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Behavior Design

Monday, December 20th, 2010

Behavior Design The best design solutions today change human behavior. Yet despite decades of research, challenges remain for people who design to influence.

First, “persuasion” seems a dirty word. It shouldn’t be. We should now embrace that we’re in the business of behavior change. Next problem: conceptual confusion. The landscape of persuasion can be disorienting, muddied by impractical theories and over-hyped techniques. Our new work provides a clear view of behavior change, including language that is simple yet accurate.

Behavior change is a step-by-step process. This explains why one-shot solutions rarely achieve outcomes that matter most. To help designers and researchers succeed more often, my Stanford lab has created the “Behavior Wizard,” which maps routes to the 15 ways behavior can change.

What Matters in Behavior Design

1. We humans are lazy. BJ Fogg has mapped out the six elements of simplicity that account for this reality. With this new insight, we can pinpoint why many designs fail to achieve results. Simplicity matters more than motivation when it comes to influencing people.

2. Hot triggers change people. Many people would argue that information matters most when designing for behavior change. Not so. Hot triggers are the most powerful element in changing behavior.

3. Daily habits are powerful. In fact, daily habits are the most powerful of all behaviors. While technology can help people create good habits most attempts fail. Why? Few designers understand the psychology of long-term behavior change. We know what it takes to create a habit – in yourself, a customer, your dog.

Designing for behavior change via social and mobile tech is new, with no leading books or conferences to provide guidance. Our goal is to explain human nature clearly and map those insights onto the emerging opportunities in technology.

Behavior Design Project Team

The following people have contributed their time and energy to this project.

Tags:Behaviour, design, Human-Behavior
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Behavior Wizard

Friday, December 3rd, 2010

The Behavior Wizard is a method for matching target behaviors with solutions for achieving those behaviors. It is a systematic way of thinking about behavior change. The Behavior Wizard expands the Behavior Grid and the Behavior Model by combining our best work into one easy-to-use solution.

Fogg Behavior Grid – 15 Ways Behavior Can Change

The Fogg Behavior Grid outlines 15 types of behavior as defined by BJ Fogg. The grid describes the ways behavior can change. Its purpose is to help people think more clearly about behavior change.

Each of the 15 behaviors types uses different psychology strategies and persuasive techniques. For example, the methods for persuading people to buy a book online (BlueDot Behavior) are different than getting people to quit smoking forever (BlackPath Behavior).

With this framework, people can refer to specific behaviors like a “PurpleSpan Behavior” or a “GrayPath Behavior.” For example one might say, “The Google Power meter focuses on a GrayPath behavior.” These new terms give precision.

But this innovation goes beyond identifying the 15 types of behavior change and giving them clear names. The model also propose that each behavior type has its own psychology. And this has practical value: Once you know how to achieve a GrayPath Behavior, you can use a similar strategy to achieve other GrayPath Behaviors (for example, getting people to watch less TV). In this way, the Behavior Grid can help designers and researchers work more effectively.

Fogg Behavior Model – What Causes Behavior Change?

The Fogg Behavior Model shows that three elements must converge at the same moment for a behavior to occur: Motivation, Ability, and Trigger. When a behavior does not occur, at least one of those three elements is missing.

Using the Fogg Behavior Model (FBM) as a guide, designers can identify what stops users from performing behaviors that designers seek. For example, if people are not performing a target behavior, such as rating hotels on a travel web site, the FBM helps designers see what psychological element is lacking.

The FBM also helps academics understand behavior change better. What was once a fuzzy mass of psychological theories now becomes organized and specific – and practical –when viewed through this model.

The Behavior Wizard & Resource Guides

To make this approach to behavior change clearer and more useful, we created the Behavior Wizard and Resource Guides for each of the 15 types of behavior change. Each guide gave more examples, explained relevant theories, and highlighted real-world techniques for achieving the specific behavior type.

We felt that in the past, most designers and researchers guessed at solutions for changing behavior. And frankly we saw that most attempts failed. Rather than guessing at solutions, people who used our Resource Guides had clear guidance. The Behavior Wizard generated these Resource Guides, drawing on the ever-improving content our team created (it was like wikipedia for specific types of behavior change).

UPDATE

The Behavior Guides were created in 2010 and we are no longer updating or selling them.

There is still lots of useful information in these guides. If you’re interested in obtaining a specific guide, please email us (captology@stanford.edu) and let us know in which guide you’re interested and why. We may be able to share a copy with you.

Behavior Wizard Project Team

The following people have contributed their time and energy to this project.

BJ Fogg, Project Director
Jason Hreha, Project Lead
Robin Krieglstein, Web Developer
Kara Chanasyk, UX Designer
Gaj Krishna, Research Specialist
Gaju Bhat
Shuqiao Song

Visit www.behaviorwizard.org to learn more.

Tags:Behaviour, design
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Mobile Health

Sunday, November 21st, 2010

The Persuasive Tech Lab looks at how mobile phones can be platforms for persuasion. In particular we are interested in how mobile devices can be used to improve the health of everyday people. We focus on what is really working to change people’s health behaviors, right now.

Since 2007 we have been bringing together academics, government agencies, mobile vendors, and other private sector health organizations at conferences and workshops to share insights, resources, and best practices.

Mobile Persuasion was the beginning

Early in 2007 our lab organized the first Mobile Persuasion conference. We sold out the event. We then put together a book entitled Mobile Persuasion: 20 Perspectives on the Future of Behavior Change. This book has short, insightful chapters from over 20 authors.

