works: Questions3 —

The Ecosystem
WHAT WE’RE DOING

IntroductionThe Ecosystem4 —
The Ecosystem
The Ecosystem is a behavior model we’ve created to help
simplify complex neurological and behavioral concepts into
something actionable for this audience.

The Ecosystem
Behavior Model
Motivation HabitSatisfactionDecisionsTriggers
The Ecosystem4 —

The Ecosystem
Motivation DecisionsTriggers
The reason why we take action.
Behavior ModelThe Ecosystem4 —

The Ecosystem
Motivation SatisfactionDecisionsTriggers
Anything that catalyzes a decision.

The Ecosystem
Selection of course of action.

The Ecosystem
HabitSatisfactionDecisionsTriggers
Satiation of needs from an experience.

The Ecosystem
HabitSatisfactionDecisions
A ﬁxed way of thinking, willing, or feeling.

The Ecosystem

Pokemon Go
iPhone 6
375 x 667px
• An app phenomenon
• Great example of how a habit
forming experience pulling from
various motivators.
• We’ll use examples throughout

A Virtual Scavenger Hunt
Who Are We Introductions1 —

Motivation
Deﬁned
The reason why we take action.
Holy grail of marketers
everywhere.
A core part of user research.
How does motivation interact with
the other neuroscience pillars?
MOTIVATION TRIGGERS DECISIONS SATISFACTION HABITThe Ecosystem4 —

Core
Motivators
Dr. B.J. Fogg postulates 3 Core
Motivators:
Seek Pleasure, Avoid Pain.
Seek Hope, Avoid Fear.
Seek Social Acceptance,  
Avoid Rejection.
MOTIVATION TRIGGERS DECISIONS SATISFACTION HABITThe Ecosystem4 —

Motivational
Matrix
Developed by author David
Forbes, the MindSight Matrix is
one way we can apply
motivational concepts to
marketing and product design.
Asks two questions that we
consider when seeking change:
What change do we want? Where
do we want it to occur?
The Ecosystem4 — MOTIVATION TRIGGERS DECISIONS SATISFACTION HABIT

The Ecosystem MOTIVATION TRIGGERS DECISIONS SATISFACTION HABIT
INTRAPSYCHIC 
The self
INSTRUMENTAL
The object world
INTERPERSONAL
The social world
EXPECTATIONS
For the future
Safe, Conﬁdent 
SECURITY 
Insecure, Afraid
Free, Powerful 
EMPOWERMENT 
Trapped, Frustrated
Accepted, Belonging
BELONGING
Isolated, Lonely
EXPERIENCES 
In the moment
Unique, Interesting 
IDENTITY 
Ordinary, Boring
Involved, Absorbed 
ENGAGEMENT
Passive, Indifferent
Sharing, Caring
NURTURANCE
Selﬁsh, Unloved
OUTCOMES
From past behavior
Talented, Exceptional 
MASTERY
Incompetent
Victorious, Productive
ACHIEVEMENT
Defeated, Pointless
Proud, Respected 
ESTEEM
Ashamed, Disgraced
adapted from Forbes “The Science of Why”
The MindSight Matrix
4 —

Medals
iPhone 6
375 x 667px
iPhone 6
375 x 667px
iPhone 6
375 x 667px
The Ecosystem MOTIVATION TRIGGERS DECISIONS SATISFACTION HABIT4 —

Intrapsychic Motivation
• Important for realization of self needs and wants.
• Future: We want to feel secure about our expectations for the future.
• Present: We want to experience unique and interesting things in the
moment.
• Past: We want to feel a sense of accomplishment when we have
mastered something for ourselves.

iPhone 6
375 x 667px
Filling Up
Pokedex iPhone 6
375 x 667px
iPhone 6
375 x 667px

Instrumental Motivation
• Important for feeling comfortable within physical space
• Future: We don’t want to feel trapped in our life situations.
• Present: We want to be empowered in our planning and engaged with
our experiences.
• Past: We also want to feel productive & efﬁcient in our work &
situation.

iPhone 6
375 x 667px
Lures  
and Teams iPhone 6
375 x 667px
iPhone 6
375 x 667px

Interpersonal Motivation
• Important for feeling valued with the people in your circle.
• Future: We want to feel accepted by other people when we think
about engaging with them.
• Present: We want to feel cared for by them when we engage with
them.
• Past: We also want to feel as though we’ve secured a place in our
many social circles.

