Design psychology with Amy Bucher

A transcript of Episode 232 of UX Podcast. James Royal-Lawson, Per Axbom, and Amy Bucher talk about how psychology can influence the design of digital products.   

This transcript has been machine generated and checked by Janine Beck.

Transcript

James Royal-Lawson
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Computer voice
UX Podcast, Episode 232.

[Music]

Per Axbom
Hello, I’m Per Axbom.

James Royal-Lawson
And I’m James Royal-Lawson.

Per Axbom
And this is UX Podcast. We’re in Stockholm, Sweden, and you’re listening in 192 countries all over the world from Tunisia to Sverige.

James Royal-Lawson
And now we’ve just probably confused 80% of our listeners. [Laughs]

So, Dr. Amy Bucher, is Vice President of Behavioural Change Design at Mad*Pow. She’s a strategic consultant with a PhD in psychology and lots of experience working with behaviour change products at healthcare companies.

Per Axbom
And Amy’s just released “Engaged: Designing for Behaviour Change” through Rosenfeld Media, which promises to give practical advice for applying the psychology of engagement to design work.

[Music]

James Royal-Lawson
So Amy, I was thinking first, we’re – whenever we’re designing things, we’re always trying to get something to happen, but what makes the situation we’re designing for one of behavioural change?

Amy Bucher
So whether something is very specific with designing for behavior change, and it is really about selecting a small set of behaviors and being really disciplined about making sure that they are behaviors. So when I – I just did a webinar this week, actually, but I do this a lot when I offer workshops and trainings. We have people go through a list of items that are potential design targets and specify which ones are behaviours. And it’s really tricky because there are things on the list that seem very worthwhile, and that we do talk about as objectives of design, but they’re not behavior.

So things like feeling confident is not a behavior, that’s more of an attitude. But it is a really important ingredient. So we don’t want to leave by the wayside. What we need to do though, is specify the behavior. So it might be taking medication every day as prescribed, and then we want to make sure people feel confident to do that, because that will actually make sure that they end up doing that behavior. So it’s really a lot of discipline around the behavior itself.

And then the other piece that has been important in my practice is I always think of the complexity of the behavior, and the more complex it is, the more the context that it takes place in is complicated or difficult, the more you really need to bring in your big behavior-change-guns. So you’re really relying on theory in those cases. So an example that I use, like if you want somebody to click on a website, that is a behavior and there is behavior change that has been applied pretty successfully to increasing the odds that somebody will do that. But the work that I focus on is often much more complex behaviors that take place away from a screen.

So I mentioned medication adherence, that’s a problem that I’ve worked on quite a bit in my career for different health conditions. And it tends to be a really complicated one, because so many medications, they may have side effects that people deal with, they – people forget to take them, they may have complicated daily routines if they travel for work, or if there are things that are not always happening on the same schedule every day. They may be taking multiple medications, they have different schedules, things like that. In the United States, we really have a lot of issues with healthcare costs, as you probably know, so finances enters into the equation. The more that we have those kinds of complicating factors, the more behavior change has to offer to designing for a solution.

James Royal-Lawson
So you make the distinction between behaviour which maybe an organisation or a business wants to change, and then behaviour maybe that I want to change of my behaviour.

Amy Bucher
Yeah, absolutely. So my approach comes from motivational psychology, and one of the things that’s really clear, if you look at the theory of – theories of motivation is that goals are only sustained if they matter to the person. So we really need the person to take ownership of that. It has to come from them, not from us. So a lot of what I do as a consultant is trying to find the overlap in the Venn diagram between what people want for themselves and what is good for businesses. So my organization that I work for Mad*Pow, one of our tag lines is actually “we find solutions that are good for people and good for business”. So a lot of times if you’re designing a product that helps people with a behavior change, your goals really are aligned. People want to do that behavior change, hopefully. It’s something that benefits them in their life, and gets them to a positive outcome. And them using your product to do it gets you to your business goal of having customers selling product, whatever that may be. So it’s really about trying to find that alignment and design toward that.

