Category

Behavioural Science Insights

5 problems with traditional user research and how Behavioural Design solves them

By All, Behavioural Science Insights, Customer Behaviour

Product, Service and Experience Designers often complain that they lack killer insights into their users. They often feel flooded with insights to the extent that they have no idea where to start. They complain that the insights often don’t inspire strategy and creativity. 

I regularly get the question about what really differentiates the Behavioural Design Method from other ways of gathering user insights. The Behavioural Design Method integrates user research, strategizing, creative exploration, and prototyping and testing in a single sprint process. We deliberately designed this process to solve some of the problems with traditional user research.

I think there are five problems with more traditional research approaches:

1. The quality and depth of the insights

The problem with traditional market research is that people have no idea what they want; they have a profoundly biased understanding of the drivers of their behaviour. Furthermore, their intentions are highly unpredictable. And yet, our surveys and focus groups rely heavily on what they tell us about themselves and what they think they will do in the future.

Behavioural Design experts take a radically different approach. Instead of asking them what people think or feel, we ask them to explore with us their past behaviour. Because past behaviour never lies. We ask them to share successful journeys and failed journeys. We often do in-depth interviews of more than 1,5 hours. During these interviews, we’re not looking for customer journeys but ‘human journeys’. In a human journey, we look for the struggles, obstacles, beliefs, prejudices, anxieties, hot triggers, habits, social pressure, seductions, and many other psychological forces that shape or sabotage the desired behaviour.

2. The switching cost between research, strategy, and design

The problem with separating research from strategy, and strategy from design, is that a great deal of value gets wasted in the handover between each stage. Every stage produces a summary, and the next team uses that summary as the new point of departure. After the insights turned into strategy and strategy turned into the design, the original insights into the users have often been watered down or were carefully selected to post-rationalize the creative idea that everyone loved.

The Behavioural Design Method is an integrated process for strategizing through prototyping. A single team of two Behavioural Design experts interview the users, analyze their behaviour, explore solutions, design and prototype interventions and test these interventions with the users. This highly structured process eliminates switching costs and puts deep human understanding at the heart of the design process.

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3. The disconnect of the strategy and design team from the user

The most powerful benefit of running a Behavioural Design Sprint is that we bring the psychology of the user into the design process. We always insist that our clients attend at least two in-depth interviews and a full day of prototype testing. This active engagement allows them to experience the humans they designed for: What words do they use to describe their behaviours? What are their frustrations and problems? Which barriers stand in the way of success? Which prejudices do they have about themselves or the product, service or solution? How do they describe success? Etcetera. Going through this empathy phase is an enormous source of inspiration for the team, and it gives them a deep understanding of the psychological forces they need to take into account.

The key is to make them fall in love with the user’s problems. They need to appreciate their irrationality, their difficulty sticking to habits, and their deep desire for help or intelligent support to help them to overcome temptation and laziness. Teams with a deeply human understanding of their users find it much easier to design solutions to solve these problems or help them overcome these obstacles.

4. Expert biases, groupthink and cherry-picking the insights that match our beliefs 

When user insights are summarized in a report or abstract user personas, experts often cherry-pick or bend the meaning of the insights to match their beliefs and prejudices. We tend to project our own beliefs, values and experiences onto the user, or we are overly confident that something that worked in one context will transfer to a new context.

Bringing the human into the design process and prototyping and testing our interventions eliminates expert bias. Prototyping and testing take experts out of their judgement mode by treating every idea as a hypothesis. This way of working generates a context of psychological safety for exploring fresh and unconventional ideas.

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You can do this in our fast-paced and evidence-based Behavioural Design Sprint. We have created a brochure telling you all about the details of this approach. Such as the added value, the deliverables, the set up, and more. Should you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us. We are happy to help!

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5. User personas that don’t inspire strategy and creativity

The power of the Behavioural Design Method is that we think of influence as a set of Behavioural forces. In between current and desired behaviours stand:

  • Pains we can solve
  • Gains we can generate
  • Anxieties we need to take away
  • Comforts we need to replace
  • Jobs-to-be-Done we need to fulfill

In conclusion

By plotting our understanding of the user onto the two-dimensional Influence Framework, you’ll get a much deeper understanding of the psychological forces that shape the users’ beliefs, perceptions, and behaviours.

This two-dimensional model generates a much clearer shared problem experience than traditional user personas. Personas tend to become simple narratives of people’s personalities deprived of deeper meaning. Personas become useless as a source of inspiration when everyone can project their own beliefs and preferences onto them.

 

Tom De Bruyne 

How do you do. Our name is SUE.

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Suppose you want to learn more about how influence works. In that case, you might want to consider joining our Behavioural Design Academy, our officially accredited educational institution that already trained 2500+ people from 45+ countries in applied Behavioural Design. Or book an in-company training or one-day workshop for your team. In our top-notch training, we teach the Behavioural Design Method© and the Influence Framework©. Two powerful tools to make behavioural change happen in practice.

