Behavioral Design Under Pressure

Curious about accessible marketing? Take a look at a selection of slides from my presentation at Digital Summit here, or keep reading below for the context and background on this topic—one I’m deeply passionate about. Digital Summit is a virtual conference that convenes industry professionals, thought leaders, and experts to explore emerging trends and best practices in digital marketing and technology.

Crisis Context and Initial Approach

By July 2020, COVID-19 shutdowns had devastated businesses across the country for months, and the business insurance company I worked for faced an unprecedented challenge. State regulations were changing weekly; federal relief programs launched in waves; and business owners were drowning in existential uncertainty about coverage, liability, and survival itself. Our marketing team was tasked with creating an assessment to help overwhelmed entrepreneurs understand their insurance options during the crisis—a digital triage tool for businesses we had never had to build before.

We made a 20-question assessment tool with one question per page, progress bar tracking, and single-choice answers that would take user responses to determine personalized coverage recommendations. The assessment included fundamental business questions like annual revenue, industry type, number of employees, property ownership status, and current location—standard inquiries that worked well for insurance prospects under normal market conditions. The methodology was built on what seemed like solid behavioral design foundations, drawing from established UX psychology principles. The core architecture combined three frameworks:

1. Loss aversion activation

2. Authority-driven guidance

3. Urgency-based engagement

Loss Aversion Activation refers to designing experiences that emphasize what users might lose if they don’t take action, tapping into the psychological principle that people feel losses more acutely than equivalent gains. We implemented this through the Von Restorff Effect, which makes specific information stand out through visual contrast—in our case, using high-contrast accent colors to make coverage gaps impossible to ignore, theoretically motivating protective action. Authority-Driven Guidance leverages Authority Bias, the tendency for people to comply more readily with expert recommendations. We activated this by displaying regulatory compliance indicators and positioning as insurance crisis experts. Urgency-Based Engagement is exactly what it sounds like—using ‘crisis language’ to apply time pressure, encouraging people to complete the assessment and get our recommendations as fast as possible.

Original System Architecture

The assessment combined clean visual design, state-specific personalization, and branching technical infrastructure with gap-focused messaging positioned as definitive guidance. We segmented users by demographics and geography, delivered comprehensive risk assessments, and measured success through engagement metrics like completion rates and time spent—assuming these indicated purchase intent.

The methodology assumed linear user psychology during crisis: present authoritative information about risks → user acknowledges gaps → urgency drives action → qualified lead generated. Each component was designed to reinforce the others in a systematic cascade toward conversion, exactly as these psychological principles had worked in our pre-pandemic insurance campaigns.

We also briefed our Sales and Customer Success teams about the new assessment initiative, and they were very supportive of the approach. We specifically asked them to alert us if business owners who called them referenced the assessment, whether positively or negatively, so we could monitor real-world user experience beyond the digital analytics.

Where the Framework Buckled

The first structural failure occurred at the user state assumption level—our assumptions about users' psychological and cognitive condition when entering our system. Our method treated all crisis-affected business owners as if they would exhibit rational loss aversion and simply be concerned or worried versions of our normal prospects. But this was presumptuous. We failed to account for the cognitive overload that business owners were likely experiencing as they juggled real things in the real world, like PPP loan applications, employee safety protocols, supply chain disruptions, and revenue free fall. This incorrect presumption caused various components to break down in our framework.

Component-Level Breakdowns

The following analysis examines each core framework component to understand what we expected to happen versus what actually occurred, along with the specific evidence that revealed our failures.

Loss Aversion Activation Malfunction

• Design Intent: Use high-contrast visual highlighting (hat tip to the Von Restorff Effect) to make coverage gaps impossible to ignore, motivating users to take preemptive action

• Actual Result: We unfortunately amplified anxiety in business owners who were already paralyzed by daily crisis management decisions

• Evidence: The Customer Success team reported a significant increase in calls where users referenced the assessment but seemed harried and uncertain about next steps, even though the tool provided clear “get this coverage” recommendations with direct enrollment links

• Root Cause: Our method assumed users had the cognitive bandwidth to process risk information constructively, not recognizing that stressed decision-makers exhibit “tunneling” behavior

Authority-Driven Guidance Failure

• Design Intent: Show regulatory compliance indicators and assert the necessity and extreme usefulness of the assessment and our recommendations (hat tip to the principle of Authority Bias) to accelerate trust-building

• Actual Result: We created unrealistic expectations that our assessment could solve broader business survival challenges

• Evidence: The Sales team reported prospects asking about cash flow management, employee retention strategies, and supply chain alternatives during insurance consultations—problems completely outside our expertise scope

• Root Cause: Authority signals during crisis situations can generate dependency rather than empowerment, causing users to expect comprehensive business guidance beyond our scope as an insurance provider

Urgency-Based Engagement Backfire

• Design Intent: Time pressure and crisis language would focus attention and accelerate decision-making using scarcity principles

• Actual Result: We triggered decision paralysis in business owners who were already overwhelmed by simultaneous urgent priorities

• Evidence: Web analytics showed substantial prospect abandonment at one question in particular:

  • “How many months can your business survive at current revenue levels before permanent closure?”

• Root Cause: Producing a sense of urgency in users who are already experiencing acute stress can compound their cognitive load rather than focus their attention or provoke a desired action

Methodology Diagnosis

Our fundamental methodological error was context blindness—applying behavioral design principles calibrated for stable market conditions to users who were experiencing unprecedented economic disruption. Restaurant owners facing permanent closure, retail stores navigating capacity restrictions, and service businesses losing 80% of revenue weren’t exhibiting standard insurance buying behavior. The framework probably would’ve worked well for baseline prospects, but it became actively harmful when applied to cognitively depleted users mid-crisis.

