possible for a person to see a behavior as reinforcing an important value or part of their identity. Maybe they consider themselves as a kind person, and spending two hours every week at a volunteer project helps them live into that value. When a behavior is important because it supports someone’s identity or values, the person has integrated motivation.
The final and most autonomous form of motivation is intrinsic motivation. This happens when a behavior is enjoyable purely for its own sake. This is rarely seen in behavior change projects; although some target behaviors can be pleasurable, it usually takes some time and training before that’s the case. Consider exercise, which can feel wonderful for someone who has a comfortable routine; it’s hell for many newbies. On the other hand, many of the “bad” habits that interventions try to break may be very enjoyable for people, and therefore hard to abandon.
More autonomous forms of motivation are better than controlled ones for long-lasting behavior change. Behavior change tends to be hard for people; if their reasons for trying to change are personal and deeply held, they’re more likely to help them weather the difficult times. Controlled forms of motivation are more vulnerable to obstacles. Therefore, a goal of behavior change design is to coax people along the motivational continuum away from controlled forms of motivation toward more autonomous alternatives. This is done by designing experiences that fulfill people’s basic psychological needs.
Basic Psychological Needs
Yes, people are different from each other, but in some fundamental ways, they’re all the same. One of those fundamental ways is that all people share three universal basic psychological needs. The more these needs are supported by an experience, the more people want to engage in it. Basically, support for these needs is what makes an experience fun, interesting, or fulfilling. Because people are hardwired to satisfy basic psychological needs, they are extremely sensitive to cues in the environment that either support or thwart them.
The first basic psychological need is autonomy. Autonomy means having control and being able to make meaningful choices. Meaningful choices include which goals to pursue and, broadly, which methods to use to pursue them. Programs that dictate user goals are likely to feel less autonomy-supportive; similarly, programs that give users lots of choices that aren’t meaningful, like the color of a dashboard, won’t fill this need.
The second basic psychological need is competence. Competence is supported when people can see that they’re learning or growing with time and activity. People thrive on progress. Regular, clear feedback helps people see what they’ve done. And designers can help ensure that people make progress by identifying the obstacles stopping them from success and creating ways for them to overcome those obstacles.
The third basic psychological need is relatedness. Relatedness is satisfied when people feel part of something larger than themselves. Often, relatedness comes from one-on-one or small group relationships, but people can also get their relatedness fix from being part of a community, feeling connected to a higher power, or having an emotional bond with a pet. People are very good at creating connections, even with inanimate objects, so it’s possible to help fill their relatedness tank through technology alone.4
NOTE TEACHABLE MOMENTS
Part of the design process involves understanding the circumstances under which someone might use your product. Depending on what your product is intended to do, you might identify opportunities where users are more receptive to the idea of a specific behavior change. An example of a teachable moment is the aftermath of a health crisis; someone who’s just had a heart attack may be ready to consider an exercise program that seemed unnecessary before the diagnosis. On the more positive side, someone who’s just gotten a promotion and raise at work may be open to assistance in paying down student loans more aggressively. Understanding these teachable moments can inform your marketing and onboarding strategies, as well as the way you structure goal-setting within the product.
Cross-Cultural Relevance
Self-determination theory has been used in research around the world. For the most part, the theory holds up across national and ethnic cultures, as well as across socioeconomic classes. There are some cultural differences in how people seek support for their basic psychological needs, but those needs themselves are found universally. The take-home message is that SDT is safe to use as a lens for your product development, but be sure to research the specifics with the target users in the target context.
The Behavior Change Design Process
The phases of a behavior change design project look a lot like the phases of any project. At Mad*Pow, where I work, the behavior change design team breaks the process into four phases:
• Diagnosis is a research and discovery phase to better understand the problem space, the target users, and the context in which they live and perform the target behaviors. This phase could include primary research like interviewing or observing target users, as well as secondary research, such as literature reviews or reviewing insights from previous projects.
• Prescription is a generative phase where potential solutions are explored and product requirements created. Literature reviews can come in handy here, too. They offer a fast track to identifying solutions that are likely to be effective, especially when paired with a framework like the Behaviour Change Wheel5 that links behavior change barriers to interventions.
• Execution is the phase where the product is built, whether that takes the form of visual design, coding, service development, and so forth. Behavior change designers may be active contributors to the build, or they may work closely with other team members to ensure an accurate translation of concepts.
• Evaluation refers to the measurement of a product’s effectiveness. Although it’s represented as the end phase of a four-part process, evaluation is ideally an ongoing activity throughout the design process to maximize product success. For example, it’s always a good idea to test early prototypes with users if you can, rather than investing in a full development before getting feedback. Once a product is out in the market, measurement provides tools to continue to iterate and improve it.
Regardless of what your team calls these phases, you probably have a similar process that you use. The labels matter less than what you do during each phase. Behavior change designers typically perform a specific set of activities to accomplish phase objectives. Sometimes these are familiar activities that other design professionals also use, like research interviews or prototype sketching. Other times, the activities are more closely tied to behavior change, such as doing a literature review of previously published interventions or creating an outcomes logic map. What’s important is that you are doing the groundwork to understand your target users and their needs, coming up with reasonable hypotheses about how to change target behaviors, and testing the efficacy of your designs.
The tactics and activities in this book occur across the entire product development process. You’ll learn about ways to research and understand target users; identify product features to help them accomplish goals and overcome barriers; specify requirements so they can be brought to life in product development; and investigate whether and how a product works to support user outcomes.
The Upshot: You Can Do Behavior Change Design
Behavior change design is the application of psychological science to the creation of products or experiences in order to influence specific behaviors in users. Behavior change designers work to incorporate science to the inner
