Designing for Behavior Change: Applying Psychology and Behavioral Economics (2013)

Part III. Developing the Conceptual Design

Chapter 7. Constructing the Environment

My wife has a Fitbit One—a small exercise tracker that hooks onto clothing, displays progress on a screen, and sends over detailed information to a computer or smartphone.

The Fitbit One does many things right to help encourage exercise. It automates two very annoying (and therefore action-inhibiting) parts of the exercise process: it automates the process of tracking how much exercise the person has had, and it automates uploading that information onto a computer or phone. Those are examples of structuring the action—by shifting the burden of work from the user to the product (aka “cheating”).

The device also does a number of things, beyond changing the action itself, to help users take the action of exercising. For example:

§ It reminds people to exercise. For example, it gives random “Chatter” messages on the screen; I still smile as I remember when I first saw the message, “Walk Me.”

§ It provides immediate and meaningful feedback. Shortly after my wife got it, I remember her looking at the screen and seeing she’d walked something like 9,945 steps. She just started running around the room, to break the 10,000-steps threshold.

These tactics are two examples of how a product can construct the user’s decision-making environment to help them take action. That’s the topic of this chapter.

Tactics You Can Use

Thus far, you should have a clear sequence of steps that the user will take in order to complete the target action. You’ve found the Minimum Viable Action, automated parts of it, and made parts of the process shorter, less taxing, and more familiar to the user.

Now, let’s assume the action itself is set in stone. Users need to do X, Y, and Z to succeed. How can you help users take that action? One way is to structure the environment to encourage the action.

By environment, I mean two things:

The product itself

For software applications, the primary “environment” enveloping the user is the product—particularly, the web pages where the user takes action, or the tiny progress screen on the Fitbit One tracker.

The rest of the user’s local environment

While using your application, the user is also embedded in a physical environment (trying to use your application while on the subway, with a spotty Internet connection), and a social environment outside of the application (a set of expectations from friends on the “right” behaviors).

Clearly, you have the most control over the first part of the environment: the product, including the app and related hardware like the Fitbit One tracker. However, with good user research, you can leverage the rest of the individual’s environment to increase the impact of the application.

Remember that the design process occurs at two levels. You start with the conceptual level, where you develop a behavioral plan that describes steps the user takes within and outside of the product. Then you proceed to the interface design level, when you develop and review individual screens of the product and the interactions that occur on them. Thus far, we’re working at the conceptual level with a behavioral plan (expressed as a journey map or narrative, for example); we’ll stay at that level for now. In a later chapter, we’ll come back to the interface design level, but the design considerations and process are very similar.

There are five main ways that products can construct the users’ environment (the product software itself, and, sometimes the surrounding environment) to help them take action:

1. Increase motivation.

2. Cue the user to act.

3. Generate a feedback loop.

4. Remove competition.

5. Remove obstacles.

Let’s look at each of these, in turn. To keep things concrete, I’ll use the example of exercising throughout this chapter. I’ll draw examples from the Fitbit (what my wife has and loves) and a similar product, which was much less effective and shall remain nameless (I had one of them, before I returned it for reasons I’ll explain later).

Increase Motivation

How can the product motivate people to act? There are myriad ways, and you can think about them along four dimensions:

New versus existing

A product can add new motivation or highlight a user’s existing motivation to act. Ideally, you want to leverage existing motivations first.

Rewards versus punishment

A product can reward people for taking an action or punish them for not taking it. You should avoid punishing your users.

Type of motivator

A product can pay people to act, increase their esteem among friends, help them feel a sense of mastery and accomplishment, or provide a variety of rewards via other motivators. There are no “best motivators”—find the right motivators for your particular users.

Current versus future motivation

The benefit of changing behavior may be far in the future; for example, one benefit of getting in shape is living longer. The problem is, the future just isn’t real. Translate future motivations into something meaningful in the present.

The following sections provide a bit more detail on each of these topics.

Leverage Existing Motivations Before Adding New Ones

Does your product need to add a new motivation for users to act, highlight existing ones, or both? First, understand what currently motivates users to act. Use the information you learned about your users in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5, about why they want to take the action. Maybe their doctor has told them to exercise more; maybe they really enjoy running but can’t seem to fit it into their schedule. Since we’re often distracted and thinking about other things, simply reminding people of their existing motivation at the moment of action can be powerful. And, it’s really cheap to remind people of what they already care about; it’s much more costly to add a new motivation.

