Behaviour Change Design

A summary of Stephen Wendel's book, Designing for Behaviour Change.

Designing for Behaviour Change is about getting a customer through the practical, mental and emotional hurdles that they face when trying to perform a function.

This includes:

• Learning a language.
• Sticking to a diet.
• Meeting new people.
• Saving instead of spending,
• Cutting back on utility costs
• taking action for a political movement you already believe in.

Behaviour change is the measurable outcome of good UX design.

Designing for behaviour change integrates behavioural research, pragmatic product development, and rigorous data analysis.

In order to make behaviourally effective products, you need three things:

• The product and design expertise to build something that people will actually like
• A clear understanding of user behavior and how to influence it
  
• A commitment to testing the heck out of your product and listening to what the data tells you

the process

Understand how the mind decides to act and what that means for behavior change
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Discover the right behaviors to change, given your goals and your users’ goals
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Design the product itself around that behavior

Refine the product’s impact based on careful measurement and analysis

Understand

Cue
‍Something needs to cue the person to think about acting. Why would your users think about running? Maybe a push notification, an SMS invite from a friend, or an ad on TV.
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Reaction
‍The mind automatically reacts intuitively and emotionally. What do your users think about running? For some, it’s great; for others it’s new and strange, or embarrassing to be out of shape.
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Evaluation
‍With conscious awareness, the mind does a quick cost-benefit analysis. How hard will the action be to take, what’s the action’s value for the user, what are other alternatives, etc.? For some users, running is a net negative (maybe it aggravates a knee condition) and for others, positive.
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Ability
‍The person must actually be able to act and know it. The person must know logistically what to do, have the resources to do it, and not be dissuaded by an assumption of failure. Some users may not have running shoes, for others it’s raining outside: they can’t run even though they want to.
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Time pressure
‍The person needs to have a reason to act now, rather than doing something else that is more urgent. The user may want to run, but is busy doing something else.
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Execution
‍If all of the above are in place, then a person can execute the action.

The Elephant and the Rider

“the elephant is our immensely powerful but uncritical, intuitive self. The rider is our conscious self, trying to direct the elephant where to go. The rider thinks it’s always in charge, but it’s the elephant doing the work; if the elephant disagrees with the rider, the elephant usually wins.”

Discover

Define the Outcome:
Make sure it’s observable. Avoid states of mind like “knowing how to eat healthy” that fall short of the outcome you really care about. E.g. Weight loss.
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Identify the Actor:
Who is your target market? The clinically obese? Active 20-25 year olds? Be specific as possible. E.g. Sedentary office workers in New York City.
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Select the Action:
Brainstorm at least 5 very different ideas about what action your actors can take that will meet the outcome (for example: healthier eating, a diet pill, gastric bypass, exercise). Then, evaluate according to four criteria:

4 factors in evaluating an action idea

Impact
‍How well will the action actually achieve the target outcome?

Ease
‍How difficult is it for the user to take that action?

Cost
‍How costly will it be for you to build a product supporting that action?

Fit
‍Does the action make sense for the company’s larger goals and culture?

Persuading people through technology is the next social revolution. Facebook demonstrates just how powerful it will be.- BJ Fogg

“Often these behaviors relate to big-picture social issues, like health and wellness. When we design products that support these behaviors, we help the individual and impact our society at the same time.”

Discovery Phase: Deliverables

• Detailed observations about your users
  
• A set of user personas, indicating the main groups of users of our application (or potential users) and their characteristics
• A clear statement of the target outcome, actor, and action
  
• A definition of success and failure

Design

Structure the action‍

• How can these screens be tailored to better leverage the existing knowledge and experience of the users?
  
• Do these screens present the Minimum Viable Action required of the user?
• What parts can be dropped to simplify the process?
  
• What parts can be automated or intelligently defaulted?
• Are they any repeated actions that can be turned into habits?
• Is each action required clearly communicated to the user, and does it appear feasible up front from the perspective of someone with scant experience with the product?

Construct the environment

• Does the user have a clear motivation to continue on each screen, and is she thinking about that motivation in that moment?
  

• Are you asking the user to take a single clear action on each screen?
  

• If the action takes longer than a few seconds, does the product provide clear feedback to the user of progress (or of the need to course-correct)?
  

• What distractions are there on each screen that would pull the user away?
  

• What distractions is the user likely to face given the time of day and location in which she will access this screen?
  

• How can you work around them?
  

Prepare the user

• How does each user persona likely see himself, and does that self-concept support action on this screen?
• Does this look familiar to what users already know, especially when it comes to taking action on the screen?
• Is it clear where and how to take action?
• Does the user know what is needed, especially when action is required outside of the application?
• Are there clear, physically specific instructions?”

Design Phase: Deliverables

BEHAVIOUR PLAN

Accurate
‍It actually measures the outcome you want to measure.
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Reliable
‍If you measure the exact same thing more than once, you’ll get the exact same result.
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Rapid
‍You can quickly tell what the value of the metric is. Rapidness encourages repeated measurement, and makes it easier to see if a change in the product was effective.
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Responsive
‍The metric should quickly reflect changes in user behavior. If you have to wait a month until you can measure the impact of a change (even if it only takes a minute to measure it; i.e., even if it is rapid), that’s 29 days wasted that you could have been learning and improving the product.
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Sensitive
‍You can tell when small changes in the outcome and behavior have occurred. For the developers among you: floating-point values are great; Booleans are not.
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Cheap
‍Measuring the outcome multiple times shouldn’t be costly for the organization or it will shy away from measuring the impact of individual changes to the product and have difficulty improving it.

Refine

A few things you need to have a successful experiment‍

• Make sure you have enough people
• Ensure a real random assignment
• Make sure you’re only varying one thing
• Compare results for everyone
  
• Know who you’re working with
  
• Measure the same thing for both groups
  

6 Factors in measuring impact…

Accurate
It actually measures the outcome you want to measure.
‍
Reliable
If you measure the exact same thing more than once, you’ll get the exact same result.

Rapid
You can quickly tell what the value of the metric is. Rapidness encourages repeated measurement, and makes it easier to see if a change in the product was effective.
‍
Responsive
‍The metric should quickly reflect changes in user behavior. If you have to wait a month until you can measure the impact of a change (even if it only takes a minute to measure it; i.e., even if it is rapid), that’s 29 days wasted that you could have been learning and improving the product.
‍
Sensitive
‍You can tell when small changes in the outcome and behavior have occurred. For the developers among you: floating-point values are great; Booleans are not.
‍
Cheap
‍Measuring the outcome multiple times shouldn’t be costly for the organization or it will shy away from measuring the impact of individual changes to the product and have difficulty improving it.

How do measure the success of an action?

Define two metrics that say how you’ll measure the product’s target outcome and target action.

PLAN A
If the outcome and action are within the application, great. Measure them directly.

PLAN B
If not, try to find creative ways to get that data from someone else or build it into your application.
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PLAN C
If both of those fail, you’ll need to build a model of how behavior with the product affects the outcome and action: a data bridge.

Designing for Behaviour ChangeApplying psychology and behavioral economics

Steven Wendel
Forward by BJ Fogg

https://amzn.to/2ozHPYp
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HookedHow to build habit forming product
By Nir Eyal
with Ryan Hoover
‍https://amzn.to/333MSiR