Per Axbom
I have to say that’s something I really appreciated about your book because it really talks almost about ethics in every chapter about how it’s actually the person’s autonomy that you have to acknowledge and be respectful be respectful of, but because sometimes these days when you talk about behavioral science, it tends to drift into persuasion, or more coercive persuasion, and it’s almost like you see people on stage talking about it it’s like these snake oil peddlers. Why do you think that is?

Amy Bucher
Oh, boy, I I’m really sensitive to that. So it’s very deliberate that the book talks so much about ethics. I really feel strongly that we have – “we” meaning people who are professionals in behavior change, have an obligation to use our tools ethically in a way that is respectful of people. I think one of the reasons why that snake oil approach is so common is because it’s appealing to businesses. They have business objectives, and it’s easier for somebody who does behavior science to sell their services, if they can promise quick results. It’s short sighted though because, you absolutely can manipulate people’s behavior in the short term. Absolutely. But they will typically figure that out. If it’s not aligned with their longer term interests with the goals that they really have, they will figure that out, and they will not continue to be there – your customer. They will walk away from you and they will walk away from you with negative feelings that you, frankly deserve.

So the challenge, and I do face this a lot in my work, is you have to help people understand that, yes, it’s going to take a longer time to do behavior change if you’re doing it in a way that’s really respectful of people, that takes their goals into account, and that sets up sustainable repeatable behavior patterns. But if you’re thinking long term, that’s the better play because that’s where you’re earning customers who are loyal to you, who understand that you have a real relationship with them and that you think positively of them. That you support them. So it’s – I think it’s that tension between wanting quick results and being willing to invest in a longer term relationship.

James Royal-Lawson
So I guess what’s probably critical there is that you make sure you – you’re measuring or watching the right thing or metric as part of that journey. Because I guess, when we, when we look at a lot of the conversion focused parts of the design industry, then it’s very much about increasing revenue or signups or those very easy, front-line measurable metrics in organisations.

Amy Bucher
Yeah, I– I talk – so I have a chapter in the book about measurement, and I have a tool in there that I call an outcomes map. It’s very similar to a logic map. Some people have seen those as well, but you basically plot over time, the outcomes that you will expect to see if your product is successful. So the very short term metrics, the leading metrics are going to be your traditional user engagement type metrics. So people – are they signing up for your program –and I’m talking, of course here about additional program. There are analogs for non-digital programs as well – but are people signing up? Are they logging in? When they’re logging in, how long are they staying within the product? So forth, and so on, and those are important because if people don’t interact with the product, it’s not going to have its intended effect.

But then you also want to be looking at the behaviors that they’re taking out in the world because if they’re not doing whatever the behavior is, they won’t get to the longer term outcomes that are important. And those long term outcomes in a business context are often related to money so it’s a return on investment. In healthcare, it might be things like using fewer emergency services, which are more expensive. So really being planful at the outset about what are all the outcomes we hope to see and what is the timing that we can expect to see associated with that. It’s helpful in terms of setting expectations because people ultimately do want those long term outcomes. They want to save the cost, they want to see better results in terms of somebody’s health metrics. But if you set the expectation that it will take time, and that they are on track based on the leading metrics, it can really help.

Per Axbom
And this is even the part of the process for how you communicate to the individual who downloaded your service or app because you have to set the right expectations up front. And that’s also something you’re very clear about, set the right expectations, because if they think that things are going to change really quickly, they’re going to give up, I suppose.

Amy Bucher
Yeah, yeah. I’ve also done a lot of work with physical activity and just because so much of my career has been in the health area, and almost every kind of health issue whether it’s being more mindful and managing stress or dealing with a chronic health condition or losing weight, has physical activity as a component. And it’s difficult because if you’re starting from fresh, if you have never exercised before, it can be really painful and hard to become an active person. And if you’re doing it for reasons like weight loss, that takes some time. It doesn’t happen quickly. So [laughs] one of the things that I’ve worked with that seems to work pretty well is asking people to be more mindful in the moment and pay attention to short term results. So when I used to work at Johnson and Johnson, we had a focus on energy and energy management; so what makes people feel energized. And we found that if we have people take a walk, and then pay attention to their energy level, that helped them to make the connection, like, “oh, this is helpful for me, even if it isn’t making me lose weight today”, or “even if my blood pressure today is not better yet”. So part of it is also not just setting those expectations for the outcomes people walk into the situation wanting, but helping them realize there may be other outcomes that they can see sooner, pay attention to, and feel good about the things that they’re doing.

