Synopses & Reviews
A new wave of products is helping people change their behavior and daily routines, whether its exercising more (Jawbone Up), taking control of their finances (HelloWallet), or organizing their email (Mailbox). This practical guide shows you how to design these types of products for users seeking to take action and achieve specific goals.
Stephen Wendel, HelloWallets head researcher, takes you step-by-step through the process of applying behavioral economics and psychology to the practical problems of product design and development. Using a combination of lean and agile development methods, youll learn a simple iterative approach for identifying target users and behaviors, building the product, and gauging its effectiveness. Discover how to create easy-to-use products to help people make positive changes.
- Learn the three main strategies to help people change behavior
- Identify your target audience and the behaviors they seek to change
- Extract user stories and identify obstacles to behavior change
- Develop effective interface designs that are enjoyable to use
- Measure your products impact and learn ways to improve it
- Use practical examples from products like Nest, Fitbit, and Opower
Synopsis
This book provides step-by-step instruction for designers and product managers in Behavioral Change: the use of behavioral economics and psychology within products to help people change their daily routines and behavior.
The problem that many designers and product managers face is how to put their new knowledge of psychology to work in an actual product, especially when the behavioral goals of that product extend beyond having the user click on a particular link. Instead of another list of cognitive biases or another model of behavior, they need practical guidance. This book fills that gap: by providing step-by-step instructions on how to conceptualize, design, build, test, and refine products that help people change their behavior in beneficial ways.
Synopsis
The book gives step-by-step guidance on how to design, build, and test products that help people change their daily behavior and routines. The goal is to help people take actions that they want to take, but have struggled with in the past: from exercising more (FitBit, Fuelband), to taking control of their finances (HelloWallet), to spending less on utilities (Opower, Nest).
Its a practical how-to book, aimed at designers, product people, data scientists, entrepreneurs and others who are thinking about and building these products. It includes:
- Key lessons from behavioral economics & psychology, including how mind makes decisions,
- Step-by-step instructions on how design and build products that intentionally change behavior,
- Tools for evaluating a products concrete impact, and for discovering obstacles to behavior change, and
- Lots of practical, concrete examples.
About the Author
Stephen is Principal Scientist at HelloWallet, where he's worked for four years to develop applications that help users take control of their finances. He is a behavioral social scientist by academic training, and works with behavior economists and psychologists to conduct research on behavior change, especially around savings and spending behavior. The impetus behind writing this book comes from two places. First, it comes from his experiences at HelloWallet. HelloWallet has confronted first-hand the frustrations and failures that come from the two most common approaches to behavior change: telling people what to do (without taking into account their psychology), and trying to directly apply the research literature (without focusing on the quality of the product itself). Second, he is a co-founder of community of like-minded practitioners, “Action Design DC”, where he has had the opportunity to learn from other companies attacking the same problems of practical behavior change. He has a thorough knowledge of the academic literature, experience applying it in product development, and expertise in experimental design and statistical modeling.
