The Forgotten Middle

The Gym: Paying Not to GoDellaVigna & Malmendier, “Paying Not to Go to the Gym,” American Economic Review 96(3), 2006, pp. 694–719 (members on flat monthly contracts averaged ~4.3 visits/month, >$17 per visit vs. a $10 ten-visit pass; monthly members slower to cancel than annual)Full working-paper PDF (UC Berkeley)Loyalty Programs: The Forgotten MemberBond Brand Loyalty — The Loyalty Report 2023 (U.S. consumers belong to ~18 programs, active in about half)McKinsey — “Next in loyalty: Eight levers to turn customers into fans” (programs built around top-tier customers; active members spend ~10% more, redeemers ~25% more than inactive)The Design Principle: Perpetual IntermediatesAlan Cooper, About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design — most users are “perpetual intermediates”; interfaces neglect the majority in the middleThe Office Ribbon: Jensen HarrisJensen Harris, “The Story of the Ribbon” (Microsoft Learn archive of his Office UI blog)Jensen Harris, “No Distaste for Paste (Why the UI, Part 7)” — command-usage data from the Customer Experience Improvement Program (Paste ~11%; top 5 commands ~32% of all usage in Word)“The Most Frequently Used Features in Microsoft Office” — summary of Harris’s Word 2003 command dataHarvard Business Review, “Why Microsoft Had to Destroy Word” (2009) — customers kept requesting features Office already had, just buried; the Ribbon was built to surface themProduct MentionedWebsite Reality Check — Johns & Taylor Services