Before this class…
I thought that behavior change was a bigger, more obvious effort to be prompt and efficient. Coming from a political science background, behavior change to me was never a subtle effort, but a drastic one that had to be prepared, planned, and consistent. Even for the individual, I believed that a stronger willpower was necessary for the initial efforts to transform into consistent habits. For example, skin picking (a topic I did a usability testing for and is a problem I face!) was something I thought would have to be a constant 24/7 reminder with full determination not to do, not incremental reminders. Maybe that’s why I feel like I learned so much in this class, since I’ve always been one to beat myself up over not creating a habit right away.
My experiences in this class…
Methodological experiences…
My favorite part of the design project (and what I took active notes on for during class!) was user research outside of the conventional interview format. This included doing assumption tests, diary studies, and intervention studies, which helped shape my user journey mapping to a remarkable degree. I learned to ask follow-ups that strayed away from the answers I sought, and I enjoyed watching people live through the experiences I imagined for the project in the studies. Additionally, I’m glad that we got to explore the use of system models and the “backend” part of the design, as that helped guide what screens needed to include what. For our project that required a “switch” functionality that took place beyond our app, not referring to system models would’ve definitely tripped me up on the design – it would’ve probably made us have more screens than needed for each flow.
My least favorite part was probably the slow build for the actual MVP features and design of the app. I felt as though I could’ve taken more away from the system path, story map, and even the storyboards if I really thought about what our idea would be first. Not fleshing out the MVP made it so we all just stuck to the simplest version of our intervention for each activity and stuck with it – hence why my group narrowed down our app topics to be about habit stacking by reading on the toilet and app switching (one of them is definitely a dark horse idea). I would’ve liked even the traditional crazy 8 to differentiate our ideas more. Personally, I believe our idea may not have enough competitive features that make it a standout app on the app store.
Some suggestions…
If I were to have a suggestion for the redesign of this project and class, I’d like to dive into the mind of the user a bit more and explore the tensions users have when attempting to change their behavior, such as darker emotions like regret, guilt, and shame, and how to design around them. I feel like a lot of what we’ve learned has been to subtlety nudge the user into forming a habit, but what if the nudge was too soft, or if the user starts to notice a lack in progress? A streak that’s lost, and a calendar showing a month of just grey instead of speckled with dots that they’ve done the right behavior, such as reading (subtle reference to the calendar feature in our project). For an extension of the project, I’d like to explore how to prompt a user back into a habit after they take a break for a while.
There are definitely a lot more extensions I’d want to explore too now that I know more about the different “techniques” for behavior change, and I wish I would’ve written them down and analyzed which ones were applicable to my project. I think my group went off of an idea we knew was feasible to the topic and tried to weave principles of behavior changes into it, like nudges and framing, but I could definitely see how elements like loss aversion could be incorporated into this type of app – for example, if you don’t catch up in reading on this material you’re going to lose 10% of your final grade on this paper. That would honestly work so well on me. Going off of that logic, I’d definitely like a week where we can explore how different interventions work for our project and storyboard around that. That way, the ideas wouldn’t be so disconnected to the actual app? That would also help build up to the MVP features.
In terms of what I’ll remember ten years from now, I’d say any type of intervention that I can use myself and apply to my own daily life. It’d be cool if we could do a project that reflected on how we navigate behavior change!
Ethical considerations…
Our project played around with framing and friction the most. In our initial user studies, we realized that the reason why phones were such a great distraction when reading – and why reading was not a good distraction for quite literally anything, like reading a book – was due to the fact that phones are so accessible. Our users cited getting distracted from a class reading on their laptop since opening up a new tab and typing in Youtube was just that easy. So is picking up a phone next to you on a nightstand with a book in your lap. But what made reading so hard? The thought that you’d have to search for new reading material, go to a library, or navigate through several pages on canvas to get to the research article your professor requires. So, we thought about using your phone, which is a big distractor, as a reading tool that makes distractions like social media harder. In the next phases of our MVP, we wanted to incorporate difficulty levels to bypass the intervention. For example, if you want to scroll through Instagram during a reading session, you’ll need to answer 10 AI-generated comprehension questions on your current reading.
In terms of consideration of universal users, we designed our personas so that we included users who enjoyed reading and those that found reading necessary but were easily distracted or found it to be a weakness of theirs. That being said, the actual design may cater towards those that are more inclined to read as a passion rather than for an academic requirement. When setting goals, for example, we had to be careful in whether we should ask if they read “daily” or “weekly” to be considerate of our users’ schedules, and we also understood that there are people who may not be able to finish entire books. Although these concerns aren’t exactly harmful to the user who may be using the app, there are concerns on the app itself being too much friction for something that should be as simple as reading. To some users, reading may be as easy as opening up a book and flipping a page, but for users that find it difficult to get to that stage, would all these extra steps for logging reading and starting a session and a reading timer make it harder for them to read? I mean, ideally, they would get to a point where reading becomes a swift past-time, but then again, they really wouldn’t be using our app at that stage for behavior change anymore. In that sense, we’d hope to incorporate more features that are also about keeping track of reading rather than just app switching.
Now I think this…
You can make behavior change easier. It’s not just about determination, but also the subtle, incremental changes in your context, such as your environment, social life, or even your routine. Behavior change isn’t about changing attitudes. Behavior change doesn’t have to be an extravagant start and end, or a concrete one. You can ease into forming long-lasting habits without even knowing it!
Next time when faced with a similar situation, I will…
- I will go outside of traditional user research methods and understand my user’s routines and current behaviors. I will shape my user journeys from stories during their diary studies, test my assumptions on my users, along with how they react to the interventions I propose.
- I will be more methodological with how I design for behavior change, and look at interventions that have worked. I will explore the push and pull of nudges, along with other tensions of behavior change.
- I will put myself in the shoes of the user. I will think of behavior change tactics that I can apply in my own life. I will ask my teammates to do the same.