You can also hire SUE to help you to bring an innovative perspective on your product, service, policy or marketing. In a Behavioural Design Sprint, we help you shape choice and desired behaviours using a mix of behavioural psychology and creativity.

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How to motivate your team or employees

By All, Behavioural Science Insights

Do you want to know how you can boost motivation in your team? Astrid Groenewegen explains in her video what you can do to make this happen. 

Experiential bonuses

Think back to when you last rewarded an employee. It probably was with a raise or bonus. Did you know this is not the best way to boos motivation. Monetary gives a short surge in motivation, but is doesn’t last long. Ofcourse, baseline rewards are good because your employees deserve to be compensated for their hard work. But for motivation there is a better way to achieve this.

You should start focussing on experiential bonuses: free lunches, gifts, dinners with their partner, a trip to Disney with their family. These can be standard gifts at Christmas or unexpected gifts tailored to their situation (but not money).

It will boost pride, loyalty and work satisfaction over a longer period of time. Just so you know, if you ask them what they would rather have (money or a gift) they will choose the money. But know that the satisfaction with the cash will run out soon. Gifts will build good will. Next time you have to gift, think beyond the money. It boost appreciation.

Tip: Humans love appreciation not bonusus. Appreciation boosts the social relationship between employer and employee which last longer and has a far greater positive effect.

Watch more on YouTube

Check out the whole series on YouTube. If you like the videos, it would mean a great deal to me if you could give them a thumbs up or subscribe to my channel.

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How to boost performance with public praise

By All, Behavioural Science Insights

Do you want to know how you can boost performance in others? Astrid Groenewegen explains in her video what you can do to make this happen. 

Using public praise

Did you know that an effective tool to make other people succeed in their tasks is public praise. Humans have the desire to seek pride for what they do and avoid shame as a result of their actions. Getting public praise helps to achieve this.

Public praise keeps up the social image and helps us signal our identity and norms to others. During social interactions we want to be seen in a specific way to fit in with the crowd. We want to seem hardworking, effective or maybe funny. When other people praise us for certain behaviour it will establish our image towards others. It will help us fulfill the need for recognition an beloning.

There are different ways you can praise someone. You might have a employee of the month in companies. Non-profit organizations may use a wristband or button to make it explicitly visible to others that this person donated. Research showed that in primary schools public praise can also boost performance. Children who received congratulation cards after finishing a school taks showed a 12% increase in performance.

Here is our tip: by giving people public praise you can boost motivation an performance. So, don’t be afraid to give someone some praise for what they are doing!

Watch more on YouTube

Check out the whole series on YouTube. If you like the videos, it would mean a great deal to me if you could give them a thumbs up or subscribe to my channel.

Or check out the most popular videos here

Or book a training

Learn how to influence minds and shape behaviour.

Join our most popular training the Behavioural Design Fundamentals Course. You will learn the latest insights from behavioural science and you'll master an easy-to-use method to help apply behavioural science in practice right away!

Download the brochure

Go ahead, it’s completely free of charge!

Understanding numbers

By All, Behavioural Science Insights

Do you want to understand numbers and statistics better? Astrid Groenewegen explains in her video what you can do to make this happen. It is all about perspective.

Meaningful numbers

Do you find it difficult to understand big numbers? You are not the only one. This is because processing numbers requires too much thinking. But sometimes, it is important that you do understand what the numbers are trying to tell you. For example, if it is about statistics about your health or welfare.

One important sector that uses a lot of numbers is the media and the news. Headlines guide your opinions and decisions. But we find it difficult to understand them sometimes. If a headline is talking about ‘33.000 gallons of drinking water’, do you know how much that is?

In an experiment, they tried adding anchors to numbers: adding a perspective that helps people interpret information much better. For example, 33.000 gallons of drinking water is about 2 average swimming pools.

What can you learn from this experiment? If you have to communicate a number, you should put it into perspective by finding an anchor. By using an anchor, you can make information much more meaningful for someone as it puts meaning to a value or statistic.

Watch more on YouTube

Check out the whole series on YouTube. If you like the videos, it would mean a great deal to me if you could give them a thumbs up or subscribe to my channel.

Or check out the most popular videos here

Or book a training

Learn how to influence minds and shape behaviour.

Join our most popular training the Behavioural Design Fundamentals Course. You will learn the latest insights from behavioural science and you'll master an easy-to-use method to help apply behavioural science in practice right away!

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Go ahead, it’s completely free of charge!

Self discipline is overrated

By All, Behavioural Science Insights

Can’t control yourself sometimes? It’s not up to you! Self-discipline is hugely overrated. In this video, Astrid Groenewegen explains what we can pay attention to besides self-discipline. 