James Royal-Lawson
So you help them create an association, during the process.

Amy Bucher
Yeah, yeah I’ll tell you something funny about that research at J&J too. So Johnson and Johnson owns tons of consumer brands, and one of them is Listerine. And so in our studies, one of the things we did is we had people swish with Listerine, and that also made them feel very energized because it burns your mouth. [Laughing] So, if you don’t have time for a walk, there’s some Listerine!

James Royal-Lawson
[Laughing] Great way of cheating on that one! So something you mentioned very early on in the book, or something you call, core tenants of behaviour change, can you tell us a little bit more about those core tenants.

Amy Bucher
Yeah, so there’s three and it’s that – I’m not going to get them exactly right, I’m sure, so then I’ll be embarrassed, like, oh, the three core tenants, I can’t rattle them off! People are different. Things change, and there’s one about context matters. So if I think to get back to that question, you asked about the magic trick, I think this is why magic tricks don’t really work in the long term because they’re very – they’re very quick. They’re intended to be something that works for all people and get them to do a specific thing, and if you’re looking at sustained behavior change, things that take place over a longer period of time, that just doesn’t work. Because people are different. There’s, there’s known variation in the way that people interact with the world, people’s preferences, the things that people care about. And you have to take account of that if you want to help them change their behaviors, long term. A really critical way that people are different is their goals. So we all want something different for ourselves. It’s all very personal.

And then context matters. Because first of all, it shapes the people we are like, our goals are almost always based in the context, a lot of people will talk about goals they have related to family and loved ones. And so there’s a common theme there. But the individual ways that those goals are expressed are different, and they’re very determined by context. But the other reason context matters is because it affects our behavior. It affects the opportunity set available to us in the world. Depending on our physical environment, the people around us, the things that we’re able to do or support it to do are going to be really different. And so if we don’t as designers understand the world that our users live in It’s really hard to design something that will work for them.

And then the things change, I think is also important too, because it’s hard sometimes to take account for that as designers, but we really actually want that. If our products work, then our users are changing. And I think that one thing as an industry I would like to see is an acceptance that it’s okay for people to graduate from our products, or to reach a point where they don’t need us anymore, because that is a sign of success. Vic Stryker, who I interviewed for the book, he founded health media, which is a company I worked for that Johnson and Johnson acquired. So that’s how I became a Johnson and Johnson employee. But one of the things he said several times in the interview, and I think I was able to capture this in the book is that he doesn’t really care if the people who use his products credit him with their success with their improved outcome. All he cares about is they end up in a better place. And I thought that was a really great way to put it that he was really just thinking about if they ultimately end up where he wants them to be. It’s okay if they don’t remember that he was the one who helped them get there. And that’s, that’s a hard thing to do because we’re all ego driven to like you want to be, you want to feel successful too. And I think sometimes that’s a hard tension to deal with. But I would really like to see as a field designers understanding that it is okay if people move on if they change in a positive way.

Per Axbom
Yeah, because I mean, if you’re gonna go to take credit for everything, you also have to take responsibility for when things go wrong.

Amy Bucher
Yes. Yes, you do.

James Royal-Lawson
Well, what I what I do like about these core tenants, is they for me, they – I can see how they reflect on both the coaching profession and also therapy in general that you would – you would you would go through – well, you would – you would go to have help in making a change. And it is the point of this to be successful in making that change, and that’s a great thing. It’s the whole essence of what you’re trying to do.

Amy Bucher
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, the thing to remember too, is that, look none of us are ever going to achieve perfection, people will always have a new problem to work on a new goal to pursue. So I don’t think it should feel so threatening that people change in – graduate out of our programs – graduate out of our products. There is always the next product to develop, there’s couch to 5K, and then there’s couch to 10K, so you can move on to the next the next thing, really thinking about life is a process and how can we as designers create different tools for different parts of that process?