Appealing to All Angles
These approaches are constructs that help us categorize the billions
of complex, intrinsic reasons why we do things.
Use a different motivational approach to sell the same or similar
product.

Target Multiple Motivating Factors
Dual use of intrapsychic and interpersonal motivation creates
broad appeal to a variety of our motivations within a target
audience segment.
Best practice to position your brand, product, or service as
satisfying not just one but a variety of different motivations.

The Reward System
1
2
• Aversion, reward, and
addiction centers of the
brain.
• Related to impulsivity, the
placebo effect, and
rhythmic typing .
Nucleus Accumbens
brain.
VTA
1
2

In the Brain: VTA is DOPE
The Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA) is a vital part of the brain’s
reward system.
Center of dopaminergic pathways and studied for behavior
enforcement and addiction.
The Ventral Pallidum is speciﬁcally associated with
‘wanting’ (motivation) and ‘liking’ (satisfaction).

Like Expected reward
Learning Action selection
Actual reward
Dopamine
neurons
Dopamine
neurons
Attribution of
incentive salence
Incentive Assignment(a) (b) Salience and Reward
Want
Motivational
Salience
The extent an object, event, or
thought drives goal directed
behavior.

Incentive
Salience
Assigns ‘want’ attribute to stimuli
Creates want by rewarding stimuli
with increasing dopamine.
In behavioralism, positive
conditioning.
Actual reward
Dopamine
neurons
Dopamine
neurons
Attribution of
incentive salence
Want

Actual reward
Dopamine
neurons
Dopamine
neurons
Attribution of
incentive salence
Want
Aversive
Salience
Reduces ‘want’ attribute to stimuli.
Decreases dopamine levels.
In behavioralism, positive
punishment.

Key Takeaways for
Motivation• Intrapsychic, instrumental, and interpersonal motivational
“buckets” can be used to help classify different types of
motivation.
• Ensuring that your service or product offering appeals to all
three will broaden your reach and increase your relevancy.
• Consider the motivational salience of your product / service. To
what extent does your product / service drive goal-directed
behavior?

Persona 1: College Student
• Design student, interested in UX
• Enjoys visiting Art museums
• Likes to learn coding, especially CSS
• Asks questions about user research, product design
• Answers questions about typography, logo design

Persona 2: Junior Level
Professional• Marketing Strategist
• Enjoys music production
• Likes to code in her free time
• Asks questions about audio mastering tips, Adwords
search
• Answers questions about Google Analytics, about violins

Persona 3: Aerospace Engineer
• Competitive Gamer
• Mid-30’s
• Asks questions about CS:GO strategy,
aerospace industry trends
• Answers questions about rocket engineering,
pro gaming strategies

Stop Here
WORKBOOK BREAK

The Ecosystem

The Ecosystem
Motivation SatisfactionDecisionsTriggers
Anything that catalyzes a decision.

Triggered by…Vaporeon?

Trigger-nometry • A trigger is anything that
catalyzes a decision.
• External & internal.
• The strongest triggers are both.

Trigger-nometry
External Internal
What to do next is outside What to do next is in the user’s head
Alarms
Emails
Sales
Warnings
Reward Programs
Due Dates
Calendar
Stores
Emotions
Routines
Situations
Goals
Loss Aversion
Reward Expectation

External Triggers
Paid Triggers: Effective but costly. Less effective at getting users to
come back. Leverage for acquisition then use other triggers.
Earned Triggers: Referrals from family and friends are key part of
spreading products. Build an engaged user base through good UX.
Owned Triggers: Owning a piece of real estate in the user’s
environment. As long as a user gives permission. (Strongest trigger.)

Notiﬁcations
iPhone 6
375 x 667px

Go PLUS

Internal Triggers
Internal triggers manifest automatically from motivators and related
emotions.
Negative emotions are particularly strong. Many motivations stem
from loss aversion. (Avoid pain, fear, social rejection).
Positive emotions can stem from satiation of motivators.

