Thanks @kr. Great question too. A lot that can be learnt from industry.

For instance, I used to do an ‘app club’ in my old job every month or so. Reviewing unrelated apps in different niches to try and find good experiences or UX to potentially repurpose as ours. After some time we switched it to a particular theme, e.g. new user onboarding, with each able to grab 1 of 10 suggested apps.

What was refreshing was actually the team wanting to distance themselves too heavily from conversion optimisation (involving lengthy onboarding steps & granular personalisation) and more towards transparency and snappiness. Colleagues spoke about wanting to increase trust and differentiate vs other competitor products, that were employing every psychological trick in the book to hook you into a short-term subscription.

A lot can be gained from not following the herd, as you highlighted with your shopping bag example. Definite balancing act there.