I'm flexible with the ways that I tend to work with clients, though there are a few patterns that my engagements tend to follow.
We always start with exploration
This helps us understand the ways we can work together long term. This often comes in the form of a behavioral audit or a workshop.
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 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....
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 researchUse a badging system as a method of actionable user research
If you have a high quality badging/achievements system, then that means you know what the user goals are, you can recognize when those goals are accomplished, and your app notices when the user behavior is bringing the user closer to accomplishing their goal.
The three most important questions to ask of a badging system:
What are the user's goals?
What signals progress to the user/company?
What signals failure along the process of goal achievement?
What signals success to the user/c.... Soon afterwards, you'll receive a summary of what I believe the main takeaways should be.
The next engagement is based on what we uncover in exploration
From the first engagement, it tends to be clear what our next steps will be.
The most flexible type of engagement is a retainer. This is for teams that work fast on dynamically changing priorities. This includes ongoing discussion to hone an evolving strategy in response to a dynamic situation, as well as stewardship and commentary on initiatives to implement said strategy. As 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..., 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. Pricing is based on a continuous monthly fee and a day rate for particularly intense months.
It will often be the case that the exploration engagment reveals a distinct project where you would want me in a more involved role. An example of this might be if I need to come up with your onboarding or retention strategy for you. I prefer to fix the price of the project as much as possible, but if there is a high degree of uncertainty in scope, I may introduce a day rate as well.
One type of engagement that I haven't done yet but would like to explore 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 practice. This would follow a general cycle of learning about the company's current challenges, finding the relevant Lenses of behavioral science and game design principlesLenses of behavioral science and game design principles
I like to Learn by going up and down the ladder of abstraction. One of the main ways that I do this is through developing and testing lenses.
Whenever I find (or come up with my own) frameworks or principles of behavioral influence in a paper, game, or my own practice that I feel may be "generalizable" in some sense, I turn them into a series of abstract questions that I can ask myself across situations. This allows me to solve future problems with my present work and encode knowledge. As I ..., facilitating a workshop with the team, and then I would review and help hone the ideas to be implemented.