Habits & Behavior Change talks

Designing behaviors means deliberately shaping what people do when they use a product: which actions they take, which habits they form and how they respond to feedback. It treats behavior, rather than screens or features, as the thing being designed.

For UX and product teams this perspective matters because a product’s success often depends on people taking particular actions, repeatedly. Knowing how motivation, ability, triggers and rewards work helps designers make desired actions easier and more rewarding, and also makes clear the responsibility that comes with that influence.

The talks here, recorded between 2009 and 2016, cover the subject widely. B. J. Fogg talks about how individuals must change habits for better health, and Robert Fabricant’s Behavior is our Medium (IxDA Events, 2009) makes the case for behavior as the designer’s material. Nathalie Nahai’s 5 Psychological Principles of Persuasive Product Design (Mind the Product, 2015) and Anders Toxboe’s Beyond usability: Designing with persuasive patterns (GOTO, 2018) focus on persuasion. Jesse Schell explores designing for pleasure, Stephen Anderson’s From Paths to Sandboxes comes from Gamification 2013, and Chris Risdon and Dan Lockton look at behavior change. Maurits Kaptein on personalization of continuous feedback and Julie Zhuo’s How a Facebook Designer Thinks complete the collection. Patterns such as triggers, variable rewards and shaping in the UI-Patterns.com library describe many of these mechanisms.