Designing for Behavior Change (2nd Edition): Applying Psychology and Behavioral Economics

Part I. How the Mind Works (Chapter 1-4)

Behavioral science is an interdisciplinary field that combines psychology and economics, among other disciplines, to gain a more nuanced understanding of how people make decisions and translate those decisions into action. (5)

One of the most active areas of research in behavioral science is how our environment affects our choices and behavior, and how a change in that environment can then affect those choices and behaviors. Environments can be thoughtfully and carefully designed to help us become more aware of our choices, shape our decisions for good or for ill, and spur us to take action once we've made a choice. We call that process choice architecture, or behavioral design. (5)

When designing a product lookout for unnecessary frictions or for areas where a user loses self-confidence. Build habits via repeated action in a consistent context.

We economize our time, attention, and mental energy by using simple rules of thumb to make decisions; for example, by excluding cereal with cartoons. As researchers we call these results of thumb heuristics. Another way our minds economize is by making split second non conscious judgments; non conscious habits are automated associations in our heads that trigger us to take a particular action when we see a specific trigger. Habits free our conscious mind to think about other things. (8)

We often call the results of a heuristic or other shortcut going awry a cognitive bias: a systematic difference between how we'd expect people to behave in a certain circumstance and what they actually do. (8)

Biases and heuristics: status quo bias, descriptive norms, confirmation bias, present bias, anchoring, availability you Mystic, IKEA effect, Halo effect. (13-15)

Habits arise in one of two ways. First you can build habits through simple repetition: whenever you see X, a cue, you do Y, a routine. Over time your brain builds a strong association between the cue and the routine and doesn't need to think about what to do when the cue occurs. Sometimes there is a third element, in addition to a cue and a routine: a reward something good that happens at the end of the routine. The reward pulls us forward-it gives us a reason to repeat the behavior. (16)

What we do is shaped by our contextual environment in obvious ways. It's also shaped in non-obvious ways by the people we talk and listen to (our social environment) what we see and interact with (are physical environment), and the habits and responses we've learned over time (are mental environment). (19)

Our minds still use clever shortcuts to help us economize and avoid taxing our limited resources. (23)

With the intention-action gap, the intention to act is there, but people don't follow through and act on it. Good intentions and the sincere desire to do something aren't enough. (24)

People take action (or fail to) in a specific moment. Our will and desire are certainly important-but it's not enough, especially when we're looking to design for behavior change period we need to understand what brings one action to the fore and not others. For that we have the CREATE framework: a cue, which starts an automatic intuitive reaction, potentially bubbling up into a conscious evaluation of costs and benefits, the ability to act, the right timing for action, and the overwhelming power of past experience. (30)

These six mental processes-detecting a cue, reacting to it, evaluating it, checking for ability, determining if the timing is right, and interpreting it all through the lens of our past experiences-are gates that can block or facilitate action. (31)

For someone to take a conscious action, six things must happen immediately beforehand:
1) the person responds to a queue that starts their thinking about the action;
2) their intuitive mind automatically reacts at an intuitive level to the idea;
3) their conscious mind evaluates the idea, especially in terms of costs and benefits;
4) they check whether they have the ability to act-if they know what to do, have what they need, and believe they can succeed;
5) they determine whether the timing is right for action-especially whether or not the action is urgent;
6) they aren't turned off by a prior negative experience that overwhelms the otherwise clear benefits. (51)

Sometimes helping people take action requires intentionally stopping a habit. Why are habits difficult to change? First, remember that habits are automatic and not conscious. Our conscious minds, the part that would seek to remove them, are only vaguely aware of their execution; We often don't notice them when they occur, and we don't remember doing them afterward. Across dozens of studies on behavior change interventions, researchers have found that the conscious mind sincere, concerted intention to change behavior has little relationship to actual behavior change. (56-57)

We can help people use what's known as situational self-control; just as we can shape an environment to encourage action, we can shape an environment to slow down rash decisions and interfere with undesirable habits and behaviors. Use the CREATE framework in reverse. (65)

If the behavior is habitual, here are specific techniques to focus on: avoid the cue altogether, build up a new positive habit that uses the same cue; deploy intentional mindfulness. (65)

Behavior change is the core value of the product for users, and behavior change is required for users to extract the value they want from the product effectively. (71)

Ethical guidelines for work: don't try to addict people to your product; Only apply behavioral techniques where the individual benefit; Tell users what you're doing; Make sure the action is optional; Ask yourself and others if they want to use the product. Avoiding coercion doesn't mean that you encourage users to do anything they want to do. Your company will have, and must have, a stance on the behaviors it wants to encourage. (84)