If you’re not sure what currently motivates your users, you can do some simple field tests—check how important particular motivations are versus other things in the person’s life. A good way to gather that information is to present a series of trade-offs—ask which of two things the person wants more (e.g., as motivations for exercise: “living five years longer” versus “going on a date next month”). It’s less ideal to simply ask people, “How important is this to you?” because we often don’t have a real baseline against which to answer that question, and it engages a different part of our minds than usually makes the actual decision to act.

Another reason the existing motivations are important has to do with extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation ([ref47]; [ref156]). Intrinsic motivation comes from the inherent enjoyment of the activity itself, without considering any external pressure or reward. Extrinsic motivation is the desire to achieve a particular outcome, such as receiving a reward for it (like money or winning a competition).

Your users can have preexisting intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, and your product can leverage both to drive behavior. But when the product adds a new motivation to act, the source of that motivation is almost always, by definition, outside of the user and outcome-oriented, or extrinsic. For example, people using the FitBit One often have both a preexisting intrinsic motivation and a new extrinsic motivation: an inherent enjoyment from exercising and using one’s muscles, and the desire to reach a particular goal and be congratulated for it by the product.

Intrinsic motivations can keep people going when the product isn’t directly involved in their lives. New extrinsic motivations, provided by the product, can’t do that. They are only effective when the product is directly involved: when they stop, so do the users. If your product adds extrinsic motivations, it can also “crowd out” people’s existing intrinsic motivations—meaning they lose the joy of doing something for its own sake if they start being paid to do it ([ref46]).^[88^]

However, that doesn’t mean new extrinsic motivations are always a bad thing; they just have to be used judiciously:

§ When the person doesn’t have a strong existing motivation for a particular step in the sequence of actions. For example, someone really wants to get healthy, but doesn’t see how regular blood pressure checks are important. A little boost can help.

§ For one-time actions where crowding out intrinsic motivation is irrelevant. For example, someone really wants to exercise but has no motivation to go buy gym clothes. An incentive can get them past that barrier, and closer to their goal.

§ To help users transition from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation—to get people started as they find the joy of the activity itself. For example, conversation clubs can use a small incentive (free dinner) to get together people who are learning a new language for the first time. While they are there, they experience the intrinsic joys of being immersed in the language, which pulls them forward for future learning.^[89^]

Avoid Punishing Your Users

There’s great debate on whether rewards or punishments are more effective at motivating people in general. However, in the context of products that design for behavior change, the choice should be clear: avoid punishing your users. If you give people a consistently bad experience, in most cases, they will stop using your product and do something else with their time. If you could hypothetically force people to endure your punishment, that might be effective. But you can’t, and the user has the option to ignore or avoid you.

Not punishing your users doesn’t mean completely avoiding the threat of properly selected punishments. One powerful type of threat is a commitment contract: in which people pre-commit to taking an action, and they forfeit something they care about if they fail to follow through.^[90^] For example, Stickk.com employs commitment contracts to generate creative, personal punishments, like automatically donating money to an NGO you hate if you fail to lose weight. Importantly, their punishments are self-imposed and self-calibrated; people choose their own punishment. We react much more negatively to externally imposed punishments than we do to self-imposed ones.

Overall, the trick is to carefully use the threat of punishment (and ideally, a self-imposed one) to motivate action without actually punishing people and driving them away.

Test Out Different Types of Motivators

As humans, we don’t lack for things that could motivate us. Money. Food. Control. Esteem. Researchers have tried to make sense of our various motivations for decades,^[91^] from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (we address deficiencies in a successive set of needs, from basic comfort to self-actualization), to von Neumann and Morgenstern’s expected utility theory (we should do what provides us the most benefit). I won’t try to argue which motivations are most important for all of humanity, but rather will make an observation. The most important form of motivation is the onethat’s actually compelling for your users, given their life circumstances. Identifying that motivation is part of getting to know your users, and what resonates with them.^[92^] It may also entail experimentation—trying out a cash payment, or public acclaim, or providing a sense of mastery. Three big areas you can explore with your product are:

1. Monetary rewards, like cash

2. Social motivations, like status or esteem of peers

3. Intrinsic benefits like exploring something new (the product can accent the intrinsic rewards that users already receive)

Also, try varying the motivation over time—we become satiated in any single area, at least in the short term, and start looking for new rewards. That’s obvious with food (if you’re no longer hungry, more food just isn’t that motivating), but it also applies to other forms of reward (if you’ve won a competition against your friends 10 times in a row, winning again isn’t that interesting).