Table of Contents
Foreword; Preface; What Does It Mean to Design for Behavior Change?; Who This Book Is For; What Types of Behaviors Can This Help With?; How This Book Came About; The Chapters Ahead; Let's Talk; Acknowledgments; Understanding the Mind and Behavior Change; Chapter 1: How the Mind Decides What to Do Next; 1.1 The Deliberative and Intuitive Mind; 1.2 Making Sense of the Mind; 1.3 Most of the Time, We're Not Actually "Choosing" What to Do Next; 1.4 Even When We "Choose," Our Minds Save Work; 1.5 The Obvious, Simple Stuff Is Really Important; 1.6 A Map of the Decision-Making Process; 1.7 On a Napkin; Chapter 2: Why We Take Certain Actions and Not Others; 2.1 A Simple Model of When, and Why, We Act; 2.2 The Create Action Funnel; 2.3 On a Napkin; Chapter 3: Strategies for Behavior Change; 3.1 A Decision or a Reaction: Three Strategies to Change Behavior; 3.2 Strategy 1: Cheat!; 3.3 Strategy 2: Make or Change Habits; 3.4 Strategy 3: Support the Conscious Action; 3.5 A Recap of the Three Strategies; 3.6 On a Napkin; Discovering the Right Outcome, Action, and Actor; Chapter 4: Figuring Out What You Want to Accomplish; 4.1 Start with the Product Vision; 4.2 Nail Down the Target Outcome; 4.3 Identify Additional Constraints; 4.4 Generate a List of Possible Actions for Users to Take; 4.5 On a Napkin; Chapter 5: Selecting the Right Target Action; 5.1 Research Your Target Users; 5.2 Select the Ideal Target Action; 5.3 Define Success and Failure; 5.4 How to Handle Very Diverse Populations; 5.5 On a Napkin; Developing the Conceptual Design; Chapter 6: Structuring the Action; 6.1 Start the Behavioral Plan; 6.2 Tailor It; 6.3 Simplify It; 6.4 Make It "Easy"; 6.5 On a Napkin; Chapter 7: Constructing the Environment; 7.1 Tactics You Can Use; 7.2 Increase Motivation; 7.3 Cue the User to Act; 7.4 Generate a Feedback Loop; 7.5 Knock Out the Competition; 7.6 Remove or Avoid Obstacles; 7.7 Update the Behavioral Plan; 7.8 On A Napkin; Chapter 8: Preparing the User; 8.1 Tactics You Can Use; 8.2 Narrate the Past to Support Future Action; 8.3 Associate with the Positive and the Familiar; 8.4 Educate Your Users; 8.5 How Training Your Users Fits In; 8.6 Update the Behavioral Plan; 8.7 How Behavior Change Techniques Relate to the Thought the Behavior Requires; 8.8 On a Napkin; Designing the Interface and Implementing It; Chapter 9: Moving from Conceptual Designs to Interface Designs; 9.1 Take Stock; 9.2 Extract the Stories or Specs; 9.3 Provide Structure for Magic to Occur; 9.4 On a Napkin; Chapter 10: Reviewing and Fleshing Out the Interface Designs; 10.1 Look for Big Gaps; 10.2 Look for Tactical Opportunities; 10.3 On a Napkin; Chapter 11: Turning the Designs into Code; 11.1 Put the Interface Design in Front of Users; 11.2 Build the Product; 11.3 Go Lean If Possible; 11.4 On a Napkin; Refining the Product; Chapter 12: Measuring Impact; 12.1 Why Measure Impact?; 12.2 Where to Start: Outcomes and Metrics; 12.3 How to Measure Those Metrics; 12.4 Determining Impact: Running Experiments; 12.5 Determining Impact: Unique Actions and Outcomes; 12.6 Other Ways to Determine Impact; 12.7 What Happens If the Outcome Isn't Measurable Within the Product?; 12.8 On a Napkin; Chapter 13: Identifying Obstacles to Behavior Change; 13.1 Watch Real People Using the Product; 13.2 Check Your Data; 13.3 Figure Out How to Fix the Obstacles; 13.4 On a Napkin; Chapter 14: Learning and Refining the Product; 14.1 Determine What Changes to Implement; 14.2 Measure the Impact of Each Major Change; 14.3 When Is It "Good Enough"?; 14.4 How to (Re-)Design for Behavior Change with an Existing Product; 14.5 On a Napkin; Putting It into Practice; Chapter 15: Common Questions and a Start-to-Finish Example; 15.1 An Example of the Approach; 15.2 Questions About How and Why We Act; 15.3 Questions About the Mechanics of Building Behavior Change Products; Chapter 16: Conclusion; 16.1 Four Lessons; 16.2 Themes; 16.3 Looking Ahead; Glossary of Terms; Resources to Learn More; Resources on Behavior and Decision Making; Bibliography; About the Author;