🎬 TL;DR: WATCH THE VIDEO (click above) for the full breakdown with real insights and my actual Slack AI experience. Only takes 〜3 minutes at 2x speed. ⏩
“AI is turned on for Irrational Labs.”
That’s the banner Slack showed me this week. At first glance, it looks like a simple notification. But zoom out, and it becomes a behavioral science case study in how people adopt new features - especially AI features.
Turning a feature on doesn’t guarantee people will use it. Adoption depends on motivation, action, and recovery when things don’t go perfectly. This one banner illustrates three lessons product teams can apply right away.
Lesson 1: Show the immediate benefit of your feature
It made me pause. Is this a product message? Or a legal disclosure? From a product perspective, it felt like a missed chance to spark interest. From a legal perspective, maybe it made sense. But either way, it didn’t motivate me to do anything.
Behavioral science gives us a clue why. People are far more motivated by rewards they can get now than ones they’ll get later. This is called present bias.
If I offered you a whole chocolate bar next month or half a bar right now, most people would grab the half bar. We like immediate payoffs.
Slack’s banner didn’t highlight any immediate value. “AI is turned on” is information, not motivation. Compare that with:
“See what AI found in your past conversations”
“3 questions you can now ask Slack AI”
“Here’s how a famous PM is using it”
Each of these makes the benefit concrete and present. They give me a reason to stop what I’m doing and try it now.
That’s the first lesson: if you want adoption, don’t just announce that something is available. Use the moment to show the value I can experience immediately.
Lesson 2: Capture motivation before it disappears
When I saw the banner, I was curious enough to click. Slack had my attention. This is the moment product teams work hard to create.
But then I landed on an informational page. No demo. No prompt to try. Just text explaining the feature, and then I was back in Slack.
Behaviorally, this is a fragile moment. Motivation is high, but it fades quickly if it isn’t tied to an action. Psychologists sometimes call this the problem of activation energy; once the spark dies, inertia takes over. And inertia is strong: I’ve been searching Slack with the same keyword habits for years. Without a push to practice something new, those old habits win.
It’s like walking into a restaurant hungry and being handed a menu but no food. The desire is there, but it isn’t satisfied.
What could Slack have done differently? The second I clicked, they could have given me a hands-on trial:
A practice search (“Try asking: What are today’s deadlines?”)
My actual daily recap from yesterday
Even a playful “Ask me something about your last meeting” prompt
Lesson 3: Plan for the inevitable fail state
When I finally tested Slack AI search, I asked about a client deadline. The answer I got? A conference talk date.
It’s Gen AI. It makes mistakes. The question isn’t will it fail? but what happens when it does?
Here’s the psychology: first impressions matter. If my very first attempt feels wrong, my takeaway isn’t “maybe I should rephrase.” It’s “AI search doesn’t work.” And once that belief forms, I go back to my old search habits.
So the design challenge is recovery. How do you keep people trying after the first stumble? A few options:
Provide examples of good queries to set expectations
Prompt me to refine my question instead of presenting one wrong answer with full confidence
Frame the interaction as a back-and-forth rather than a verdict
The first stumble is where adoption is won or lost.
The bigger point
Adoption doesn’t hinge on the big announcement. It lives in the small details, when you give people a reason to try, help them act, and support them when it goes wrong.
🎬 Watch the video teardown for the full breakdown (and to see exactly how Slack’s banner played out). Only takes 〜3 minutes at 2x speed. ⏩
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📧 Working on AI adoption? Shoot me an email: kristen@irrationallabs.com.
Want to increase conversion, retention, engagement? Reach out to Irrational Labs.
We design products that change behavior, using behavioral science. Check out our case studies to see it in action.
