The way a product is designed shapes the way that people use it. Every app is designed for behavior change, intentionally or unintentionallyEvery app is designed for behavior change, intentionally or unintentionally
As described in The Kurt Lewin Equation, people’s behavior is influenced by the relationship between who they are and the context of their situation. While the user is paying attention, the app controls a portion of the user’s digital context. As such, app design exerts significant influence over user behavior, whether you designed it intentionally with this purpose in mind or not.
The large majority of behavioral science research can effectively be summarized as “here’s how this environment..., so the questions that drive behavioral product strategy must be addressed. User InvolvementUser Involvement
Imagine purchasing a gym membership in order to lose weight or grow more muscular. Having a gym membership is not enough on its own! In order to successfully accomplish that goal, you would need to work out regularly on the right muscle groups. You might have a higher likelihood of success if you participate in exercise classes or hire a personal trainer. Your outcomes are shaped by your own behavior in the gym.
User involvement is defined by the set of user behaviors that lead to experienci... is a set of metrics whose success is defined by the combination of user behaviors that contribute towards creating a desirable outcome. Behavioral product strategy is making product decisions to influence user behavior and improve user involvement.
It doesn't matter what features you have if people don't use them to accomplish a goal. When people achieve a goal using your product that they were previously struggling to achieve on their own, then you've won their User InvolvementUser Involvement
Imagine purchasing a gym membership in order to lose weight or grow more muscular. Having a gym membership is not enough on its own! In order to successfully accomplish that goal, you would need to work out regularly on the right muscle groups. You might have a higher likelihood of success if you participate in exercise classes or hire a personal trainer. Your outcomes are shaped by your own behavior in the gym.
User involvement is defined by the set of user behaviors that lead to experienci.... This creates a positive feedback loop: they'll behave in ways that enable them to accomplish their goals and accomplishing the goals reinforces the value of their current style of usage. Designing for user involvement has positive effects on adoption, retention, and viralityDesigning for user involvement has positive effects on adoption, retention, and virality
Adoption
The most successful app adoptions come from a project because that gives users the motivation to learn functionalities in the context of when they are useful and persist through failures. Adoption requires a baseline of user involvement in order to overcome inertia. Designing for user involvement allows you to Speak to the user with a shared vocabulary. People design their own experience in an app through their actions, so designing for User Involvement early on means that the user ....
Products are fundamentally voluntaryProducts are fundamentally voluntary
People can always choose to use the product, use an alternative, or use nothing at all. In fact, not using your product is their default state of being, and you’re trying to get them to do something different and effortful in using your product. Adoption requires a baseline of user involvement in order to overcome inertia.
It’s easier to facilitate people doing something that they want to do than it is to convince them to do something they don’t want to do. It’s easier to enhance their desir.... People can always choose to use the product, use an alternative, or use nothing at all. In fact, not using your product is a consumer's default state of being, and you’re trying to get them to do something different in using your product. The goal of behavioral product strategy is to turn usage of your product into a default behavior for certain goals.
This is where behavioral science proves its worth for product decisions. By understanding users and their behavior through these lenses, we are able to
- Design a product that people want to use
- Facilitate, encourage, and enable them to use the product to its fullest potential to accomplish the goals that they have.