THE INVISIBLE PRODUCT

The Counterintuitive Truth About Product Success

Most products obsess over engagement metrics. They ask: “How do we get users to use our product more often?”

The best products flip this question: “How do we make solving the underlying problem so effortless through our product that it becomes habitual and the product disappears?”

Great products don't just solve problems, they transform the user's relationship with the problem itself. When Duolingo works, users don't think "I should use Duolingo." They think "I should practice Spanish", and Duolingo is simply how they do it. The product becomes invisible infrastructure for life.

This article presents a framework based on the psychology of anticipatory anxiety and habit formation. It helps to build empathy around users' pain points, prioritise product features, and build products and brands that become synonymous with their solutions.

Why Problems Feel Harder Than They Are

Psychologist Viktor Frankl identified a phenomenon called anticipatory anxiety, "the fear of a negative outcome that, paradoxically, causes that outcome". When we fear that a task will be unpleasant or difficult, that fear itself makes it so.

Consider a typical example: You want to capture a brilliant idea before you forget it. You open a note-taking app, and it asks you to name the note, choose a folder, add tags, and format the text. By the time you've navigated this structure, the thought is gone. The friction wasn't in the thinking. It was in the tool designed to help you think.

This anxiety-induced friction creates a behavioural loop that prevents action:

• A user wants to learn a language, but forgets to practice

• A user wants to watch a movie but dreads choosing the wrong one

• A user wants to start exercising but sees no immediate progress

The problem isn't lack of motivation. It's friction at critical moments in the problem-solving process.

The Four Types of Friction

Drawing from James Clear's habit formation framework, we can map any user problem across four dimensions. Each represents a potential point of failure in building a habit:

1. Invisible Cues

The problem is challenging to identify or remember.

• "I want to practice Spanish, but I simply forget"

2. Unattractive Craving

Starting feels unpleasant, overwhelming, or cognitively taxing.

• "Choosing what to watch feels like work, not relaxation"

3. Difficult Response

Executing the task requires too much effort or cognitive load.

• "Note-taking apps force me to organise thoughts before I can capture them"

4. Absent Rewards

Completing the task does not provide immediate satisfaction.

• "I've been running for a week, but I feel no different"

Great products identify which friction point matters most to their users and eliminate it ruthlessly. Let's examine how four successful products addressed different friction points.

Four Products, Four Friction Points

Duolingo: Making Cues Impossible to Ignore

For most people who want to learn a language, the problem isn’t motivation; it’s remembering to practice. Duolingo made the cue more aggressive than the task itself.

How they solved it:

• The app icon transforms based on missed lessons (happy owl → anxious owl → sad owl → angry owl)

• Streak counters gamify consistency, creating anxiety around breaking the pattern

• Push notifications are persistent and guilt-inducing

The anxiety of breaking a streak becomes stronger than the resistance to learning. Forgetting becomes impossible.

Netflix: Eliminating Decision Paralysis

Netflix recognised that content discovery (choosing what to watch) is cognitively taxing. Infinite choice creates paralysis, turning relaxation into work.

How they solved it:

• Autoplay preview videos after brief hovering (reduces decision effort)

• "Continue Watching" eliminates the choice for in-progress content

• Post-credits autoplay of the next episode (zero friction)

They made the response so easy it's almost passive. You barely choose anymore; you flow.

Google Keep: Removing Intellectual Overhead

Most note-taking apps force structure at the worst possible moment: during capture. They require names, folders, tags, and formatting when ideas are most fragile.

How they solved it:

• Opens directly to a blank note with zero navigation

• Minimal features interfering with the core action

• Organisation becomes optional later, in a different cognitive state

They recognised that capturing thoughts and organising them are different tasks requiring different mental modes. Keep eliminates friction at the moment of capture.

Strava: Manufacturing Immediate Rewards

Delayed exercise benefits. You don't see fitness gains for weeks or months. Strava recognised this reward gap and compressed it.

How they solved it:

• Instant post-run statistics and visualisations

• Personal records and achievements unlock immediately after activities

• Social validation through kudos arrives within minutes

They compressed the reward loop from months (visible fitness results) to seconds (social recognition and data satisfaction).

However, even the best friction solutions aren’t universal. What removes friction for one user might create it for another

Why One Size Never Fits All

Here's where product strategy becomes nuanced: different users struggle with varying points of friction for the same underlying problem, based on their personality, behaviour, and life circumstances.

Consider fitness tracking:

• Beginners might forget to work out (cue problem) → need reminders and streaks

• Intermediate users might find solo workouts boring (craving problem) → need social features or varied content

• Advanced athletes might struggle to track complex training plans (response problem) → need detailed analytics and planning tools

A great product behaves like a skilled therapist: it first diagnoses the user's specific anxiety point, then prescribes the proper intervention.

Three approaches to handling this:

• Segment explicitly: Create distinct products or tiers for user segments with different primary frictions (e.g., Peloton app vs. Peloton bike)

• Adapt dynamically: Observe user behaviour and personalise features accordingly (e.g., Spotify's changing homepage based on listening patterns)

• Provide flexible tools: Let users self-select features for their friction point (e.g., Notion's flexible workspace vs. templates)

The mistake many products make: building features for all friction points without understanding which one matters most to their core users. This creates bloat and dilutes the experience.

Why This Creates Business Value

This isn't just about user experience. It creates a strategic competitive advantage.

Your Brand Becomes a Behavioural Cue

When users habitually solve problems with your product, your brand itself becomes a trigger. Seeing the Duolingo owl reminds people to learn. Netflix's "Tudum" prompts entertainment seeking. The Strava orange signals fitness time.

Over time, your brand equity compounds, not through advertising, but by becoming embedded in users’ daily behavioural loops.

Higher-Quality Engagement

When users find genuine meaning in the habit you've helped them build, engagement becomes authentic:

• Higher retention: Users return because they've built the habit, not because of manipulative notifications

• Lower churn: The habit becomes part of their identity (e.g., "I'm a Duolingo user with a 500-day streak")

• Organic growth: Users become product advocates when the product genuinely transforms their behaviour

• Better unit economics: Habitual users require less re-engagement spending

A Diagnostic Framework for Product Decisions

Framing problems as friction points provides clarity for difficult decisions:

Instead of: "Users aren't engaging with Feature X"

Ask: "Which friction point does Feature X address, and is that the primary friction our users face?"

This lens helps with:

• Feature Prioritization

  • Google Keep can deprioritise advanced formatting because it addresses response friction, not cue friction

  • Duolingo can justify aggressive notifications because their primary friction is invisible cues

• Choosing the Right Lead Metrics

  • Google Keep should minimise "time from app-open to first keystroke"

  • Netflix should maximise the "watch time to browse time ratio"

  • Duolingo should track "distribution of streak lengths" more than total users

• Competitive Analysis

• What friction do competitors leave unsolved?

• Can you serve a user segment experiencing a different primary friction?

For example, Calm entered a meditation market dominated by Headspace by addressing a different friction point. While Headspace focused on making meditation attractive (friction point 2), Calm focused on making it feel immediately rewarding through beautiful design and instant relaxation (friction point 4).

The Ultimate Goal: Invisible Infrastructure

The best products don’t build habits around themselves; instead, they build habits around the problem they solve. Users stop thinking about your product entirely. They just... solve their problem.

When Google Keep works, users don't think "Let me open Keep." They think, "I need to capture this thought," and Keep is simply where thoughts go.

When Strava works, runners don't think "I should use Strava." They think, "I'm going for a run," and tracking it is automatic.

When your product becomes invisible infrastructure for a better life, you’ve achieved the highest form of product design: disappearing.