Apply behavioral science on ourselves to be ethical: fix the incentives, draw bright lines, set up independent reviews, and support regulations. (84) Part II. A Bluebrint for Behavior Change (Chapters 5-15)

Behavioral science helps us understand how our environments profoundly shape our decisions and our behavior. What does this process look like? I like to think about it as 6 steps, which we can remember with the acronym DECIDE (Define, Explore, Craft, Implement, Determine, Evaluate): that's how we decide on the right behavior change interventions in our products and communications. (90)

Define the problem, explore the context, craft the intervention, implement within the product, determine the impact, and evaluate what to do next. (91)

Defining the problem: the root cause of many bad designs-when designing for behavior change or otherwise-comes from a lack of clarity from the start. (100)

Defining the problem centers on the target outcome (what is the product supposed to accomplish?), the target actor (who do we envision using the product?), and the target action (how will the actor do it?) (101)

Exploring context includes the following: prior experience with the action, prior experience with similar products and channels, relationship with the company or organization, existing motivations, physical psychological or economic impediments to action. These five things make up the behavioral profile of users. To gather this information, you can use the standard tools of market research and product development-look for existing quantitative data on user demographics, deploy field surveys, and conduct qualitative research with users in focus groups and one-on-one interviews. If at all possible, include some direct observation in the field-see how people actually act. (126)

Generate formal user personas-short descriptions of archetypal users with a simple background statement about a sample user's life. Unlike traditional user personas, these personas are all about behavior: groups of users who are likely to interact with the application differently and who are likely to respond differently to behavioral interventions. (129)

Consider a behavioral map (similar to customer experience maps). The behavioral map is a depiction of the individual steps users take from whatever they're doing now, all the way through using the product and completing the target action (or for stopping an action what they do that leads up to the action to be stopped). Some of these steps will occur within the product and some require behavior that is completely outside of it. The map examines at each step of the way what's going on with users and why they would continue to the next step. (134)

Diagnosing why people don't start requires a three-part process: First, we identify the micro behavior that stops people (or for new products, are likely to stop people). That’s our behavioral map. Second, we check which micro-behavior seems to be a problem. Where are people dropping off or likely to drop off? Third, we use the CREATE action funnel to determine the likely behavioral cause. (144)

The diagnosis for a behavior you want to stop entails: 1)identifying the micro behaviors that led up to the action; 2) at each micro level, determine if it's habitual or conscious; 3) use CREATE for conscious actions and CRA for habitual actions to map out the current enabling factors for each micro behavior. (145)

The purpose of the design process is to craft a context that facilitates (or hinders) action. (151)

Changing context usually happens in one of four ways: 1) do it for them by magically taking away all the burden of work from the user; 2) structure the action to make it feasible (or in reverse, more difficult), 3) construct the environment to support or block the action, and 4) prepare the user to take (or resist) the action. (164)

Crafting the intervention involves cues, reaction, and evaluation. Cues, wisely placed, are essential for behavioral change period this is true for non-conscious habits – a cue in the environment starts a habitual routine-and for conscious decisions to act. One simple way to queue people to act is just to ask them. (171) Another way to cue action is to help users reinterpret an existing feature of their environment as a queue. Let them specify something that they see or hear normally in their environment-like the morning show on their favorite radio station. Then have them associate an action with that cue. (172)

Once a cue catches the user's attention, the mind reacts-often in the blink of an eye. Regardless of the overall merits of the action and product, that reaction can cause the user to shut down. (177) Techniques to address that problem: help people see themselves as someone for whom the action is a natural, normal extension of who they are; redirect someone’s current attention to prior successes; associate with the positive and the familiar; use social proof as a key tactic to persuade; use peer comparison; display strong authority on the subject; be authentic and personal; make the site professional and beautiful. (177-183)

Conscious evaluation is similar to the stereotypical view most people have of decision making: do the benefits outweigh the costs? Make sure incentives are right, leverage existing motivations before adding new ones, avoid direct payments, leverage loss aversion, use commitment contracts and commitment devices, test different types of motivators, use competition, pull future motivation into the present. (183-189)

One way to think about the mental cost of your target action is cognitive overhead, or “how many logical connections or jumps your brain has to make in order to understand or contextualize the thing you're looking at period figuring out what to do shouldn't be guesswork for the user.” That may mean making the action slightly more difficult to undertake in order for it to be easy to understand. Also makes sure instructions are understandable, and avoid choice overload. (191-192)

