Designing for Behavior Change: Applying Psychology and Behavioral Economics - Softcover

Wendel, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1449367623 ISBN 13: 9781449367626

Publisher: O′Reilly, 2013

Synopsis

A new wave of products is helping people change their behavior and daily routines, whether it&;s exercising more (Jawbone Up), taking control of their finances (HelloWallet), or organizing their email (Mailbox). This practical guide shows you how to design these types of products for users seeking to take action and achieve specific goals.

Stephen Wendel, HelloWallet&;s head researcher, takes you step-by-step through the process of applying behavioral economics and psychology to the practical problems of product design and development. Using a combination of lean and agile development methods, you&;ll learn a simple iterative approach for identifying target users and behaviors, building the product, and gauging its effectiveness. Discover how to create easy-to-use products to help people make positive changes.

• Learn the three main strategies to help people change behavior
• Identify your target audience and the behaviors they seek to change
• Extract user stories and identify obstacles to behavior change
• Develop effective interface designs that are enjoyable to use
• Measure your product&;s impact and learn ways to improve it
• Use practical examples from products like Nest, Fitbit, and Opower

About this title

About the Author

Stephen is Principal Scientist at HelloWallet, where he's worked for four years to develop applications that help users take control of their finances. He is a behavioral social scientist by academic training, and works with behavior economists and psychologists to conduct research on behavior change, especially around savings and spending behavior. The impetus behind writing this book comes from two places. First, it comes from his experiences at HelloWallet. HelloWallet has confronted first-hand the frustrations and failures that come from the two most common approaches to behavior change: telling people what to do (without taking into account their psychology), and trying to directly apply the research literature (without focusing on the quality of the product itself). Second, he is a co-founder of community of like-minded practitioners, "Action Design DC", where he has had the opportunity to learn from other companies attacking the same problems of practical behavior change. He has a thorough knowledge of the academic literature, experience applying it in product development, and expertise in experimental design and statistical modelling.

Edition details

• Publisher: O′Reilly
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1449367623
• ISBN 13: 9781449367626
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400