🥱 Law of Minimal Effort:
We tend to do things the easiest way possible.
Laziness is hard-wired into our system, and people will unknowingly opt for the path of minimal effort.
Importantly, this is without even being aware that they are taking such a shortcut.
A puzzle
It's easier to show you this, rather than explain it.
Look at the puzzle below:
A bat and ball costs £1.10.
The bat costs 1 pound (£) more than the ball.
How much does the ball cost?
Most people would answer the obvious: the ball costs £0.10. And they'd be wrong.
The answer
If the bat costs £1.00 more than the ball, then the ball costs £0.05 (the bat costs £1.05).
This is a puzzle that initially seems easy, and most people who could objectively answer it correctly, wouldn't have, because they unknowingly took the path of least effort.
They settled on the first answer the was feasibly correct, rather than investing the small amount of effort required to check their initial judgement.
This is how people navigate the world, including digital products.
The bat and ball study
This bat and ball study, which was from the book 'Thinking, fast and slow', explains that more than 50% of students at Harvard, MIT and Princeton gave the intuitive (and incorrect) answer.
At less selective universities, the failure rate was above 80%.
Feature usage
If a feature looks daunting to use, and there's a viable option to not bother, the user will be tempted to take the path of least effort.
Habits
Habits are, by their very nature, a way for people to operate on autopilot (i.e., without exerting too much effort).
It's easier to maintain a habit, than it is to break one.
Effort & motivation
As a broad rule of thumb, people will try and exert as little effort as possible. If you want people to put in more effort, you'll need to motivate them.
Complexity & understanding
People will put minimal effort into learning how your service works—despite it saving them time and effort in the long run.
Education is rarely low effort.