Pull Future Motivations into the Present

We like stuff now, rather than later. We’re far more motivated by current goods and experiences than in future ones, even after accounting for inflation, uncertainty, and so on. This “temporal myopia” (focusing on the present even to our own detriment) is deeply ingrained, and something that too many behavioral change programs forget.

For most people, most of the time, “a few years from now” doesn’t exist. It’s not real, and whatever happens then isn’t motivating now.

And that presents a serious problem. Let’s say we sincerely want to slim down our weight to avoid heart disease, or we may really think that saving for retirement is important. But if the threat of heart disease, or the need for retirement money, is still many years off, it just isn’t real to us.^[93^]Daniel Goldstein refers to this as the struggle between the present and future self (2011). We have noble long-term goals but are tempted to do other things in the present.

How can we make that future motivation affect our near-term behavior? We can use moments of strength (when we are actually thinking about the future) to lock in that motivation. Commitment contracts—described in an earlier section—are one option. An extreme version of them, called the Ulysses contract, was described in Homer’s Odyssey: Ulysses had the crew members on his ship tie him to the mast so that he was physically unable to respond to the alluring call of the mythical (and deadly) sirens. In a Ulysses contract, people make binding commitments that restrict what they can do in the future.

Another method is to try to bring the future into our current awareness. For example, researchers have used photo imaging techniques to help people visualize what they will look like in the future, and act according to their future self’s motivations ([ref90]).

[ref9] tells a personal story about how he turned a long-term motivation into something meaningful and useful in the present with “reward substitution.” He needed to take a highly unpleasant, painful medication for over a year that had a long-term benefit (beating a disease). But that long-term benefit wasn’t enough to overcome the temptation to stop taking the medication. So, he linked taking the medication to something that he enjoyed in the near-term—in this case watching movies. He’d only watch movies right before taking the medication, effectively substituting one motivation (beating the disease) for another one (enjoying the movie).

If these don’t work, we can forget about the long-term motivation altogether and simply look for a completely different motivator that isn’t far off in the future. For example, instead of talking about the long-term health benefits of getting in shape, highlight the immediate benefits it will have on someone’s love life.

Each of these is a technique to make the action motivating now, when it otherwise would be far in the future. Just remember: when we ask people to just think about what a wonderful retirement they’ll have in 20 years or all the things they’ll be able to do after they lose 300 pounds, we’re asking them to do something that’s deeply foreign to how our brains are wired ([ref113]; [ref106]).

Don’t Forget the Other Preconditions for Action

The reason I mentioned motivation as the first tactic is that it’s the one that most of us jump to when asked how we can encourage people to do X. The problem is, it’s often not what’s really needed, or at least, not on its own.

Here’s an example: the monetary rewards to investing in a retirement plan when your employer contributes money (i.e., a “matching” contribution) are tremendous. We’re talking about free money that grows for decades, tax free, with the magic of compound interest. The users need to personally contribute some of their own money to get the match; but that’s something they know they need to do anyway—in order to enjoy their retirement (and not live in their kids’ basement when they’re 70). But up to 50% of people won’t do it unless something more is done to change their behavior ([ref136])—like automating the process (automatic enrollment) or forcing people to make a choice (a strong trigger to act).

To make this point another way, think about this: what is the most effective way to earn gads of money? That is: how can you receive the most monetary rewards? For most of us, we simply have no idea, and we don’t waste our time looking for that “optimal-money-producing” answer. We’ve picked the best career path among those presented to us—through a mix of what we’re aware of, what seems feasible, the diverse set of motivations and options that fit our personal stories and prior experiences. Money, as with any other type of motivation, is only part of the story.

Here are some challenges that arise when focusing too much on motivation:

§ When a product is helping a person take an action he or she already wants to do, the person by definition already has some motivation. For most “good” behaviors, like exercising, everyone has already told that person how important it is—another voice in the choir isn’t going to add much. (Though sometimes the motivation is too far in the future, as mentioned earlier.)

§ There are always competing motivations to do other things. Understanding which exact action we take, why, and when, is the kicker. The answer is often not “the most motivating one.”

This isn’t to say that making people more motivated isn’t important—it is. It’s just not enough. Tactics to increase motivation (like highlighting the user’s existing reasons to act, or experimenting to find the right motivator for your users) work best when carefully executed along with other parts of the Create Action Funnel from Chapter 2. More motivation improves the chances that a person will successfully pass the intuitive reaction and conscious evaluation components of the funnel. But don’t forget that there’s other work to be done as well!