Internal Triggers (cont.d)
Users associate an internal trigger with your product
(solve for their need).
The information about what to do after the trigger is encoded
as a learned association.
Internal triggers keep users coming back to the experience.

iPhone 6
375 x 667px
Filling Up
Pokedex iPhone 6
375 x 667px
iPhone 6
375 x 667px

Combined Triggers
Relationship Triggers: Can become internal triggers. Interpersonal
motivators can drive users to re-engage.
Owned Triggers: Can become internal triggers. Intrapsychic and
interpersonal motivators.

Fogg Behavioral Model
Hard to do Easy to do
High
Motivation
Low
Motivation
Ability (A)
Motivation (M) Triggers (T)
Succeed Here
Triggers (T)
Fail Here
Activation
Threshold
B=MAT

B=MAT
M=Motivation. Why a user
takes action.
High
Motivation
Low
Motivation
Motivation (M)

B=MAT
A=Ability to perform the Action
Ability (A)

T=Strength of Trigger
High
Motivation
Low
Motivation
Ability (A)
Succeed Here
Triggers (T)
Fail Here
B=MAT

Spark
Leverage motivations.
High
Low
(A)
(M)
Facilitator Signal
Spark
Facilitator
Reduce risk, make easier to use.
Signal
Reminder; don’t confuse with others.

Signals can be
quick and
effective
Certain triggers catalyze actions
that don’t always reach the
decision making process. These
are quick thinking triggers.
These use the brain’s fast,
automatic, and intuitive approach.

Trafﬁc Light
Car turn signal
Elevator chime
Notiﬁcation
Low Battery
Event Reminder
Transactional email
Free Trial CTA
Sound Affordance
IRL Phone Digital Product
Signals can be quick and effectiveSignals can be quick and effective

Signals can be quick and effective

Quick Triggers
• Signals often fall under the category of System 1 triggers become
stronger with habit formation.
• Many soft conversion triggers are System 1.

Slow Triggers
• Slow triggers have multiple inﬂuencing factors.
• Most hard conversion triggers are slow triggers.

The Reward System
1
2
brain.
• Related to impulsivity, the
placebo effect, and rhythmic
typing
Nucleus Accumbens
brain.
VTA
1
2

In the Brain: Back to that VTA
• Ventral Pallidum neurons encode incentive
and hedonic stimuli in phasic bursts of
excitement.
• These bursts are the measurable effects of
triggers on the brain.
• We’ve shown people ice cream and scanned
their brains.

Key Takeaways for Triggers
• Triggers are catalysts for action.
• Quick triggers don’t reach a decision making process.
• Quick triggers are often stronger and less complex than slow
triggers.
• Triggers become stronger through habit formation.

The Ecosystem
Selection of course of action.

Decision-Making as a Model
• Some decisions are easy (“I’m starving; time to eat”)
• Others have more layers (“Do I continue writing my novel of 10
years if I have started prioritizing my career as a strategist?”)
• What are the factors at play that comprise this difference?

High
Motivation
Low
Motivation
Ability (A)
Succeed Here
Triggers (T)
Fail Here
Activation
Threshold

• Motivation, ability, and a trigger must be present for a user to take
action.
• Triggers lying above the activation threshold curve are successful in
generating an action.

High
Motivation
Low
Motivation
Ability (A)
Succeed Here
Triggers (T)
Fail Here
Activation
Threshold
Decision
Zone

Decisions as Outcomes
• Delicate balance between input and output.
• Decision attitude: our opinion of the cost analysis of the proposal.
• We assess the magnitude of change the decision will bring to our
lives.

The Pokemon
Store iPhone 6
375 x 667px

Decision Process • Our brains create a weighted
average “decision attitude”
within seconds.
• Do I want to do this?
• Is it hard to do?
• Am I good at it?
• How long will it take?

