Summary: Engaged: Designing for Behavior Change by Amy Bucher

• Behavior change is one of the most important and challenging goals in the modern world. It can help people to improve their health, happiness, and productivity, and to solve some of the most pressing problems facing humanity, such as climate change, poverty, and inequality. But how can we design products and services that can effectively and ethically influence human behavior? How can we create digital experiences that can help people achieve their goals and improve their lives? These are some of the questions that Amy Bucher, a behavior change designer and a psychologist, tries to answer in her book Engaged: Designing for Behavior Change.
• If you want to learn more about the behavior change design, how to recognize and resist the lies that sabotage your peace, and how to live in the truth and enjoy the freedom that God has for you, you should read this book. It will show you how to apply behavioral science principles and methods to design better products and services that can help people achieve their goals and improve their lives. It will also inspire you to pursue your passions and goals, to overcome your fears and challenges, and to find your peace and freedom. It will teach you how to live no lies.

Recommendation

Designers can nurture long-term behavior changes in users that positively shift their mind-sets, explains behavior change expert Amy Bucher. She details the basics of “behavior change design,” and how to create effective interventions that serve users’ best-possible future selves. Bucher applies psychological principles to design, guiding product designers through the process of creating products and user journeys that align with users’ deepest needs and values, while inspiring trust.

Take-Aways

• Transform people’s behaviors by applying psychological principles to design.
• Write your success story and define your desired outcomes.
• Don’t try to force behavior change.
• Interventions prove ineffective when product designers don’t understand user challenges.
• Encourage users to embrace a growth mind-set with positive feedback.
• Appeal to users’ need for social connection with human and non-human support systems.
• Design your user journey and product to inspire trust.
• Target your users’ future selves, empowering them to achieve long-term change.

Summary

Transform people’s behaviors by applying psychological principles to design.

Effective behavior change design empowers designers to create products that benefit users, while helping designers demonstrate proof of concept. Designers focusing on behavior change seek to alter people’s behaviors through products they refer to as “interventions.” Duolingo, for example, encourages people to communicate in new ways, while financial services interventions prompt people to save for significant goals.

The “self-determination theory of motivation” holds that something that aligns with your most deeply held values and goals triggers the strongest motivation. Effective designers leverage this psychological theory by aspiring to support people’s basic needs for “competence” – growing and learning; “autonomy” – meaningful choices; and “relatedness” – the desire to feel connected to something bigger than yourself.

“If your products are intended to change people’s behavior, then psychology is essential for your design toolkit.”

The four phases in the behavior change design process include:

1. “Diagnosis” – Engage in research and discovery to understand your target users, the context you’re operating in and the problem.
2. “Prescription” – Explore possible solutions and create product requirements.
3. “Execution” – Build the product.
4. “Evaluation” – Measure the product’s effectiveness. Ideally this remains an ongoing activity. Test your early prototypes, as well.

Write your  success story and define your desired outcomes.

Guide yourself toward success by writing a strong “outcomes story”: the story you hope to come true after you launch your product. Create a journey map or storyboard to plot your story visually, or write an imaginary magazine article about your future success as though you have already achieved it. Create an outcome logic map that plots what you’ll measure – for example, user engagement.

“Metrics allow you to determine whether your product works, how much people like it and what the most effective ways to improve it would be.”

If you don’t achieve your desired results and your data suggests your behavioral intervention isn’t working, treat this outcome as an opportunity to improve your product and change your approach. To test the effectiveness of your product, conduct surveys and randomized control trials. Evaluate your product for iteration, assessing how you can change your product over time and identifying areas you should improve through conversations with users. Review the processes necessary to conduct all research ethically, ensuring you never jeopardize users’ trust.

Don’t try to force behavior change.

Users aren’t likely to stick with the journey of behavior change if they feel an external agent, such as an app, is imposing goals on them. They must connect their new goal to a value that resonates with them on a personal, intrinsic level. Help users make decisions by building an optimal “choice architecture” that eases decision-making while giving people the information they need to make informed, meaningful choices. Give users who sign up for a process of behavior change “an out” when prompting action steps, rather than forcing them to engage in your process. Allowing users to customize their journeys via the choice of different options gives them a sense of control and autonomy.

“It’s a leap of faith to design with the users’ autonomy in mind because it means allowing for the possibility that users won’t do what designers want – what designers need – them to do. It feels scary. That’s OK.”

To provide users with choices, product designers must help users reflect on the connections between their most deeply held values and any new behaviors. To ensure your product taps into users’ deepest needs, apply “question laddering.” Product managers should keep asking why new features are necessary until they can no longer think of a reason. This helps them pinpoint each feature’s true purpose. Products such as the weight-loss app Noom, for example, use a similar tactic, asking users a series of probing questions, prompting them to identify the deeper desires contributing to their goal of losing weight.

Interventions prove ineffective when product designers don’t understand user challenges.

If people aren’t performing your desired behavior, learn what’s blocking them. According to the “COM-B” model of behavior change, people must have the “capability, opportunity and motivation” required to achieve their desired behaviors. Often, ineffective behavior change design results from those involved in the process not fully comprehending and addressing the challenges involved in achieving a particular target behavior. After you identify what’s blocking behavior change, prioritize the blockers to change, because you may not be able to tackle all of them.

“Whether it’s reading content, making a purchase or sharing data, every digital product has something that it asks its users to do. Your job as a designer is to make those behaviors as easy as possible for your users.”