Let’s say you offer a badge of recognition when users complete an action, which is a tactic to increase motivation. That’s useful, but needs to be combined with the rest of the Create Action Funnel. For example, in order for the users to benefit from that extra motivation, and to eventually take action, they first need to be aware of the reward. In other words, they need to be cued to think about it. The target action must also out-compete (be relatively more motivating, more urgent, etc.) other potential actions the user could take. Those two tactics—cueing and blocking the competition—are coming next.

Cue the User to Act

The sight of the overgrown grass prompts you to mow the lawn. A TV commercial for steak reminds you that you’re hungry. For many behaviors, the motivation is often present, but it’s in the background. Something needs to cue you to think about it now rather than later: that cue is the first step in the Create Action Funnel we talked about in Chapter 2.

Cues, wisely placed, are essential for changes in behavior. This is true for nonconscious habits—a cue in the environment starts a habitual routine—and for conscious decisions to act.

One simple way to cue people to act is just to ask them. If you do it nicely, and don’t ask too often, it rarely leads to less action than not asking. Asking for action within a software product has three distinct effects:

Cueing (attention)

Not only are people busy, but their attention is extraordinarily limited. Dean Karlan (among others) shows that increasing mere attention to an issue is a key factor in driving behavior—especially if the person already has the motivation to act ([ref104]).

Obligation

It’s uncomfortable to tell people “no” to a reasonable request. If the company (and especially, a particular person that the product personifies) can be seen as a friendly, anthropomorphized presence, then this can help spur action.

Immediacy/urgency

Most “good” actions, like saving money, exercising more, or smoking less are things that a person can do at any time, and therefore can be put off. Asking people to do it now (with some reason for the urgency) helps people get over the “I’ll do it later” hump.

It doesn’t take much to ask users to act. Emails. Text messages. Big honkin’ “Act Now” buttons on websites (Figure 7-1). These are obvious and effective ways to trigger action.^[94^] Don’t waste time on complex psychological approaches to help people to act if you haven’t already tried the obvious ones.

Figure 7-1. The first place to start: just ask people to act

Another way to cue action is to help users reinterpret an existing feature of their environment as a cue. Let them specify something that they see or hear normally in their lives—like the morning show on their favorite radio station. Then, have them make a plan to act once they see or hear that thing (e.g., “Once the morning show finishes, go running” or, “On Thursday, when I exit from the metro, I’ll go buy my running shoes”).

Simple mnemonics like this have been used for thousands of years—and your product can help people use them by building an association between something they’ll see, and something they want to do. More recently, researchers have experimentally established the impact of “implementation intentions” ([ref84]), in which people make specific plans for action in the future. Implementation intentions are a way to tell the mind to do X whenever Y happens. They pull the burden of thinking from the future to the present, allowing the person to invest time in setting up the plan to act now, and simply executing it automatically when the environment cues action in the future.

Here’s a nice, clean example of how setting up a concrete plan establishes a cue to act in the future. It’s from http://twords.2lch.com/, a simple online program to encourage writers to write regularly. Figure 7-2 shows what I filled out when I first signed up.

Figure 7-2. My plan to write each night, from twords.2lch.com

Generate a Feedback Loop

The current crop of wearable computing products, like Jawbone Up, LarkLife, Fitbit One, and BodyMedia Fit CORE, are built around providing feedback to users about their exercise and sleep habits. For example, my wife’s Fitbit One provides constant feedback on how much exercise she’s gotten. When she makes an adjustment in her routine, it’s quickly reflected in the tracker, and she can see how she’s doing. That feedback loop allows her to adjust her behavior throughout the day to meet her goals.^[95^]

For feedback to be effective at actually helping people change their behavior, it should be:

Timely

Ideally, the feedback should occur while the action is being undertaken so the user can make live adjustments and see the impact.

Clear

The user must understand what the information means.

Actionable

The user must know how to act on the information.

In addition, and this may seem obvious, the user must care enough about the feedback to change behavior. Being intrigued and entertained by feedback is not enough. The user must want to, and be able to make the adjustments necessary to, improve performance. The user must also be paying attention. In this combination of motivation, attention, and the ability to act, we find many of the same issues we’ve already discussed about designing for behavior change.