Make the desirable behaviour easy

Have you ever had good resolutions? Exercise more, eat healthy, or work harder. Yet you quickly fall back into your old behaviour. Why does this happen anyway?

Relying on self-discipline to achieve the desired behaviour is overrated. In fact, only top athletes usually succeed. This is because self-discipline requires cognitive action. But the part of the brain you need for this has only a limited capacity.

If you start with the best intentions at the beginning of your day, you will still fail at the end of the day because your cognitive capacities will be depleted by then. As a result, you start snacking or slacking off. So this is not a weakness but human nature. Your automatic brain takes over, and you fall back into your old behaviour.

Behaviour that is familiar and doesn’t require too much attention.
But you can change your behaviour. The solution is to make the behaviour very easy to perform. This will allow your automatic brain to execute the new behaviour. For example, slice some cucumber in the afternoon and put it in a bowl on your desk. It is then much easier to eat than a bag of chips still in the cupboard.

Our tip: To stick with new behaviour, focus on making the behaviour easy to perform rather than relying on self-discipline.

Watch more on YouTube

Check out the whole series on YouTube. If you like the videos, it would mean a great deal to me if you could give them a thumbs up or subscribe to my channel.

Or check out the most popular videos here

Or book a training

Learn how to influence minds and shape behaviour.

Join our most popular training the Behavioural Design Fundamentals Course. You will learn the latest insights from behavioural science and you'll master an easy-to-use method to help apply behavioural science in practice right away!

Download the brochure

Go ahead, it’s completely free of charge!

How to get a lot by asking a little

By All, Behavioural Science Insights

Do you find it hard to ask for big favour from someone? Then you must be happy to hear that you don’t always have to! In this video, Astrid Groenewegen explains how asking for something small, in particular, can help you win big.

Improving fundraising 

How do you get a lot by asking a little? That’s what they did in an experiment to raise money for charities. That sounds very contradictory. You fear you will also get less money when you ask for a small amount. Yet this works slightly differently.

The size of the donation should be taken into account, as well as how many people give to a charity. At the American Cancer Society, they did an experiment. In this, they went door to door with two alternating questions.

  1. I raise money for the American Cancer Society. Would you like to help by giving a donation?
  2. I raise money for the American Cancer Society. Would you like to help by giving a donation? Even a penny would help.

It had a significant effect to highlight that even a small donation can help. The number of people who donated something went from 20% to 50%. In addition, adding this sentence did not affect the donation size. So more people donated, and they did not give a lower amount than before.

This is also known as the legitimising effect: making it okay to give only a small amount. So don’t be afraid to ask for something small. It can work out great.

Our tip: By making it okay to give a little, people are more likely to give something. Often even more than you had asked for.

Watch more on YouTube

Check out the whole series on YouTube. If you like the videos, it would mean a great deal to me if you could give them a thumbs up or subscribe to my channel.

Or check out the most popular videos here

Or book a training

Learn how to influence minds and shape behaviour.

Join our most popular training the Behavioural Design Fundamentals Course. You will learn the latest insights from behavioural science and you'll master an easy-to-use method to help apply behavioural science in practice right away!

Download the brochure

Go ahead, it’s completely free of charge!

Why most purposes suck

By All, Behavioural Science Insights

Are you struggling to motivate your employees to participate in your business goals? That could be because you are engaging them in the wrong way. In this video, Astrid Groenewegen explains the missing ingredient for setting good goals.

Show the impact of actions.

Many companies set goals or missions that often don’t work. They expect that when managers set a new goal, it will automatically stimulate employees’ willingness to change or contribute to the company. What they often forget is to inject actual behaviour into these goals.

What is crucial to increase willingness to cooperate is giving employees the opportunity and time to see the impact of their actions. It is very nice to see how your services or products help people. For doctors, this is very easy; people were sick and are now getting better. But even when you sell products, employees need to see the positive impact of their work. For example, how a savings app made them save money which made them have less stress or can do fun things.

Here’s our tip: translate your goals into real behaviours to boost motivation. Being able to see how your projects or products have helped other people is great.

Watch more on YouTube

Check out the whole series on YouTube. If you like the videos, it would mean a great deal to me if you could give them a thumbs up or subscribe to my channel.

Or check out the most popular videos here

Or book a training

Learn how to influence minds and shape behaviour.

Join our most popular training the Behavioural Design Fundamentals Course. You will learn the latest insights from behavioural science and you'll master an easy-to-use method to help apply behavioural science in practice right away!

Download the brochure

Go ahead, it’s completely free of charge!

How to amp up your sales

By All, Behavioural Science Insights

Do you need to convince people to buy something? We often try to persuade people with reasons why it will make their lives better, easier or more fun. Astrid Groenewegen explains in this video that you actually need to focus on what you are missing if you don’t buy a product.