Decision
Process
Problem 1 Problem 2
Get $900 for sure
OR
90% chance to get
$1,000
Lose $900 for sure
OR
90% chance to lose
$1,000

• States: Our aversion to loss is generally greater than our
response to gains.
• Different from utility theory, which treats changes in state
as having equal psychological weight.
• Disrupts traditional rational thought in economics
Prospect Theory

Prospect Theory
-10
10
+ Dollar
- Psychological
Losse
Gain

• Align product/service sure gains with prospect theory.
• Emphasizing how your product or service helps users avoid sure
losses can appeal to loss aversion as a general psychological
principle.
Prospect Theory in Action

The Reward System
1
2
• ”Higher brain functions.”
• Planning complex behaviors
• Pulls from other variables to
give weight to reward
system
Prefrontal Cortex
• Sensory input and
language processing
• Key in planning and
coordination
Anterior Parietal Lobe
1
2

Key Takeaways for
Decisions• Use the Fogg Model to treat decisions as a function of
motivation, ability, and triggers.
• Our brains create split second decision attitudes as a weighted
average of our initial assessment of a decision’s impact on our
lives.
• The magnitude of change that a decision will bring to our lives is
often more important than the actual product, service, or situation
itself.

The Ecosystem
HabitSatisfactionDecisionsTriggers
Satiation of needs from an experience.

• Satisfaction: Sometimes used interchangeable with
happiness.
• Evaluation of an experience as a whole.
• Happiness: Product of emotions in the moment.
I Can’t Get No…

• Satisfaction is:
• Emotions during your experience
• Memory of that experience
• External factors affecting your memory
Major factors

• A reward reinforces a displayed behavior. It increases the
probability of that behavior occurring again.
Rewards

Incentive Salience:
Reward
• ‘Want’ or ‘desire’ attribute
• Creates want by rewarding
stimuli with increasing
dopamine.
• Satisfaction before, during, and
after experience leads to
pleasure and increased ‘want’.
Actual reward
Dopamine
neurons
Dopamine
neurons
Attribution of
incentive salence
Want

Incentive Salience:
Reward
• Perception of satisfaction - ﬂuid
• The following can change
perception of satisfaction by
average rating of 2: 
— Previous memories 
— New associative memories 
— Environmental shifts

Memory Plays
Large Part Over
Time
• Our perception of satisfaction
can be altered before and after
an experience.
• Associations and things like the
Primacy Effect can skew or
derail perception of satisfaction.

Incentive Salience:
Reward
• Rushing at the end of a vacation
can distort your memory of the
entire experience.

Incentive Salience:
Reward
15%
11%
18%
57%
During Experience
Associative Experiences
Triggers
Environmental Changes

Memory Recall • Brains recall old memories by
piecing together stored
components and creating a
cohesive remembrance of the
past.
• Recollective experience is handled
by the hippocampus.
• Recollection of episodic
experiences, stored in
hippocampal event engrams.

Memory
Association
Banana Vomit

TL;DR - No Need
to Avoid Bananas
• Brains form temporal and causal
connections between our
memories.
• Anchoring: “ﬁxing” the brain to a
certain reference point
• Availability effect: the brain’s
tendency to accept that which is
most easily available

Anchoring in
Projects
• Gifn’s internal promotion feature
leverages the anchoring effect in
real time.

Micro-Experiences
1. To reduce possibility of skewing satisfaction. 
2. Make the action easy to do to improve
triggers.
Create discrete, simple, and rewarding  
micro-experiences.
Micro-experiences are distinct and small
experiences that provide small rewards.
START
SMALL
EXPERIENCE
REWARD

Micro-Experiences
• Onboarding
• Interaction Animations
• Wizards
• Suggestions
• E-mail swipe-to-delete
• Twitter

Micro-Experiences

Our Talk is
Loading…

Thanks! Here’s a Bathroom Break!

Reward Centers • Your brain rewards you for
behaviors that beneﬁt you.
• Reward centers release GABA,
dopamine, serotonin.
• Satisfaction is a product of these
centers.

Hedonic Hot Spots • Areas of the brain associated with
“liking” certain rewards.
• MRI scans and for plum mapping
identify opiod distribution in these
areas to ﬁnd them.

