Before I came to this class, I had always blamed myself for not being able to build habits as I wished, and I attributed this to my laziness and lack of perseverance. However, I did not know how to solve problems of laziness and lack of perseverance, because they seemed to be habits themselves. While I really wanted to make changes and build healthier habits, I often got stuck in such a loop that made me deeply question my ability to change my behaviors. Holding this thought, this class’s name intrigued me: Design for Behavioral Change. I had never thought that behaviors or habits could be designed. Doesn’t it just rely on some sort of personal initiative (which I don’t really know what that exactly is) to change behaviors? If not, how do we design to change behaviors? I have tried various apps that help build habits, and almost all of them advertise themselves as being designed to change something, but none of them really worked for me. I had always thought that failure was my problem, but this class made me think that maybe if we could learn to design behavior change, then those apps could have done a better job. So I joined this class with these curiosities.
I must say that the readings in the class were well worth the time. A lot of them focused on how to build habits, which made me realize how biased I was in thinking that it only takes a person’s willpower to build a habit. They also made me let go of the belief that building habits must be hard, and that the harder the process, the worthier the result. Instead, I was taught that I should make the process as easy as possible and that I shouldn’t purely rely on willpower to change habits.
The process of building the project was really fun. This is my first HCI class, and before taking it I had only very vague ideas about what HCI actually does, but the process of building the project helped me learn a lot. I think a one-sentence summary of HCI, and even habit building in general, is that we want to make the process as friendly and low-effort as possible. Carrying the idea that habit building should be easy to execute, my group and I tested many different ideas to develop approaches that require as little willpower as possible. It was exciting to realize how interesting the solutions could be.
While building the actual app, I tried hundreds of times to go through the flow myself. I recalled that I often criticize other apps for how difficult they are to understand, yet I finally realized how difficult it is to make things easy when I do it myself. Even for a simple app with minimal features, we have to consider every possible way a user might use it (the wireflows really helped) at every single step. It’s also really humbling to see that many attempts to design the flow correctly turned out to be confusing for testers. However, I really loved the process and would definitely explore HCI more.
I find myself having a lower threshold when it comes to ethical discussions of nudging and manipulation. I have always felt that nudging and manipulation can be necessary and effective approaches to solving certain urgent problems. What I mean is that if I were someone trying to change my sleep schedule, I would be open to an app that nudges me and even manipulates my emotions a bit to change my behavior, because I would need that intervention. In our project, my proposed idea was to show users how bad they would feel if they didn’t go to bed by sending them images of themselves looking tired. Some people think this could be manipulative, but I believe a certain level of user consent is important—if a user truly wants change, they may be willing to accept this kind of intervention.
Now I feel that I have a much better understanding of behavioral change and HCI in general. I have started building new habits using what I learned from this class and treat myself less harshly when facing difficulties in changing habits.
Next time, when I want to change habits for myself or for others, I will consider how to make the process easier and more approachable. I want to use creativity in design to make things easier—and perhaps build better apps than existing ones.