Loss aversion

You can significantly improve your sales figures by using a powerful principle from Behavioural Design: Loss aversion.

Losing something hits us 1,5 times harder compared to winning something of the exact same value.

We hate to lose something. We can put this tendency not to lose anything to good use in sales. After all, you can present your offer in a certain way. Take selling solar panels, for example. You can do this in 2 ways:

  • Buy new solar panels now and save €250 every year.
  • If you don’t install solar panels now, you lose €250 every year.

Research shows that the second offer turns out to be much more efficient. This is because we find it worse to lose €250 than to gain.

You can also use this in your daily life. Incorporate loss aversion into your sales pitches. What you have to keep in mind is that you have to present something in a loss frame rather than a gain frame to stimulate the willingness to perform behaviour.

Watch more on YouTube

Check out the whole series on YouTube. If you like the videos, it would mean a great deal to me if you could give them a thumbs up or subscribe to my channel.

Or check out the most popular videos here

Or book a training

Learn how to influence minds and shape behaviour.

Join our most popular training the Behavioural Design Fundamentals Course. You will learn the latest insights from behavioural science and you'll master an easy-to-use method to help apply behavioural science in practice right away!

Download the brochure

Go ahead, it’s completely free of charge!

How to be more convincing and attractive

By All, Behavioural Science Insights

The most important task a Behavioural Designer has is to make the desired behaviour easy to implement. When you come across as convincing, you can more quickly persuade people to do what you want them to do. That is why, in this video, Astrid Groenewegen gives you a golden tip to achieve this quickly.

Simplicity is key

Perhaps the solution seems very simple. But the language we use is one of the strongest factors influencing behaviour. That is why it is important to think about communication when developing behavioural interventions.

Humans process a lot of information in a day. Our brain often suffers from cognitive overload. That is why we like simplicity: easy signals we can quickly grasp. It is our survival mechanism to take the easy route.

We can use this trick the brain does to our advantage. By using easy language in your communication, you will come across as much more convincing. Use language that a fourth grader understands. This does not only apply to low-educated people. Simple language also works very well with a highly educated target group. This is also how elections are won!

So to encourage the desired behaviour, we need to use easy language. We process this faster, which makes you look more persuasive and attractive. This is how you get people to do what you want them to do.

Watch more on YouTube

Check out the whole series on YouTube. If you like the videos, it would mean a great deal to me if you could give them a thumbs up or subscribe to my channel.

Or check out the most popular videos here

Or book a training

Learn how to influence minds and shape behaviour.

Join our most popular training the Behavioural Design Fundamentals Course. You will learn the latest insights from behavioural science and you'll master an easy-to-use method to help apply behavioural science in practice right away!

Download the brochure

Go ahead, it’s completely free of charge!

Comparison isn’t always the thief of joy

By All, Behavioural Science Insights

In this week’s video, Astrid Groenewegen explains how comparison can also be positive. We often look at the negative sides of comparing ourselves to others. Other people seem to always have it that little bit better. But comparison doesn’t have to be just negative. Comparing yourself with others can also give feedback that positively influences behaviour.

Comparison isn’t the thief of joy

If you want to influence other people’s behaviour, comparison can be a powerful technique. We are constantly trying to compare ourselves to other people. Consciously but also unconsciously. This is because people like to belong to a group. By paying attention to other people, you will quickly adapt your behaviour to that of the group norms. This happens especially often with people who are close to us or with people whose behavior or opinion is important to us.

Did you know that people waste less water at home if they can see the water consumption of their neighbors? This is a good example of how you can use social comparison to positively influence behaviour.

An experiment showed that this also works for doctors. When they were informed about how often colleagues prescribed drugs, the number of unnecessary drugs prescribed by these doctors was also reduced.

How can you apply this yourself? Maybe you have the idea to go for a walk during your lunch break. Often this plan fails. Even if you count your daily steps online, it often won’t motivate you enough to go outside. This is because this is about individual feedback. In an experiment it was investigated if feedback from other people that you can use to compare your own actions to would solve this problem. There were two groups. Group 1 only received individual feedback on the number of steps they took in a day. Group 2 also received feedback on the number of steps colleagues had taken. The result was clear. Through social comparison, group 2 took 1020 more steps per day than group 1.

Comparison can therefore put us humans into action. Especially if we recognize ourselves in the behaviour of others.

Watch more on YouTube

Check out the whole series on YouTube. If you like the videos, it would mean a great deal to me if you could give them a thumbs up or subscribe to my channel.

Or check out the most popular videos here

Or book a training

Learn how to influence minds and shape behaviour.

Join our most popular training the Behavioural Design Fundamentals Course. You will learn the latest insights from behavioural science and you'll master an easy-to-use method to help apply behavioural science in practice right away!

Download the brochure

Go ahead, it’s completely free of charge!

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