Key Takeaways for Satisfaction
• Satisfaction is the evaluation of a user experience as a whole,
rather than the sum of emotions in a single situation.
• Leveraging rewards and reward behaviors with your product or
service design can integrate satisfaction into your product
strategy.
• Utilizing micro-experiences as satisfactory stepping stones in a
user experience can maximize reward centers along a process
ﬂow.

The Ecosystem
HabitSatisfactionDecisions
A ﬁxed way of thinking, willing, or feeling.

Hook Model & Effective Habits

Satisfaction,
Motivation, and
Memory
• The three behavioral pillars
contribute to the successful
development of habitual use.
• Creating useful awards in micro-
experiences increases habitual
use of a digital product.

Keystone habits: Usually high reward, high impact habits and/
or exhibited for over 2 years and can easily become triggers.
Keystone Habits

Habit Inertia • Create investments in habits.
• By engaging in satisfying
experiences with strong triggers,
users increase their likeliness of
returning to a product.
• “Ikea Effect”
• The more time you spend on it,
the fonder you become.

The Good Old
Days iPhone 6
375 x 667px

The Patched Solution
First tracking system provided the user with system feedback
Rewarding micro-experiences as you approached Pokemon
Tracking & catching Pokemon yourself = Ikea Effect
Patched tracking removed functionality, destroying those micro-rewards

Key Takeaways for Habits
• A habit is a ﬁxed and often unnoticed action taken by a
person.
• Habits are formed through triggers, actions, rewards, and
investments.
• Investments increase habit formation inertia.
• Increase rewards and micro-experiences.

Neuroscience in Action
Using what you’ve learned about neuroscience’s role in marketing
and design, let’s put it in action by critiquing an app that we’ve
conceptualized for this workshop.
Foundations How It Works: Questions3 — Workshop5 —

Persona 1: College Student
• Design student, interested in UX
• Enjoys visiting Art museums
• Likes to learn coding, especially CSS
• Asks questions about user research, product design
• Answers questions about typography, logo design
Workshop Quest App5 —

Persona 2: Junior Level
Professional• Marketing Strategist
• Enjoys music production
• Likes to code in her free time
• Asks questions about audio mastering tips, Adwords
search
• Answers questions about Google Analytics, about violins

Persona 3: Aerospace Engineer
• Competitive Gamer
• Mid-30’s
• Asks questions about CS:GO strategy,
aerospace industry trends
• Answers questions about rocket engineering,
pro gaming strategies

Final Exercise - Journey Map
• We want to identify opportunities for
improvement in the Quest app.
• Design & marketing focused.
• Questioners & answerers.
• Three personas.

• Using the behavioral toolkits you developed earlier, each table will
create a journey map for one of the three personas.
• Half of the table will create a journey map for a questioner ﬂow.
• The other half will create the answerer ﬂow.

Six key phases for this model interaction:
• Acquisition 1 / Engagement 1

• Within each phase, we’ve deﬁned a set of goals that users need to
complete in order to count as a successful engagement.
• Your job: Using post-its at your table, ideate the steps that the user
needs to complete in order to complete each goal.
• Think about the behavioral pillars as you are writing steps. Write
these associations down in the spaces provided.

• List three design & three marketing recommendations based on
your neuroscience findings in the space provided.
• Do this for each goal. Then, compare your journey map with the
other half of the table.
• Discuss with your table what was similar & different about the
behavioral findings & recommendations in your flows.

Conclusions
PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER

Why Do This?
• Neuroscience techniques create common threads between user
experience & re-engagement.
• Ability of UX design to satisfy & motivate correlates to the impact
of user memory of the experience.
• More impactful experiences combined with triggered marketing
efforts are vital for successful re-engagement.
Conclusions Pulling It All Together6 —

The Ecosystem
Behavior ModelConclusions6 —

Connections
• Cells : Organs
• Synapses : Associations
• Steps : Goals

Connections
• Neuroscience - anti-silo
• You can think like a scientist without being one.
• Go beyond the persona.
• Go beyond the target audience.

Thank you!
PRESENTED BY
Tommy Hung
@tommyx88
UX Strategist
Caitlin Pequignot
@aveleonmusic
Digital Strategist
x

PRPL @ SXSW: The Symbiosis of Brains, Marketing, and Design

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