The methodology also suffered from variable conflation—treating engagement metrics (12-minute average session times, 340% higher completion rates) as indicators for purchase intent, when they actually could have pointed to how challenging the questions were or how desperate for information and advice the business owners were.

Deconstructed Component Analysis

What Worked (Preserved Elements)

• Personalization engine: State-specific regulatory guidance and industry-specific content delivery functioned properly and provided genuine value

• Cross-team feedback systems: Sales and Customer Success teams provided crucial real-world user experience data that our digital analytics couldn't capture, enabling us to detect problems quickly

• Technical infrastructure: Branching logic, real-time data integration, and responsive design performed as intended without technical failures

• Visual hierarchy and information architecture: Clean presentation and logical flow remained effective across user psychological states

What Failed (Discarded Elements)

• Authority positioning as comprehensive problem-solver: Promising definitive solutions and expert guidance beyond the scope of our insurance expertise

• Universal urgency application: One-size-fits-all crisis language regardless of business financial stability or user psychological state

What Needed Reconstruction (Modified Elements)

• User segmentation methodology: From demographic/firmographic categorization to psychological state-based differentiation (acute crisis vs. strategic adaptation vs. recovery planning)

• Information delivery framework: From comprehensive to incremental disclosure, based on user cognitive capacity and stress indicators

• Success metrics definition: From engagement quantity (completion rates, time spent) to outcome quality (user empowerment, decision confidence, actual problem resolution)

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Rebuilt Method Architecture

The reconstructed methodology introduced adaptive frameworks that adjust based on user psychological state rather than applying universal behavioral triggers to crisis-affected business owners experiencing vastly different stress levels and decision-making capacity.

New Architectural Principles

Our rebuilt assessment expanded from 20 to 25 questions with a strategic structure: we kept the first five foundational business questions that any business owner would need to answer when seeking insurance guidance, then added five new psychological state assessment questions about recent layoffs, ability to pay essential expenses, time spent on crisis management, business survival expectations, and preferred decision-making approach. These psychological assessment questions would determine routing to persona-specific versions of the final 15 questions, which we preserved from the original assessment and covered day-to-day operations, goals, and specific use cases.

We knew that adding five questions would increase overall completion time, so we wouldn’t be able to evaluate “time spent” metrics in the same way. Therefore, we shifted our focus to quality indicators: decreasing hard exits (users clicking X rather than using the soft exit of save-and-continue), reducing negative Customer Success and Sales interactions that seemed influenced by the assessment, and increasing conversion rates among users who started the assessment. Even if fewer people finished overall, we wanted more people who began the process to complete it successfully.

1. Crisis-State Personas

For the rebuild we created three versions of the same final 15 questions, fundamentally asking about the same business information but with different levels of detail and directness appropriate to each user’s cognitive capacity. Similarly, while the underlying recommendation logic remained unchanged, we developed three versions of each result set—with the simplest guidance reserved for Survival Mode Sam and the most specific, detailed next steps designed for Recovery Mode Rachel.

• “Survival Mode Sam” (Acute Crisis): Restaurants facing closure, retail with 80% revenue loss—cognitive capacity severely limited by daily crisis management, requires simple binary guidance and immediate resource identification

• “Pivot Mode Paul” (Strategic Adaptation): Businesses successfully adapting operations—moderate cognitive capacity available for strategic thinking, can handle comprehensive analysis and planning

• “Recovery Mode Rachel” (Recovery Planning): Companies stabilizing after initial crisis—high cognitive capacity returning as operations normalize, ready for future-focused recommendations and growth protection emphasis

The vast majority of users during the crisis were Survival Mode Sams—business owners who might normally handle complex decisions very well but were now operating with limited cognitive capacity due to unprecedented, unplanned stressors that could prove fatal to their business. Most of our architectural changes focused on making the experience work (and feel) much better for this super-majority of users.

2. Cognitive Load Management

• Early Psychological Assessment: The rebuild used questions 6-10 to assess users’ psychological state and cognitive capacity, assigning them to one of the three new personas

• Persona-Specific Question Paths: Different personas would encounter different versions of the final 15 questions tailored to respect their cognitive capacity—more simply phrased questions for Survival Mode Sam vs. strategically phrased questions for Recovery Mode Rachel

• Exit Ramp: To prevent decision paralysis, the rebuild also newly provided users with an always-visible “save and continue later” feature, which enabled them to leave the assessment but keep their progress, so they could pick it back up when they were ready. A follow-up email with a deep link was sent three days later to everyone; once again eight days later to everyone minus Survival Mode Sams, whom we didn’t want to overwhelm; and once again (and finally) 14 days later only to Recovery Mode Rachels, who were least likely to feel burned out by the reminders

3. Support-First Positioning

• Resource Identification: On the assessment landing page that introduced the tool, we moved away from wording about “the unprecedented Covid-19 global crisis that is impacting businesses” to instead center all of the help and resources that were available, e.g., tax relief measures, grants for specific industries, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP loans), and more

• Supportive Assessment Messaging: Throughout the assessment we integrated encouraging messages that reminded users there are no right or wrong answers, we’re here to help, they can stop and return anytime using the save feature, and they can complete it over the phone with Customer Success if that’s easier

• Realistic Timeline Acknowledgment: In our final recommendations (based on their answers) and follow-up emails (if they saved before completing), we softened our language from urgency-focused (“Take action today to ensure your business is protected”) to more reassuring and passive (“When you’re ready to expand your protection…”)—moving away from the implication that immediate action was needed and toward an understanding that temporary inaction is OK