🪓 The Labour Illusion:

Seeing effort makes us value results more.

Netflix

Selecting movies for you

People have a tendency to perceive products and services more favourably when they're aware of the effort that was put in to create it.

This is often called Artificial waiting, and is one reason why fancy restaurants will have open kitchens.

Or for a more abstract example, why do people think the Egyptian pyramids are impressive? Because it took a lot of effort (and skill).

✅Conversion rates

A greater perception of value can improve conversion rates.

✅ Perception of value

This is the foundation of this principle. People usually associate more value to something that they knew took a lot of effort.

✅ Purchases

Here are some of the most common ways that services will leverage the Labour Illusion:

  • Fake spinners—to keep you waiting, thinking that a server is doing something really smart.

  • Fake loading bars—if your 'personalised dashboard' loaded too quickly, people might assume that nothing really happened.

  • Fake steps—adding a faux step of "verifying" or "processing", to make the user think that something special is happening.

  • Mentioning how long something took to create—for example, saying that each case study takes me about 50 hours to create (which is true).

Whilst I have no proof that this step is fake, I suspect that Netflix could pretty instantaneously select a feed of movies for a new user.

Instead, they show this spinner, giving the illusion that they're crawling around finding you movies and shows that they think you'll love.

i.e., it feels personalised, and waiting a few seconds gives the impression that something clever is happening.