Rob's Hypertext Notebook

Rob Haisfield

Behavioral product strategist and gamification designer. This is my public hypertext notebook, sharing my thinking in motion at various stages of development.

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    There is no curriculum that encompasses everything you should know

    People often ask me what they need to read in order to work in Behavioral Product StrategyBehavioral Product Strategy
    The way a product is designed shapes the way that people use it. Every app is designed for behavior change, intentionally or unintentionally, so the questions that drive behavioral product strategy must be addressed. User Involvement 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 ma...    . My answer? There is no curriculum of everything you should know.

    I’ve found the following useful:

    • Behavioral economics helps me to understand how people make decisions and judgments around concepts of value
    • The study of individual differences and personality helps me to understand users better, how to interpret that information better, and how to translate that into behavior change
    • The study of the psychology of self-regulation helps me to understand how people set, strive for, and achieve (or fail to achieve) their User GoalUser Goal
      There are individual differences between new users in their initial user goals, which plays a crucial role in the Parameters of onboarding. Since Adoption requires a baseline of user involvement in order to overcome inertia, the user must see how the app relates to their ability to accomplish goals quickly.

      Additionally, User goals change over time, so if we want Retention, we need continued User Involvement.

      Goals that matter to the user are ones they were struggling to accomplish on their...      s. This is useful in messaging, in GamificationGamification
      I loosely define gamification as taking inspiration from game design and behavioral science to influence voluntary user behavior. Game designers and behavioral scientists are asking many of the same questions, it's just that the game designers may not use the same vocabulary or methods for validating ideas. As such, I look to game design as an alternate set of lenses for studying and drawing inspiration for Behavioral Product Strategy.

      Other definitions focus too much on mechanics or element...      , in Behavioral Product StrategyBehavioral Product Strategy
      The way a product is designed shapes the way that people use it. Every app is designed for behavior change, intentionally or unintentionally, so the questions that drive behavioral product strategy must be addressed. User Involvement 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 ma...      , and more. In the linked twitter thread, I mentioned some papers that were particularly interesting to me.
    • The study of information behavior tells me how people interact with and search for information. This has been useful for me in thinking about onboarding and information architecture/navigation.
    • The study of game design shows me a million and one ways that real designers have attempted to influence people’s behavior through a digital design. The thing to remember is that Game designers have been designing for digital behavior change for longer than just about anyoneGame designers have been designing for digital behavior change for longer than just about anyone
      Games have long recognized the truth that comes from The Kurt Lewin Equation:


      The player is interacting with the in-game world in order to get what they want and further their goals.
      Game thoughtfully designs rules and interactions to influence how you get what you want


      As such, they The goal of game design is to influence user behavior to create an intended experience. People need to play games in certain ways to make the game fun for themselves, so games are designed for behavior ch...      .

    Other practitioners have found the following useful (though I’ve barely stuck my toes in):

    • The psychology of emotions
    • Neuroscience
    • Evolutionary psychology
    • Cultural psychology

    People are incredibly complex, so it would be impossible to say “this is all you need to know about people.”

    I would even struggle to say “you need to at least know this.” The point is that you need to understand the nuance of how/when/why it works in order to use a finding, which you're not going to find in a list of heuristics and biases. The study of people is so broad in nature and there’s so much that can be useful within it to the people who are able to apply conceptual knowledge, that you might as well just follow curiosity unconditionally. It’ll be more enjoyable.

    Even if there were a curriculum, then If I read what everybody else is reading, then I’ll think like everybody elseIf I read what everybody else is reading, then I’ll think like everybody else
    I remember being in conversation with a friend of mine who had just started working at a top behavioral economics consultancy right around the time when I started consulting independently.

    He said that he felt like he should read all of the original Kahneman and Tversky papers. I proposed a thought experiment:

    If you’re working at a consultancy where everybody has read those papers, who would you prefer to work with: someone who can repeat back to you research that you have already read, or...    .