More science than art: behavioural psychology meets digital product design
If you build it, they will come? Sometimes not.
Behavioural science has shown that people are not always rational and logical. Opportunity, motivation and timely triggers are all equally important to inspire action.
Behavioural design marries psychology and behavioural economics with human-centred design to dramatically improve product outcomes for you and your customers.
What is behavioural design?
Design has an impact. It can not only influence how you feel but it can also shape the decisions you make. Changing behaviour can be hard as habits are ingrained. But behavioural design can support this change. It’s all about how we present choices within a design.
...if there are several ways of achieving the same goal, people will eventually gravitate to the least demanding course of action. In the economy of action, effort is a cost, and the acquisition of skill is driven by the balance of benefits and costs. Laziness is built deep into our nature.
— Daniel Kahneman
Why choose behavioural design?
Behavioural design is a powerful tool that can transform the way you approach digital product development. Here's how:
Understanding users
Behavioural design helps you gain deep insights into user behaviour, allowing you to tailor your products to their needs and preferences.
Driving engagement
By understanding what motivates your users, you can create experiences that keep them engaged and coming back for more.
Optimising performance
Improve key metrics and achieve your business goals by applying Behavioural design principles to your optimisation projects and product roadmap.
How does it work?
A common challenge in product development is forgetting where we start from and where we want to go. Behavioural design places the emphasis on this trajectory and designs interventions along the way to guide us to the desired outcomes:
1
Start at the end
What is the ideal outcome? It should unify a user goal and a business objective.
2
What’s the current user behaviour?
Look at existing experiences. Examine the data.
3
Understand this behaviour
Why do users have it? What external and internal forces are driving it?
4
Ideate the ideal future behaviours
What behaviour can produce the desired outcome?
5
Identify frictions and opportunities
What’s preventing the user and what’s enabling them?
6
Create a hypothesis
What assumptions are being made? How can we test this? What does a successful criteria look like?
Supercharge your CRO
Behavioural design brings a whole new dimension to conversion rate optimisation (CRO), making it the perfect strategic partner for optimisation. CRO provides the toolkit and behavioural design brings a new way to approach testing for long term outcomes and changing user behaviour. At WAS, we’ve combined our specialisms in CRO and behavioural design to create the ultimate optimisation package.
Ready to get started?
If you're ready to elevate your team with top-tier design talent, contact us to discuss how our strategic people placements can make a difference.