Persuasive Design talks

Persuasive design is the practice of shaping a product so that it encourages people to take particular actions, such as signing up, completing a task or coming back tomorrow. It draws on cognitive psychology and behavioral economics: how people actually make decisions, form habits and respond to emotion, rather than how we assume they do.

For UI, UX and product teams, this matters because no interface is neutral. Defaults, wording, feedback and timing all influence behavior whether or not anyone planned it. Understanding the psychology lets designers support users’ own goals more effectively, and it also helps teams recognise when persuasion turns into manipulation, the territory covered by dark patterns.

The 16 talks collected here, recorded between 2010 and 2018, approach the subject from several directions. Nir Eyal explains how to build habit-forming products, and B. J. Fogg talks about changing habits for better health. Kathy Sierra (“Badass: Making Users Awesome”) and Stephen Anderson (“Hooked on a Feeling”) focus on engaged users. Maurits Kaptein presents four talks on persuasion profiles, personalised feedback and why we fail to predict persuasion, while Nathalie Nahai outlines five psychological principles of persuasive product design. Rory Sutherland shares life lessons from an ad man, Tim Riesterer covers buying intent, Ash Donaldson discusses cognitive dissonance, Dan Saffer covers microinteractions, and Andy Budd and Anders Toxboe look at persuasive design and designing beyond usability. Events include TED Talks, Mind the Product, IxDA Events, conversions@google, Content Marketing World and GOTO. Many of the principles discussed, from social proof to variable rewards, are documented as persuasive patterns in the UI-Patterns.com library.