Per Axbom
And we haven’t really talked about the actual model for behavioral change that you communicate in the book. You call it the Com B model. Is that the correct pronunciation of it?

Amy Bucher
Yes, yeah. That’s actually a model that was developed by researchers at University College of London. So Dr. Susan Mickey and her team there are the creators of that and I use it a lot in my work. It lends itself really nicely to research and to design. So I love that it’s so practical and it’s also pretty straightforward to communicate, which is not always the case with psychological models. So Com B is an acronym. It stands for capability, opportunity, motivation, behavior. And the basic idea is that for any behavior to happen, people have to have the capability, opportunity and motivation to do it. So when I use the model, I’ll structure my research to assess those three factors. There are interview questions you can ask, there are things that you can observe if you’re doing more ethnographic research. And then once you uncover where there may be barriers to behavior or facilitators, because if something’s already working well, you want to take account of that, you want to amplify it and make sure that it’s part of what you’re designing around. Then Com B works with this model called the Behavior Change Wheel. So they actually did a literature review of over 1200 studies of interventions that that worked, and they – I think of it as a decision tree. So if you know that there is a barrier to behavior in the capability area, you can follow that decision tree and say, oh, okay, these are the three categories of intervention or products that are effective when this is the problem state. So then from there, you can go on and you can design within those three categories. I think it’s a really nice way of minimizing the risk associated with design and understanding what your solutions that might be.

Per Axbom
Exactly. It’s really interesting because I studied criminology for a while. That’s how I met my wife, who is a criminologist. In criminology, one of the most famous models is the – Routine Activity Theory, which is exactly the same, exactly the same which is fantastic. For a crime to occur, you need the motivation to commit the crime, you need the presence of opportunities/targets, ie a bicycle that’s not locked, and you need the absence of capable guardianship to prevent crime, ie there are no people around there – so there’s no friction and you have the opportunity and the capability. So it’s – it’s those three factors that are actually – are the source of why crime is – happens.

Amy Bucher
So I, I will never pursue this. But I do have a sort of dream of being a criminologist or a criminal profiler. I love reading novels about crime. I love reading true crime. I love television about crime. So it’s very cool that you’ve made that connection.

Per Axbom
Yeah, it’s always so funny when you look at other industries and the models they use, and you realize, well, we’re sort of working with the same thing, everybody. But that’s how I actually I discovered that model of hers, and I sort of switched around to of course – I want people to commit crimes, I want people to use my services, and so I’ve sort of been using that model in the back of my head as the UX model of choice.

Amy Bucher
Yeah, I mean, what I like about that model and several others in psychology is they’re based on evidence. There’s so much research that shows that these – that I – I hesitate to say that they’re true just because of sort of, philosophical, is anything ever true – that – all that kind of deep stuff, but they are about as true as you can get based on the evidence base and I’m sure they will continue to evolve as we gather more data. But for now, they’re they’re really well grounded and I appreciate that.

Per Axbom
Yeah.

James Royal-Lawson
I was wondering if there’s any – what are the biggest things or the most often misunderstood things that businesses have around the work you do?

Amy Bucher
There’s a couple. So one of them we’ve we’ve touched on already, which is the time for change. So I think, especially with there being such a focus on things like behavioral economics, which has its place in the behavior change toolkit, but it’s really designed for quick decision points. So things like “should I be an organ donor?” Or “should I sign up for a 401k?”. Those are things that you do once and then they’re done. They’re not kind of ongoing where key decisions. And I think because those tactics have gotten so much attention, there’s this expectation that you can have that same sort of quick effect on other more complicated behaviors. So I find I often have to do re-education around that, as well as providing some context for why behavioral economics belongs in some places of the toolkit, but not all of the places of the toolkit.

James Royal-Lawson
I guess that’s the difference between when you’ve got a moment compared to a journey.