Knock Out the Competition

There’s a flip side to encouraging a behavior, which hasn’t received nearly as much attention in the behavior change world. Namely, each distinct type of behavior is in competition with (almost) every other type^[96^]—competing to be the most motivating, to grab the user’s very limited attention (i.e., competing triggers), and to claim the user’s time (i.e., competing to be easier and faster). One can draw out these competing or blocking factors with a series of questions:

1. What in the environment demotivates the individual, or, more subtly, motivates the individual to do other things and thus crowds out the target action?

2. What in the environment already has the user’s attention, and thus crowds out awareness of your action?

3. Similarly, is the environment crowded with other actions that are already easy or simple to take?

When faced with serious competition, here are three strategies to counteract it.

First, if the competing factors are within the application, the product team needs to make hard choices and potentially decrease the motivation/attention/ease provided for other behaviors. Often you really don’t need to change all of them—just focus on pulling the users’ attention to one thing at a time. If you have their attention at the time they are doing what they need to do, it doesn’t matter (as much) that the application motivates them to do other things at other times. One straightforward way to minimize competing attention-getters is to simplify: remove other calls to action, remove distracting text, and take out anything else that isn’t essential from the page. Put those other actions in another part of the application that is clearly, conceptually different from the current one.

Second, you can use competing factors to your advantage. If the user is really engaged in something else, look for a clever way to connect it to your target action. Wherever the user’s attention already is, that’s the best place to be. That’s why many applications are built for Facebook—that’s where users are already putting their attention.

Third, there’s the brute force approach—shout louder for attention, be more motivating, and make using the product easier than breathing. I don’t recommend this. If the user is doing something (else) there’s (a) probably a good reason, and (b) it takes more than a slightly better behavior to overcome an entrenched one. There are real costs to switching behaviors; for example, we’ve already discussed the challenges of changing habits. However, if you can’t directly dampen the other actions, or find a clever way to use them to your advantage, this may be your only option. Over time, you can build up competing habits and experiences within the application that crowd out those other actions. Or, you can go back to the drawing board and find a different target action that doesn’t compete so strongly with other existing behaviors.

Remove or Avoid Obstacles

This tactic is a bit of a catch-all, to remember to review the obstacles identified in the user research process (Chapter 4 and Chapter 5). Look over the behavioral plan, and see if the obstacles identified previously will stop users from acting.

If some of the users have serious physical handicaps (can’t walk long distances) or are strongly resource constrained (don’t have the money for special running gear), for example, is there anything the company or product can do to assist them? Some obstacles have obvious solutions. If some users aren’t comfortable with or don’t have smartphones, ensure that there’s a desktop or web version of the software (the Fitbit One does this). Others are trickier—like physical handicaps—and there just aren’t any universal solutions; the team will need to think them through and look for particular solutions for their product.

This tactic is also a reminder to use standard practices in interaction design and product development to remove friction for users in all of the tasks they do within the application ([ref110]).

Update the Behavioral Plan

Each of the five tactics just discussed can make action more likely, both independently and when working together. So, look over the behavioral plan you created previously. For each step, jot down the following:

§ What is the user’s motivation to complete this step? How does the user’s software environment contribute to that motivation? Are external (physical or social) motivations already in place that can be highlighted?

§ How will the user be cued to take the action now?

§ Will the user get clear feedback on performance, and can the user act on that feedback to improve it?

§ What else is distracting the user?

§ What is blocking the user?

You should have a clear answer for each one (even if it is “we’ve done all we can here”). Tweak the behavioral plan accordingly.

As you review the plan, you’ll probably come up with lots of ideas about how the product itself should look (i.e., you’ll naturally move from the conceptual level to designing individual pages). Jot these ideas down, but try to keep them separate from the behavioral plan itself—so you’ll have a list of requirements on what the product does (the plan), and suggestions on how the plan can do it (the product itself; discussed in Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11).

On A Napkin

Here’s what you need to do

§ Ensure users are motivated to act, and that motivation is at the front of their minds. Either accent their own existing motivation (best), or motivate them with money, approval, social status, or other goods.

§ Ensure they are cued to act now. Easy version: ask them.

§ Ensure they know they are succeeding or failing—give them actionable feedback.

§ Avoid or coopt other behaviors that are competing for their attention. Ideally, piggyback onto something they are already doing.

How you’ll know there’s trouble

§ There don’t appear to be any actions competing for the users’ attention and time.

§ Your product is trying to shout over the competition.

Deliverables

§ A more detailed, refined, behavioral plan that describes the decision-making environment

§ A separate list of ideas for how that functionality might look in the product