User-Value Thermodynamics
Users are lazy; adoption only happens when total value delivered exceeds total effort spent, ideally by 10x.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 93%
Schillace models adoption like physics. Users are fundamentally lazy and cynical — they only adopt something when the sum total of energy they must expend (hearing about it, remembering it, learning it, signing up, forming a habit) is comfortably less than the resulting ease in their life. A little added value yields slow adoption; a lot of added value yields explosive adoption. The classic error is counting only the feature's benefit while ignoring the whole system of friction around it.
Origin
Sam Schillace's framing from building Writely/Google Docs and observed on consumer products broadly; he analogizes it to entropy and thermodynamics.
Core principles
- 01Nobody does anything in their life for any reason other than that it makes their life better — not because you're nice or the logo is pretty.
- 02Adoption speed scales non-linearly with added value: a little value adopts slowly, a lot of value adopts explosively.
- 03You must account for the whole system: awareness, memory-in-the-moment, learning cost, sign-up friction, and habit formation — not just the feature.
- 04The value delivered should exceed the effort to obtain it by a factor of at least a couple, ideally 10x.
- 05Every second of onboarding friction is energy on the wrong side of the ledger.
How to run it
- 1
Name the real user value
State plainly how much easier the user's life gets. If you can't point to significant user value, no amount of marketing dollars or articles will drive adoption.
Watch out Reasons you built it (you love it, you understand the problem, you want a paycheck) do not matter to the end user at all.
- 2
Sum the full energy cost
Tally every unit of effort the user must spend across the whole system: hearing about it, remembering it in the moment, learning it, the friction of signing up, and building the habit — plus friction during actual use.
Pro tip Think of it like entropy: the feature you're focused on may be locally better, but the surrounding system costs energy you're forgetting to count.
Watch out Focusing only on your one improved feature while ignoring surrounding friction is the most common miscalculation.
- 3
Enforce the 10x ratio
Design so delivered ease beats total energy spent by a large multiple — a couple of times at minimum, hopefully 10x. If the ratio is thin, adoption will lumber and may collapse under its own weight.
Watch out You have only ~15-30 seconds to convince someone there's value; they won't grind through high-friction setup.
- 4
Strip onboarding friction aggressively
Remove every non-essential step from the entry path. Defer any ask until after the user has already experienced value.
Pro tip Writely asked for nothing up front — you could create and use a document immediately, and only after ~2 minutes of typing did it gently ask for an email (no password) just to send you the doc's URL.
In the wild
Because a browser-based collaborative doc was so novel, the team removed all friction: no email, no password to start. After about two minutes of typing, if you were still there, they gently asked only for an email so they could send you the URL.
→ Minimized entry energy on the effort side of the ledger, supporting fast adoption of an unfamiliar product.
ChatGPT added a huge amount of new value to the world at once, versus other AI products that added a little value and lumber along.
→ The large value delivered produced explosive, non-linear adoption — a live demonstration of the thermodynamic curve.
Common mistakes
Counting only the feature's upside
Ignoring the surrounding system (awareness, learning, sign-up, habit) makes you overestimate adoption; users experience the whole energy cost, not just your feature.
Assuming marketing can substitute for value
If there's no significant user value, shoveling in marketing dollars and articles won't move adoption — the problem has to actually get solved.
Is it for you?
Best for
Consumer product builders and PMs deciding what to build and how to onboard, especially for novel products competing against habit and inertia.
Not ideal for
Enterprise/regulated contexts where switching is mandated or driven by compliance rather than voluntary user adoption.
From the transcript
“people are just lazy about stuff and like don't care about anything other than it making their life better”
“if you add a little B of value your adoption goes slowly and if you add a lot of value your adoption goes really quickly”
“the user has to hear about it the user has to remember it in the moment the user has to learn how to use it…”
“users will only adopt what you're doing if that sum total of energy that they have to expend is less than than the you know…”
“it has to make your life a lot better hopefully a really a lot better like 10x better than what you spend to use it”
“after about two minutes of typing if you were still there we'd very gently just say please give us your email address no password”
From the episode
How to be more innovative
Sam Schillace (Microsoft deputy CTO, creator of Google Docs)