Texting 4 Health came next

Extending our work on mobile persuasion, the lab also created and hosted an event with sponsorship from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called “Texting 4 Health” in 2008. This was the first-ever conference about using SMS to promote health behavior. Again, we created an edited volume: Texting 4 Health: A Simple, Powerful Way to Change Lives. This book brings together the best ideas about texting and health in 15 easy-to-read chapters.

Mobile Health 2010 emphasized changing health behaviors

In 2010, we put on Mobile Health 2010: Using Mobile Technology to Change Health Behaviors with our co-hosts, Centers for Disease Control and AIDS.gov. Our intent was to feature the best insights into using mobile technology to improve health behavior. You can view presentations from the first day and the second day.

Mobile Health 2011 was about what really works

In 2011, the Persuasive Tech Lab and CDC hosted Mobile Health 2011: What Really Works at Stanford University. With this event we brought together 400 people from grass roots and national health organizations, academics and mobile vendors for insights and sharing best practices.

Mobile Health 2012 — Let’s take baby steps for big change

In May 2012, the Persuasive Tech Lab hosted Mobile Health 2012: Baby Steps for Big Change. We took a slightly different angle in 2012. Why? Because this method — rapid baby steps — leads to success in three areas: behavior change, collaborations, and experience design. We realized that “baby steps” is an odd focus for an entire event. But we thought it was absolutely the right focus for 2012. The chronic problems in behavior change, collaborations, and product development have a common solution for innovators in Mobile health — and that solution is baby steps.

Events for 2013

In 2013 the Persuasive Tech Lab will be holding several smaller events instead of one large one. We’ll focus on elements of health and behavior design. To sign up for updates on our 2013 events, email us.

Mobile Health Project Team

The following people have contributed their time and energy to this project.

Tags:mobile, mobile-persuasion-project
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Peace Innovation

Sunday, October 31st, 2010

The Peace Innovation Lab is an initiative from Stanford’s Persuasive Tech Lab. Launched in Spring 2010, the PI Lab is focused on casting a spotlight on how technology and emerging social behaviors and insights are promoting new paths to global peace.

The Peace Innovation project started with Peace Dot. The goal of Peace Dot was simple: persuade any individual, organization or corporation with a website to create a peace subdomain that spotlights what they are doing to help promote peace in the world. At our launch in 2010 over 50 sites ranging from Facebook to the Dalai Lama Foundation, Khan Academy to CouchSurfing, in multiple languages created peace dot pages around the world.

Here is a video the City of Manor, Texas created for Peace Dot.

How do we go about this?

Our steps for creating a peace technology infrastructure include:

peace technology course at Stanford
blogging about peace technology examples
creating direction of peace technology initiatives
developing an analytics/metrics framework for measuring pro-social behaviors across social media platforms
developing teaching materials
preparing to fund trials
creating network of peace innovation labs
systematic insights (resources)

Peace Innovation Project Team

The following people have contributed their time and energy to this project.

For more information please visit the Peace Innovation Lab website and check out the Peace Innovation Facebook page.

You can also join our Peace Innovation Lab Consortium group page on Facebook or view our PeaceDOT Facebook page.

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Archived Projects

Sunday, October 10th, 2010

Over time the Persuasive Tech Lab has worked on many projects. We have selected several of our more popular, past projects to include in this section. These projects have completed or wound down and are no longer a main focus. You may still find some relevant resources related to these projects at the links below.

Please note we are no longer maintaining the websites associated with these projects and there may be outdated links and information.

Persuasive Online Video

Online video is a powerful way to persuade people. The 2008 elections in the U.S. gave a vivid demostration of how YouTube and similar sites could engage people with a persuasive message. In our lab we have studied the elements of persuasive video. Our work, which includes real-world interventions, has shown dramatic results. We expect this area to keep growing especially as we see the emergence of better tools for creating, distributing, and measuring online video.

To create insight on this topic, BJ Fogg organized a Stanford conference to bring experts together. He later created a new course called “Persuasive Online Video,” which was taught in Spring of 2009 with Enrique Allen.

CaptologyTV

Stanford Captology students created over 150 short videos to demonstrate how captology works online. The clips created for CaptologyTV showed how web services, such as LinkedIn and Facebook, are designed to motivate and persuade users. With CaptologyTV students showed how persuasive technology works in popular web sites.

As we created CaptologyTV, we starting seeing patterns of persuasion in the examples. So we dug deeper and synthesized a framework for online persuasion. Our lab published a peer-reviewed paper that summarizes the patterns of persuasion used by virtually every successful Web 2.0 company. We call this process the “Behavior Chain.”

Stanford Web Credibility Project

The Persuasive Tech Lab did early research on the factors that affect the credibility of websites. Since our investigations in the 1990s, we’ve found that online credibility has morphed. With the rise of Web 2.0 services, the focus of credibility evaluations extend beyond the page to the people represented. In other words, Credibiltity 2.0 has become more like reputation, or perceived reputation.

The researchers compiled 10 guidelines for building the credibility of a web site. These guidelines are based on three years of research that included over 4,500 people. It is still a popular resource today.

Persuasive Visual Stories for Small Screens

Building on our previous research about computers using the power of narratives, we’re investigating how to tell visual stories in a way anyone can understand, regardless of language or literacy. But that’s not all . . . we also want to deliver these stories via mobile phones, the most personal (and persuasive) of all interactive technologies. Previous steps in this research were funded by Stanford Media-X and the National Science Foundation.

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