Dyson and the importance of being transparent about your efforts

In our new book, Hacking the Human Mind, we take a look at 17 leading brands and explore the behavioural science underpinning their success. Each chapter starts with a short brand story before quickly delving into the behavioural science meat.

Here’s an extract from the chapter on Dyson. The background on the brand includes James Dyson’s obsession with a specific problem — and the lengths he went to solve it. Below, we go straight to the part of the chapter exploring one of the behavioural biases he instinctively put to work when he decided to publicise the number of prototypes (5,127) it took to solve the vacuum problem.

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A clear win

Dyson actively chose to be transparent about the way he worked: the marketing for the DC01 highlighted the huge number of redesigns it took to develop the cleaner. Not only does Dyson mention the 5,127 prototypes in the very first line of his autobiography, but repeated testing is central to the way the brand talks about its products. There’s a whole section on the Dyson website dedicated to what it calls “relentless engineering”.

The idea was even the focus of one of the company’s most important ads. The copy read:

While other vacuum manufacturers toyed with things like height adapters or new attachments, James Dyson worked on solving the real problem with vacuums — they lose suction power. After testing over 5,000 prototypes, he created the first vacuum cleaner that doesn’t lose suction. And now, it’s here in America. So, come see a Dyson today. It’s the vacuum. Reinvented.

What’s going on?

Maybe it matters more when your design is novel. Making it clear that the product has been through more than 5,000 prototypes before landing on its latest iteration should help allay any sense that this is a hare-brained, mad-scientist project that could blow up in your kitchen.

But as well as offering reassurance, there’s another important reason to highlight work done: effort equates with value in customers’ minds. This is due to a bias called the illusion of effort.

One study providing evidence of its impact was conducted by Justin Kruger and colleagues at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign in 2004.

The team recruited 138 participants and split them into two groups. Both groups were given a poem to read called “Order” by Michael Van Walleghen. One group was told it took the poet four hours to write; the second group was told it took 18 hours.

Next, participants rated the poem on a scale from 1 to 11 (1 = hate it; 11 = love it). Additionally, they were asked to estimate how much money the poem would earn if sold to a poetry magazine.

The results revealed that people who thought the poem took four hours to compose (low effort group) gave an average rating of 5.84. However, those told that it took 18 hours (high effort group) scored it at 6.43 — an uplift of 10%.

In addition, the low effort group estimated the poem would make $50 if sold to a magazine, while the high effort group thought it was worth $95 — a 90% increase in value.

The key point is: the exact same piece of work was rated better and valued more highly when people were told that more effort had gone into it. But Kruger explores impressions of a poem — a somewhat esoteric focus. You might sensibly wonder if this can be extrapolated to commercial settings.

We wondered the same and carried out our own experiment to explore the issue. For our study, we showed 278 Americans a picture of a fictitious brand, Black Sheep Vodka. Half of the group were told the brand had tested 143 designs before choosing (high effort); the other half were not (low effort). We then asked how much they liked the bottle design.

Among the low-effort group, 17% liked or loved it. That figure climbed to 23% for the high-effort group — that’s a 35% improvement.

The higher rating occurs because it’s difficult to judge the quality of the design. And, as Daniel Kahneman says, “When faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.” In this case, the easier question is how much effort did the designer expend. We use effort as a proxy for quality. The same substitution happens in many commercial settings.

The key for any brand, then, is to be transparent about the lengths you’ve gone to in creating your product. It’s not enough to expend lots of effort; you have to let your customer know.

But what if apparently little effort goes into your product? Say, if you’re a fast-food outlet that serves your customers in seconds? Itsu, an Asian-inspired lunchtime takeaway chain, is a great example. Your miso soup or rice bowl is served instantly, so it’s hard to claim that chefs have toiled over it for hours. But Itsu has come up with a great way to work around the problem, still applying the illusion of effort. It focuses on the hours that go into becoming the kind of miso master who works for Itsu.

Sandwich boards standing outside stores say:

744,600 hours.

Apparently, it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill.

Our miso master Yoshihiro would disagree. He and his family have been making miso in Japan for 85 years (744,600 hours) and they’re still getting better.

You might want to consider the same approach when it comes to negotiating with clients. Consider the story of designer Paula Scher and the $1.5m napkin. Scher’s company, Pentagram, had been briefed to come up with a brand design for the newly formed Citibank. Over a lunch meeting with the client, she supposedly sketched a quick logo on a paper napkin. Her speedy design turned into the basis of the entire brand. The client may have been less than delighted – $1.5 million seemed a lot for such a quick turnaround.

But, Scher is famously quoted as saying, “It took me a few seconds to draw it, but it took me 34 years to learn how to do that in a few seconds.” Thankfully, Citibank understood this, and the logo has since become one of the most recognisable in finance.

This story reminds us that if we provide services speedily, we need to draw attention to the time that has been spent elsewhere to reach this level of efficiency. Otherwise, there’s a risk that the quality of work is underappreciated.

It’s also something to keep in mind when using AI. The speed and efficiency inherent in AI can sometimes mean it falls foul of the illusion of effort. That might feel like a leap. But there’s a study from Kobe Millet and colleagues at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam that suggests just that.

In 2023, the researchers recruited 800 participants online and showed them two almost identical drawings of a human skull, both created by human artists. However, one of the images was randomly labelled as AI-generated and one as human-created.

Participants rated their appreciation of the creativity of each piece of art, as well as purchase intent, on scales from one to seven.

For creativity, artworks labelled as hand-drawn were rated at 5.30, whereas those labelled as AI-generated scored 2.75 — that’s a massive 48% drop. And, most worryingly, researchers saw the same pattern for purchase intent. The images marked as hand-drawn received a score of 4.85. Those marked as AI-generated scored 3.02. People would be 38% less likely to pay for them.

People assume that AI output is low effort. After all, they know that ChatGPT can write a blog post in seconds. This means people don’t value AI outputs as highly as human efforts. If you’re going to be open with your clients, or the public, about using AI tools, it’s important to emphasise the work you’ve put in before getting to the output, or in monitoring its results.

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Each chapter concludes with a concise summary of the behavioural science actions you’ve learnt so you can apply them immediately to your own business or brand.

To read the rest of this chapter and find out how other top brands applied behavioural science to grow, get your copy of Hacking the Human Mind from Amazon, Waterstones or any other bookshop, from 30 September.