Amy Bucher
Yeah, yeah, and so along that journey, you can imagine there are moments where it makes so much sense to use something like behavioral economics to nudge people on one part of the path or another. So I think behavioral economics is – I’m very positive about it. I like it, but it’s certainly not the only tool in my toolkit. And I think they’re – just from people who don’t have a lot of background in psychology, they may have read one of the books or seen somebody speak about it and they get really enthusiastic and then I come in and I’m the dark stormy rain cloud, who says “well, actually, it’s more complicated than that”.

The other thing that I find is a misconception and I am seeing this less, is around gamification. So I think it’s just becoming a little bit less popular now. But maybe five years ago, it was very hot, and there was an expectation that if you do behavior change, you’re doing it in a gamified way, and good gamification is absolutely based in psychology. It’s about giving people the types of feedback that tap into their basic psychological needs so that they stay engaged with the process. It feels fun, it doesn’t feel like work. It’s not always appropriate. So I like I said, I do a lot of work in health, and sometimes if you’re talking about a very serious health situation, making something gamey, feels glib, it feels not respectful of the psychological weight of what a person is dealing with.

And the other thing that is true about gamification is it doesn’t necessarily result in a game, so you can have something like competition. So think about Fitbit, or any sort of step count and you can see how you stack up next to your friends. That’s gamified because you’re you have that leaderboard, you have that competition element. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a game though. So sometimes there was also that education that needed to happen. But you – if you do want to include gamification, we can do that it doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re going to have a little animated character jumping around and collecting coins. So gamification used to be a really big misconception, I guess, or area where we would have to set expectations differently.

James Royal-Lawson
Though that has – you’re, right, I think the the – it’s moved –it’s moved along the Gartner curve somehow or it’s moved to a different quadrant [laughing] so people – companies are not asking for it in the same way as they were five, six years ago.

Amy Bucher
Yeah, I remember, this was more – maybe more like 10 years ago, we were bidding on a project with a health plan, and in their request for proposal they specifically listed the gamified elements that they wanted to see in the digital solution they were trying to get someone to build for them. And I was so frustrated because you really have to do the analysis first to understand: Who are your users? What are they grappling with? What would they need to make the behavior changes? And then from there, what might be appropriate feature sets, and they were leading with the features set it was so – in – no good reason for it either just that they thought these were cool things. I don’t see that anymore. So that’s – that’s good.

Per Axbom
Something I pulled from from gamification is this concept of friction, that friction is actually required, because that makes people try harder and they have a sense of accomplishment as well. And I sometimes argue that friction – you need friction to actually help people reflect. You need to give them time to reflect if the thing they’re deciding to do now is appropriate for what they’re trying to achieve. And – but how do you – how do you build that into interfaces – build the friction into it so that people do actually think about the next step? Because that’s what I’m taking from your book, you are really concerned that people actually do that so there – they are someone who is appropriate for the service you’re building.

Amy Bucher
Yeah, and I like the what you just said there about, having people reflect. It also builds a sense of commitment. If you’ve really considered something and you’ve chosen to go forward with it after thinking about it, then you’re more likely to follow through on it. It’s something that you have openly chosen to do and that you have commitment to. So I think it’s being thoughtful about where you build in the friction points so that people are spending that time considering the things that really matter.

And I can give an example that I actually just worked with, with a client. I can’t say who they are, but they have a model where you enroll in an online program, but as part of that program you’re also connected to a live coach who you can meet with, you can chat on their app, or you can do a video call with them. It’s a real live person who’s available to support you, and they found that a lot of their users are not making – they’re not making use of this coaching service. And so what we were talking about is how can we build friction into that coach selection piece, so that that really feels like an important part of the process.

So we don’t want to complicate the actual signup, that should be easy. If people have to spend a lot of time looking up, their health insurance number or whatever to register, they’re more likely to drop off, but once they have created their account, we actually want to make that coach selection feel like an effortful part of the process. We want it almost to feel like a Tinder or a dating service where they can say a little bit about themselves and the type of person they – they’re interested in, maybe they can look at a few different coaching profiles and say, swipe right or swipe left depending on if it’s a person they like. And our hope is that if people invest some time in selecting the person they’ll have this relationship with, they will then follow up and have the conversations because we know there’s a huge benefit to having that kind of live support as part of a behavior change program. So that’s an example right now where we’re looking at building friction in and then trying to be really deliberate about where the friction lives in the experience.

