What exactly is Behavioural Design?

We can start by saying that:

Behavioural Design is a set of techniques that intentionally induce in the users the change of a behavior and the creation of new ones.

For this purpose Behavioural Design uses the knowledge of behavioural science, cognitive neuroscience, behavioural economics and proven experiments conducted by thousands of behavioural scientists around the world.

Strictly: It uses all this knowledge and techniques to induce in the users different habits and behaviours that nudge them into making the desired action.

That’s too much buzz words, I know, let’s granulate this a bit more:

Behavioural design is more about research than any other design technique: Behavioural Design researches the users and their environment, how they interact when doing the activities you want to target in a specific environment, it also uses insights on how the brain works, all this to induce in the users a new way of interacting with the environment it just researched.

Behavioural Design is a proven method: As we already said, behavioural design is based on scientific studies and research, it uses techniques proven countless times to secure that they are trust worthy, and when done correctly, it also uses the specific information of the users to understand them and their behavioural patterns better.

Behavioural Design is, at it’s core, a different kind of UX: While most UX techniques researches the users to understand their behaviours and adapt the product to that without changing how the users act, Behavioural Design does exactly the contrary; it persuades the users to change the way they behave and while it may requires a change in the interface of the product to help the behavioural change, the product and action will always remain the same. It is, in short, a techniques that aim at changing the users and not the product, in order for the users to do something.

That said, there are 3 important things to know in order to fully welcome the idea on Behavioural Design

We are all lazy and we like simplicity: By assuming this reality we can start to map why many designs have no results; Because we try to motivate the users, but simplicity through persuasion is far more important when influencing the users to use a product.

Cues are a powerful weapon of change: With the usual design methods we tend to identify information as one of the elements that matter the most when we want users to do X, however it’s been proven that Cues (also named triggers, prompts, etc) are the more powerful elements to influence someone into doing something and to change their behaviour in order to do that something.

An example of a Cue can be found in a person daily routine, think, for instance, about when you are hungry, in this scenario your usual behaviour would be to go to the kitchen and check if there’s anything available, even when you already know there isn’t. The cue here is that feeling on hungry that motivates that routine of checking the kitchen every time just to be sure.

Daily habits is always the first key: We can easily say that daily habits are the most powerful of all behaviours. The reason while so many digital products are successful, like social media sites, is because they understood that users needed to go in daily and find something rewarding. A way to insert the use of the app into the users daily routine. After that is done, the user will automatically go into the app, even when there’s nothing in there. Just for the sake of the habit.

And, can you show me a practical example of Behavioural Design?

Even though Behavioural Design is within almost every big app we use daily, there’s one where the need for it was bigger than the rest, and that’s Apple Pay.

If we look at Apple Pay, one of the things it aims to do is change the way we buy in stores, they need us to take our phones out when we are about to pay for something rather than our cards. And to impose that behaviour in the masses was a big challenge.

What did Apple do? Well, here it is:

They draw the users attention: Apple Pay uses an eye-catching aesthetics and engaging story telling to make the users focus on their service and be remembered when a could use situation appears.

They influence our decisions: After the users has Read through the Apple Pay page and info, whenever you open the content again, it influences your decisions by customising what you see. First they provide clear and straightforward content on how to use the service and then it tries to detect your specific activity or location through various methods, so to give personalised recommendations and offers that relates to what you are doing and where you are.

They make everything easier: After you already decided to use Apple Pay, they make the use process as easy as possible, so that your experience and memories of the service is as good as possible, this build trust and associates a fast and happy memory with their service.

They build a long term behaviour: After you successfully use Apple Pay the first few times they will give some kind of reward and celebration as to deepen the happy memories you already have with the service. The platform also has some type of message that shows how the use of the service helped not only you but also someone or something else, this gives the experience a small sense of purpose, that makes the users feel attracted to the service and to repeat the use again.