Here, a product’s format can help to reinforce the effort that it puts in, helping us to focus our attention on its active features; the parts that work hardest for us.

As a result, low cost signals that are easy to fake are often unreliable cues of trustworthiness.

In fact, Iyengar argues that the regret experienced over these lost options is often greater than the joy we feel from the choices that we ultimately make.

To support the mechanisation of mail in the 1950s, the UK needed a postal coding system that could not only divide the country into small areas but also be read by a computer and understood by a postman, all the while allowing a maximum number of permutations. As easy as that.

To survive in nature, organisms converge on winning solutions. There’s more than one route to the same good idea.

How might we reinforce individual control, particularly when close to acting? How might we endorse an unexpected competing behaviour, reinforcing a desired one? How might we illustrate that the choice is theirs?

We increased perceptions of value without changing the price.

We trust expensive messages because they help us to access otherwise unobservable information about the messenger:

In total, the TRIZ methodology recognises that there are 40 inventive principles that can be drawn upon to inspire innovation.