Per Axbom
And what I take from that actually, is also that you’re building trust, because you’re taking the time to listen to them, and what they value, and that will create a good fit. And that makes at least them feel that there’s a sense of trust here. That you are doing the work.

Amy Bucher
Yeah, that’s the hope.

James Royal-Lawson
It feels like, we’re in many ways – this is building like a support structure for the individual. You’re giving them enough information, enough encouragement, and learning enough about them to make sure they’re going on the right journey. And then you’re holding on to them enough at the right time to make sure they fully understand what they’re getting into, just before they do take a decision.

Amy Bucher
Yeah, yeah, and I actually think this is also something where we are combating again misconceptions, because there have been so many examples of companies or products that offer something and then don’t follow through to deliver it. So, with this client, they offer the live coach, and there are other products where they say similar things, but it’s not really a live person, like it might be a chat bot or it might be an up-sell. So you think that you’re enrolling in something that’s free with a coach, but then it turns out that there’s a hefty subscription cost to it. So, I think part of the reason why people have been reluctant when they enrol in this product to connect with the coaches, they don’t know if it’s a real service or not. They don’t have a sense of the value that could offer, and so through this friction experience of selecting the coach, we’re also hoping to have that be an opportunity to communicate the value and say: Yes, this is real. Yes, this is included with your membership in the program, and yes, we will deliver value to you if you participate in it.

Per Axbom
And I believe that’s a good note to end on. I mean, I have to say, I’ve really enjoyed your book. I love the focus on ethics, and I just – just reading about how you approach the designers dilemma, and things like that, it just makes me trust you more as you’re describing the tools and models.

Amy Bucher
Well, thanks that’s good to hear. I was a little worried when I was writing. So, ethics is so important to me and I get really worked up when I see what I think are bad actors who are in the industry, and I was a little worried when I was writing the book that it would be a buzzkill. That I was coming in and talking about ethics so frequently, but I’m glad to hear you say that it didn’t come across that way to you, so thank you for that.

Per Axbom
Thank you. And thank you for joining us.

James Royal-Lawson
Thank you very much.

[Music]

James Royal-Lawson
If I’m going to take one single thing from this interview with Amy, it’s when she talked about the Venn diagram overlap. So what is good for the individual and the organisation? The overlap between those two things, is what we should be designing for. And we all really know this. This is one of those, core tenants of being a UX designer. Finding that – that overlap, the common point of the Venn diagram, but this is so god damn important. And it struck me that if we basically started every project – we should start every project, every feature, every every day almost by, just drawing again, reminding ourselves again. Like: What what are our organisation’s goals? What are the users goals? Are they overlapping? Am I designing for that overlap? And if you’re not, you need to press the pause button.

Per Axbom
Yeah. And I mean, it’s – this is how a lot of companies start out. They see something that people need and they see that they could possibly build something that works for that need, and so they’re really excited about building it. But then over time, things change, and they start making money because they were building something that was aligned with the user’s goals. And they start making money, and all of a sudden, the goal becomes maintaining the income. So instead, you’re not building the best product anymore you’re just trying to make the product sell as much as possible. So changing the goal, and it’s no longer aligned with users goals, and things – well – are messed up. I’m reading a lot now on how the companies that make the most money are not the ones that are profit focused. If you’re focused on making money, that’s – you won’t make money. But if we’re focused on something that you’re passionate about and solving the real user problems, that’s when you start making the money.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, and that’s – but that’s – economically that’s exactly what happens. You provide a service or you provide a product at a price that the consumer is willing to pay for, or the person who’s consuming the service or whatever is prepared to pay for. And, and that is still the the point of what you’re doing is providing that service or product. And there’s nothing wrong with earning some money on these things, if – if these things – that goals are aligned and you’re satisfying both sides of the Venn diagram, that overlap.

Per Axbom
Exactly

James Royal-Lawson
But, but keep your eye on it, don’t lose – don’t lose sight of these things. It’s just – because then you will end up being in areas such as, snake oil merchants and manipulation and persuasion, and all the rest of it.