Every time a user stops to think about what to do next, there is an opportunity to be distracted. Each micro behavior in the behavioral map can become an obstacle simply because it requires an extra iota of thought, effort, and confidence. (196)

Remove friction and channel factors, including removing unnecessary decision points and setting appropriate defaults. (196-198)

Implementation intentions are specific plans that people make on how to act in the future. They are a form of behavioral automation, telling the mind to do X whenever Y happens. The person does the work of thinking through what needs to be done now, and then when the action is actually needed there is no need to think and no logical barrier to action-the person just executes the action… For behavioral products, deploying implementation intentions can mean adding text boxes where the user describes how they'll take the action. The key is to make people think consciously about the concrete actions, and, if possible, visualize undertaking those actions. (198)

Helping your users know that they'll succeed can be as complicated as an in depth training program and building up their expertise and confidence for a hard action. It can also be as simple as reframing the action to make it feel more familiar and feasible. (199)

We're wired to value the present far more than the future-that's our temporal myopia. (200)

We don't like to be inconsistent with our past behavior. It's very uncomfortable and we have a tendency to either act according to our prior beliefs or change our beliefs so they are in line with our actions. One way to achieve this is to have the user impose urgency on themselves-promised to take the action at a specific time, then come back to them and remind them at that point. Another way to create urgency to act is to make specific promises to do so to your friends. Social accountability is a powerful force. (201)

You can make a reward for the action scarce or artificially time sensitive. This is another favorite sales and marketing tactic. It is best for one off actions and not repeated behavior. (202)

People's prior experiences shape their reactions in ways that can be difficult to foresee and even comprehend. So what can we do when someone's prior experience creates an obstacle to something they would otherwise want to do? Here are some examples: fresh starts are special times in our lives when we feel a new opportunity to change something about ourselves. People are disproportionately likely to make major life commitments during times of transition. A special fresh start can make the action in context feel special and allows people to put their past experience in a separate historical category that doesn't doom them into repeating those mistakes again: the future can be different, if you make it so. (203-204)

Use story editing. We interpret and reinterpret our experiences every day of our lives and thus shape ourself narratives and our future behavior. These cycles of interpretation and behavior can clearly support beneficial changes, like studying more. It depends on how we use our past experiences and whether we see ourselves in control of the outcomes of our lives. (205-206)

Make it intentionally unfamiliar. If prior experience with a familiar product or communication causes a negative reaction that blocks action, you could intentionally change the look and feel to no longer trigger that reaction. (206)

Working with multi step interventions overtime, building habits, and crafting interventions to hinder negative actions are advanced topics related to crafting interventions. (209-222)

Many companies use an iterative product development process… That iterative process also allows teams to assess the impact of different interventions along the way as well, which is quite valuable. Is not essential though. Regardless of the process used to implement the product itself there are a few pointers along the way that can help the behavioral aspects of the project. In particular, it's important at this stage to double check that your incentives and intervention plan are ethically sound, plan to track user behavior and results from the outset, and ensure that thoughtful planning doesn't get in the way of creative solutions. (224)

Build in behavioral metrics. The first step in measuring the impact of your product is to be absolutely clear on the impact you care about. In particular you should have a clearly defined tangible and measurable outcome that you seek with a metric; a clearly defined tangible and measurable action that drives that outcome with a metric; and a threshold for each metric that defines success and failure. (228)

Your company may need to consider adding functionality to the app to make real world measurement possible. (229)

Implement A/B testing and experiments. Experiments are your best route to determine whether you've had the impact you seek, when they are possible. So just like the metrics themselves, you should plan to implement the ability to run experiments as part of the product or communication itself. Otherwise you'll have a hard time retrofitting them. (230)

AB tests take a randomly selected group of users and show them one version of the product, and show another randomly selected group another version. (231)

When you want to know whether a product or communication actually does what it's supposed to do, randomized control trials are the most trusted and rigorous tool. In fact, they are the gold standard in science; the same tool is used to measure how effective medicines are at curing disease. (239)

In addition to the basics of experimental design, there are a few other rules to keep in mind: random selection isn't always easy, you need random assignment as well, check that the groups are drawn from the same population, make sure you're only varying one thing. (247-248)

Always run a test of statistical significance. (249)

In addition to determining statistical significance here are a few other rules that apply to experiments: go double-blind when you can, measure the same way, compare results for everyone, generalized outcomes to the same population. (249-250)

