(From a virtual seminar on uie.com’s All You Can Learn library)
“Choice Architecture…is organizing the context in which people make decisions” from Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
Example of Choice Architecture:
- A company redesigns their cafeteria to highlight the salad bar and healthy food options, while making the less healthy choices more difficult to see and get. The architecture is attempting to create a more health-conscious cafe layout to get employees to make more healthy choices. No choices were eliminated, some were just emphasized
As UXers, our products and services often live in an environment over which we have little control
- But we can influence how people perceive, navigate and interact with that environment
- Interaction design in especially key to this: it’s about shaping behavior and helping folks achieve goals
- The closer tech is to us physically (think phones and watches), the more it becomes about us
Micro-interactions are generally about features and conversion. Think about Amazon’s one-click button
- It reduces friction by reducing required interaction
- It can be a win for the biz (more purchases) and the customer (quick shopping)
- But there’s also a customer drawback: impulse purchasing is now easier!
Macro-interactions generally center around products/services and behavior change
- Think smoking cessation, weight loss etc
This is behavior change as value prop:
- Value comes from progress towards behavior based outcome
- Data collection is prominent mechanism
- Progress is measurable
- Sense of augmenting ability
- System makes prescriptive rec’s or guidance
- Value prop is time released
- But often with out of box initial value delivery
Fawn Ellis created this visualization about creating a meaningful relationship between people and tech:
We now have more direct relationships with products and services—a relationship that invites influence
Three ways to think about it
- Collection (usually data and sensors)
- Story (framing and anchors)
- Communication (feedback and feedforward)
- Prep and Prompt
Framing data is powerful! For example, loss aversion is stronger than desire the to gain:
- The options presented below are the same
- But how they are framed drastically changes the outcome
How do we add meaning to data?
- People don’t want a relationship w their data—they want to achieve behavioral goals
Feedforward
- Info about what will happen if a person follows a certain behavior
- So imagine you enter a sub shop. Based on your purchase history and your weight goal, your phone buzzes you:
Mental models also come into play—what are people thinking, feeling, doing?
Use some sort of experience mapping to develop empathy, understanding, insights:
Also consider the ecosystem—we might not be able to change it, but we should be aware anyways:
Chris likes a working session technique called OBI Backcasting:
- It asks, If we want to achieve a certain goal, what actions must be taken to get there?
- It envisions future desired conditions and steps to achieve them
- O = outcome (future state achieved by behavior)—determine this…
- B = behaviors required to achieve outcome—to identify these…
- I = interactions that support the behaviors—in order to know what to design
Another technique: Insight Combination
- On one side, list insights (clear, deep, meaningful perceptions into behavior in a particular context)
- On the other, put patterns (a design pattern like pull-down to refresh or a trend like sharing economy that describes a possible solution based on solutions from other contexts)
- Mix and match them together randomly in a timebox
Some tools at our disposal to design for behaviors include:
Chris highlights a double diamond process for designing to shape behavior:
The circles are: Feeling, Thinking, Doing; Empathy, Understanding, Insights; Outcomes, Behaviors, Interactions; Collecting data, Story framing, Communicating learnings
Chris finally points out that this is all a system, experienced over time with many different touchpoints—with several areas we can intervene in and a lot of different decisions to be made
About Chris (from his Twitter): Head of Behavioral Design @CapitalOne. Formerly Head of Design @CapitalOneLabs, Ex-@adaptivepath. Adjunct professor @CCAIxD.