Per Axbom
And the –

James Royal-Lawson
– ones on the short term Per,

Per Axbom
Sorry?

James Royal-Lawson
The long term and short term.

Per Axbom
Exactly. And then that’s – that’s one of the things that I’m taking with me, and I hope that a lot of people take with them from this interview as well, that, the point that behavior change takes time. It’s not a shortcut. It’s not something you implement, and it changes overnight. Because I see people looking for this when they look at behavioral science solutions. They look at something like we probably talked about in gamification, as well, in the podcast, that was something people were looking after when they’re applying gamification. “We want things to change so fast and we want to do A/B testing to show that this works better than that one”. But it takes time you’re not testing over that period of time that it actually takes to change someone’s behavior, and that’s why you need to stick with the people and keep having the goals aligned like you were saying as well.

James Royal-Lawson
Connected to that, and clicks to both the points we’ve just made is, we’ve – we’ve developed an industry where no CRO is a thing, Conversion Rate Optimisation, and a lot of behavioural change techniques and psychological techniques are used within conversion rate optimisation to get people to convert, to sign up for something, to start using something, to come back and so on, and I think there’s many situations where we’re clouding or we’re mixing up the – the need to remove unnecessary friction from a process. From from a – from a point – a moment in a – in a process, removing unnecessary friction is a good thing. But deception and manipulation isn’t. And behavioural change, designing behavioural change, is helping people achieve aligned goals over time, as we’ve heard from Amy, and we’ve talked about now. Removing unnecessary friction in a – in a signup form and so on. Fair enough, I mean, you’ve – you’ve got to remove as much unnecessary friction as possible to stop that being a usability issue. But that doesn’t mean to say, stuffing it full of behavioural change techniques to try and trick people into signing up when it’s not actually aligned with their goals.

Per Axbom
Exactly. I actually have this quote in front of me from the book. “It’s easy to creep into dark patterns and manipulative design choices if your goal in applying psychology is to keep someone within your product as long as possible without it being beneficial to them. Behavior change design is about helping people achieve their goals, not yours”. So you have to realize that it’s all about autonomy, and listening and understanding and allowing that person to be an individual within that context that they live and the abilities – abilities that they have.

James Royal-Lawson
Surprisingly, it’s not about us. It’s about them.

Per Axbom
Yeah.

James Royal-Lawson
So, I’ve got some recommended listening.

Per Axbom
You found something really, really way back, didn’t you?

James Royal-Lawson
I did. I found an episode from seven years ago, Episode 54. Now back then, in – seven years ago, we – we always titled the episodes, James and Per, and then something else. So this one was James and Per become unicorns.

Per Axbom
Oh, isn’t that sweet?

James Royal-Lawson
And actually, in the show notes, we do actually have a pink unicorn, which I think is a photograph of a toy my daughter had. So it’s a link show where we, amongst other things, discuss deception and persuasive design. And we get into design ethics as well.

Per Axbom
It’s really interesting because I – it’s – it’s sometimes it seems like it’s only recently we’ve started talking about ethics, but we did talk about it way back as well.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, I’m actually gonna listen to it as well, because I haven’t listened to the show for many years.

Per Axbom
Yeah.

James Royal-Lawson
So if you – but if you – if you want, let us know if this episode, maybe changes the way you think about designing for behavioural change. Just email us at hey@uxpodcast.com.

Per Axbom
And if you’d like to contribute to funding UX Podcast, then visit www.uxpodcast.com/support.

Remember to keep moving,

James Royal-Lawson
See you on the other side.

Per Axbom
How did Darth Vader know what Luke got him for Christmas?

James Royal-Lawson
I don’t know Per. How did Darth Vader know what Luke got him for Christmas?

Per Axbom
He felt his presence.

James Royal-Lawson
Ohhhhhh. Maybe. No, no. I’m not gonna go there. [Laughs]


This is a transcript of a conversation between James Royal-LawsonPer Axbom, and Amy Bucher recorded in March 2020 and published as Episode 232 of UX Podcast.