Experiments come in many flavors in terms of how they are designed and executed and in terms of the particular problem or purpose they are meant to address. Two of the most common types of experiments: one in which the second group receives nothing and one in which the second group receives a different version of the product or communication (also known as an A/B test). Here are a few other experimental designs: simultaneous impact, simultaneous comparison, multi arm comparison, staggered rollout, attention treatment, multivariate experiment, multi armed bandit. (250-252)

Teams can't always run experiments, but the need for rigorous measurement doesn't go away. There are other ways to determine impact. The easiest and most common way to look at impact is a pre-post analysis. In a pre-post analysis, you look at user behavior and outcomes before and after a significant change. In a cross-sectional analysis (or panel data analysis of impact) you look for differences among groups of users at a given point you want to see how their usage of the product impacts their behavior and outcomes, after taking into account all the other things that might be different about the users. (262-265)

At the end of each cycle of product release and measurement, the team will have gathered a lot of data about what users are doing in the product and potential improvements to do it. It's time to collect the potential changes from these diverse sources and see what can be applied to the next iteration of the product. A three-step process: 1) gather lessons learned and potential improvement to the product; 2) prioritize the potential improvement based on business considerations and behavioral impact; and 3) integrate potential improvements into the appropriate part of product development process. (275-278)

Ideally, the outcome of any product development process, especially one that aims to change behavior, is that the product is doing its job and nothing more is needed. When the product successfully automates the behavior, builds a habit, or reliably helps the user make the conscious choice to act, and the team can move on. (280) Part III. Build your Team and Make it Successful (Chapter 16-18)

Whereas majority of the book focuses on the process of applied behavioral science, the book ends with a focus on the organizational structure that enables applied behavioral science. (286)

Teams applying behavioral science to the development of products, communications, and policies are heavily concentrated in three countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. (288)

Companies are either consulting companies or those that apply behavioral approaches to their own products and services. Some teams are focused on particular outcomes for the individual-the most common being financial behavior like saving, spending and investing; health behaviors; education; and energy see use. Many also spent time on company driven outcome of product use and sales. (295-296)

There are challenges, and three main problems facing the field include practical problems of setting up and running a team; replication crisis in science; and ethical behavior. (296-299)

Behavioral science teams don't have a single design or structure; They often grow organically out of existing programs and departments, where people in those departments find that behavioral science can aid their work. (301)

Skills and people you will need on a team: 1) while some behavioral teams are centrally located centers of excellence, move many teams are embedded in product, design, marketing, analytics, or other functions. And, for these groups, the first skills that are needed are those used in the core work of the team. If you're applying behavioral science to product development that means design or product management, etcetera. If you're working on communications and marketing, and means knowing communications and marketing; 2) Impact assessment, we need to rigorously assess causal impact; 3) a knowledge of the minds quirks and of nudges that can affect behavior. (305-306)

Experimental testing, especially for outcomes that are outside of the product, can be an intimidating endeavor. Believe it or not, academic researchers would probably love to help test your products impact. Many of them can't be hired in a traditional sense-because they have full time jobs and academic institutions and for professional reasons can't accept consulting contracts. But you can build partnerships of mutual benefit if you have enough users of your product to support a scientifically valid study and know how to navigate the process. (308)

Data science often seeks to understand how something works and predict the future. Behavioral science seeks to change the future, particularly through changing human behavior. Because of these two different purposes, data scientists and behavioral scientists often use different statistical methods. Data scientists can predict the future very accurately and thoughtfully using variables that are correlated with the outcome of interest they use regressions, decision trees, neural networks, and such to find hidden relationships between contacts and outcome. Behavioral scientists, when possible, use experiments since they are the best tool to measure our ability to cause a change in behavior or outcomes. Analyzing experiments when properly designed, doesn't require advanced statistics at all simple comparison of means is often enough. Behavioral scientists do also use regression and sometimes machine learning techniques, but we do so in the service of understanding the causal relationship between context behavior and outcomes. Because of these two goals-- predicting outcomes versus causing behavior change-data and behavioral scientists also differ in how they use theory: and explanation of why something works the way it does. Many data scientists do have a theoretical understanding of what they study, and that helps them with feature selection and data analysis but it's not actually required. (310 - 311)

Three major conceptual tools were developed for the purposes of this book: 1) an understanding of how people make decisions and act in their daily lives; 2) a model of what's required for someone to take action relating to your product in a given moment (the CREATE action funnel); 3) a process for applying that knowledge to the practical details of product development (DECIDE on the behavioral intervention and build it). (313)