I'm flexible in the ways I work with clients. Below is not an exhaustive list of possibilities, though there are a few patterns that my engagements tend to follow. I generally work to improve adoption or retention through improving User Involvement. See: Designing for user involvement has positive effects on adoption, retention, and virality
People who get to this point often like to see Testimonials. Here's one from Adam Taylor, CEO of Fabriq:
"These days, it's all too easy to think you’re implementing effective behavioral design principles after reading a few articles, or a one-off conversation with someone who’s “done it before”, but Rob provides the kind of expertise that product design teams are unlikely to possess in-house, even if they are well schooled in UI/UX/CX. Rob’s contribution to our “goal & reward” system redesign was not only a crucial correction to our process and the direction we took the work, but it was an educational opportunity for our team(s) that gave us additional lenses through which to view our work that will pay dividends down the line.”
I initially performed a behavioral audit of Fabriq, analyzing its behavioral influence over its users in the context of company goals, identifying key opportunities and frictions. Afterwards, we signed a six month retainer. We cycle between strategizing product decisions and implementing/iterating, where I support them along the way. At the end of those six months, we renewed the engagement.
Please feel free to email me directly if you would like to work together: rob@influenceinsights.io
We always start with exploration
This helps us understand the ways that we can work together long term. This often comes in the form of a behavioral audit or a workshop (of varying degrees of formality).
Engagement type: Behavioral Audit
In the behavioral audit, I'll analyze your product and talk with you and members of your team about business and user objectives to gain an impression of your product. After a few weeks, you will receive a report of how your product is currently influencing user behavior and directions to explore for a more goal-driven Behavioral Product Strategy.
Engagement type: Workshop
In a workshop, my goal is to orient you and your team around the right questions to begin developing a behavioral product strategy. One example of this is a workshop where we Use a badging system as a method of actionable user research. Soon afterwards, you'll receive a summary of what I believe the main takeaways should be.
Occasionally, it will be clear through discussion that your organization has unique needs. In these cases, I generate customized workshops of varying degrees of formality from my Lenses of behavioral science and game design principles that are relevant to your situation. These allow us to combine my knowledge of behavioral influence with you and your team's knowledge of your company's context.
The next engagement is based on what we uncover in exploration
From the first engagement, it tends to be clear to me what our next steps will be.
Engagement Type: Retainer
The most flexible type of engagement is a retainer. This is for teams that work fast on dynamically changing priorities. This includes includes ongoing discussion to hone an evolving strategy in response to a dynamic situation, as well as stewardship and commentary over time on initiatives to implement said strategy. As Every app is designed for behavior change, intentionally or unintentionally, my role here is to make sure you and your team are thinking through the proper questions in the right way to influence user behavior intentionally.
Engagement Type: Project
It will often be the case that the exploration engagement reveals a well-defined project where you would want me in a more involved role. An example of this would include my work with GuidedTrack, where I developed plans for their pre-launch onboarding, validated those plans through user research, iterated, and am helping develop product functionalities that will make the app fundamentally easier to learn.
Engagement Type: Workshop Series
One type of engagement that I have been curious to explore more is a series of tailored educational workshops with the dual goal of maximizing your product and facilitating team growth. Learning through doing is the best way to learn how behavioral science and game design insights work in your specific context. This would follow a general cycle of learning about the company's current challenges, finding the relevant Lenses of behavioral science and game design principles, facilitating a workshop with the team, and then I would review and help hone the ideas to be implemented.