The following factors can limit people’s ability to embrace behavior change:

• Knowledge – Are some aspects of behavior change and using your product complicated, confusing or new?
• Skill – Do people require certain talents or need to practice regularly to perform your desired behavior?
• Time – How much time are you asking users to engage in your target behaviors? Are they too busy to dedicate the time required?
• Focus – Does your product design contain distracting features? Are your target customers able to focus or do they use your product in a distracting or noisy environment?
• Mood – Do your users suffer too much stress or anxiety to perform your desired behaviors well?
• Resources and tools – Do people need to invest in specific items or special equipment to engage in your target behavior?
• Motivations – Do people want to commit to your desired behavior? Or are they prioritizing other goals?

Encourage users to embrace a growth mind-set with positive feedback.

Prioritizing behavior change requires focusing on “progress over perfection.” Having a growth mind-set – the belief that your efforts will ultimately help you achieve your desired outcomes – fuels greater behavior change than a fixed mind-set. People with fixed mind-sets view success as the result of innate talent and dismiss their ability to develop the skills or capabilities necessary to improve. When people with fixed minds-sets experience setbacks or have difficulty completing tasks, they believe they lack the skill to successfully engage in that activity. Give users just the right amount of challenge, ensuring they don’t get bored, while also giving them sufficient time to rest and recover, to prevent them from getting frustrated. Your goal is to help them achieve a state of “flow.” When users experience flow, they’re absorbed in an activity and focused, an experience often accompanied by losing track of time.

“Above all else, the primary purpose of feedback in behavior change design is to encourage growth and progress.”

Reframe setbacks, offering people encouragement or helping them approach tasks differently. Increase user confidence by showing them evidence of their progress and celebrating milestones.

Giving users metrics that help them assess their progress. Make feedback multi-leveled by combining short and long-term insights. Offer users insights into how other users are performing. Connect users’ individual behaviors to broader societal change. Avoid extremes: either overwhelming people with too much feedback and not giving them enough feedback. Praise users when they repeat desirable behaviors and create positive new patterns. Tie feedback to the next desirable action step.

Appeal to users’ need for social connection with human and non-human support systems.

Social connection is a core human need, and inspiring and providing avenues for connection triggers positive benefits in users. Having companions on your change journey boosts your likelihood of achieving your goals. Encouraging users to have “accountability buddies” keeps them on track. Behavior change designers can facilitate social support systems, giving users opportunities to connect with others on similar journeys. For example, Noom creates digital support groups to encourage users at a similar stage in their weight loss journey.

“Like so much else in life, behavior change is better with friends.”

Designers should create products people can easily anthropomorphize, giving products human-like qualities such as names and avatars. Design an experience that helps users feel understood and seen by personalizing their experience. Consider using chatbots to inspire behavior change; users feel comfortable sharing personal information with these tools – sometimes more comfortable than they feel sharing with other people.

Design your user journey and product to inspire trust.

Each stage of your user journey is full of opportunities to engender trust between users and your team and product. For example, before users even interact with your product, you establish trust via your outreach and marketing efforts. Embracing an ethos of transparency, letting users know what to expect and explaining why you may ask certain things of them, helps establish trust. Ensure the information you share is genuinely beneficial to users. Include institutional affiliations, connect your product’s efficacy to scientific research and/or share meaningful user outcomes to bolster credibility.

“Think of trust as an ongoing conversation between you and your users. As you learn more about your users, their experience should evolve to reflect what you now know about them and reinforce that the information they’re giving you is being put to meaningful use.”

When people trust your product, they have confidence you’ll treat them fairly and protect their data, and that you won’t sneak in hidden fees. Be respectful of user privacy and data. Always secure users’ consent before sharing their data, and follow ethical data collection and usage guidelines and best practices. Don’t hide behind legal jargon. Use language users can understand, addressing any concerns they might have regarding your project.

Target your users’ future selves, empowering them to achieve long-term change.

Help users change their behaviors by focusing your design efforts on serving your users’ future selves. People often imagine their future selves will be improved versions of their current selves, and make commitments – such as tackling artistic projects or physical challenges – that might not align with a desire to take action in the present moment. Help people realistically conceptualize their future selves and avoid making commitments that are unrealistic by guiding them in goal setting. People have difficulty envisioning the far future, so support users in setting short-term milestones. Keep users’ expectations realistic, helping them understand that, while progress may be slow or challenging, they’ll eventually reach their desired outcomes.

“With a field that perpetually grows, behavior change designers are always becoming. The learning is never done.”

Behavior change involves investing in a process that helps users possess the right tools and mind-set to navigate life more successfully.

About the Author

Amy Bucher, PhD, is the vice president of behavior change design at the strategic design agency Mad*Pow.

Genres

Behavior Change, Design, Psychology, Nonfiction, Self-Help, Personal Development, Technology, Innovation, Business, Education

Review

The book Engaged: Designing for Behavior Change by Amy Bucher is a book that explains how to use behavioral psychology to design better products and services that can help people achieve their goals and improve their lives. The book introduces the concept of behavior change design, which is the application of behavioral science principles and methods to the creation of digital experiences that influence human behavior. The book covers topics such as how to understand and motivate users, how to design for different stages of behavior change, how to measure and evaluate behavior change outcomes, and how to deal with ethical and social issues in behavior change design. The book is based on the author’s experience and research as a behavior change designer, and includes case studies and examples from various domains and sectors.

The book Engaged: Designing for Behavior Change by Amy Bucher is a well-written and insightful book that offers a comprehensive and practical guide for behavior change design. The book is based on extensive research and interviews, and provides a clear and simple framework for behavior change design. The book is also engaging and relevant, as it uses stories, anecdotes, and examples to illustrate the concepts and principles of behavior change design. The book is not only a book about design, but also a book about psychology, as it covers the various aspects and dimensions of human behavior, such as cognition, emotion, motivation, social interaction, and creativity. The book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in behavior change, design, and the future of work.