Twitch Celebrates the Wrong Thing (and Misses the Aha Moment)

I can see the appeal of live streaming on Twitch.

These case studies take a huge amount of work. And so, enticed by the idea of making money while lying down, I tried it for myself.

I was hoping for an aha moment. Twitch never gave me one.

They gave me something else.

Occasionally, after ending a stream, Twitch will present you with a badge. Initially, this is likely to be something almost patronising, like having 7 viewers.

This looks a bit like an Aha! Moment, except it isn’t.

The point of one isn’t to create an enjoyable moment, or to make people feel great about themselves.

Unlocking random badges and achievements only increases the expected value if the user believes that it will happen again.

And the truth is that most people’s first streams will be rubbish: awkwardly chatting to the one person who accidentally stumbled across their channel. Or worse, just performing to nobody.

So the real Aha! Moment here wouldn’t be “you had 7 viewers”, it would be: “that was a start, but here’s how we can help you get to 100 viewers”.

But Twitch celebrates the wrong thing, and so the future expected value doesn't change. 

This causes users to 'muddle'.

Steve Krug, the author of the classic book Don’t Make Me Think, has a superb way of describing how people use digital products: we muddle through them.

We get so comfortable with this habit that our workarounds feel the same as mastery, and we’re often unaware that there are more efficient behaviours right in front of us.

For example, you’ve probably looked at your TV remote control thousands of times. 

But do you know what the four coloured buttons do?

I certainly didn’t. 

They’re contextual shortcuts. While I was streaming my Xbox, one of them ejected my disc. But because I’d found another way of doing that action, I’d never bothered to try and learn an alternative.

Even now I know about this shortcut, I won't try and remember it.

That is muddling.

The trap that Twitch falls into is assuming that people will be curious enough to learn all of the advanced features through trial and error. They won’t, especially if they find a workaround first.

As a result, there will be advanced features that users never try. Things that would otherwise elevate their streams.

Luckily, there is one trick for motivating people to explore more…

I genuinely deleted my own messages during my first livestream.

Those tiny icons are punishing.

Look how small they are compared to an iOS app icon:

With this in mind, why would streamers risk turning on features that they don’t know? They could kill the momentum that they’ve worked hard to gain.

One technique is to reduce the cost of failure—i.e., the opposite of what happened to me with those deleted messages.

This is the principle behind all sandboxes. You want people to be able to mess around, and try new ideas, without the risk that they’ll permanently block their first five followers.

Twitch could have a sandbox that simulated a bustling livestream, full of donations, subscribers and messages. 

On a smaller scale, they could also just add context between actions.

For example, instead of an empty state simply explaining that you cannot start a raid, they could explain what a raid is, and allow people to learn about that one feature in the moment.

If you want people to explore, reduce the cost of failure.