Behavioral design is a method that applies principles from the fields of behavioral science, psychology, and economics to influence human behavior. This approach is used across various domains, including product design, public policy, health, education, financial services and environmental sustainability, among others.
Behavioral Design in Real-Life
A simple solution to a costly problem: The flies etched onto the urinals at Schiphol Airport reduced spillage by 80 percent.
© Schiphol Airport, Fair Use
The "Fly in the Urinal" at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport is a classic application of the behavioral design technique known as "nudging." Nudging is a concept in behavioral economics and psychology that involves subtly guiding people's behaviors in a predictable way without restricting their freedom of choice or using direct instructions.
A realistic image of a fly was etched near the drain of each urinal in the men's bathrooms. In this instance, the nudge is the visual cue of the fly itself, which leverages a natural human behavior—the tendency to aim at targets (when urinating or otherwise). This nudge does not mandate users to aim at the fly; instead, it makes the desired behavior (minimizing spillage by aiming more carefully) more likely with the introduction of a small, intriguing target. This behavioral technique exploits automatic cognitive processes, which guide actions without the need for conscious deliberation.
Aad Kieboom, the Schiphol Airport manager at the time, reported that there was a massive 80 percent reduction in spillage after the introduction of the flies. He estimated that this resulted in an 8 percent reduction in total bathroom cleaning costs at the airport.
The effectiveness of this nudge lies in its simplicity and the insight that small changes in our environment can significantly influence our behavior.
Behavioral Design vs Traditional Design: What’s the Difference
Behavioral design and traditional design differ in focus, methodology, and application:
Focus: Behavioral design aims to influence user behavior through insights from psychology and behavioral economics, targeting specific actions or changes (like aiming for a target). Traditional design focuses on solving functional problems, to enhance aesthetics, and usability without necessarily aiming to modify behavior. For example, an everyday item like a chair or kettle is designed to be usable, but its aim isn’t to modify its user’s behavior.
Methodology: Behavioral design is data-driven, it relies on empirical research to inform design decisions and test their impact on behavior (like aiming for targets). Traditional design relies on principles of art, aesthetics, and established design practices.
Applications: Behavioral design is applied in fields where behavior change is desired, such as public health, finance, and sustainability. In the Schipol Airport story, the amount of spillage before the introduction of the fly was both detrimental financially and a public health risk. Traditional design spans a wide range of fields like graphic design, industrial design, and web design, its focus more on visual appeal and functionality.
Ultimately, behavioral design uses scientific insights to influence behaviors directly, while traditional design emphasizes aesthetics, functionality, and user experience.
Behavioral Design: Theoretical Foundations
The key idea behind behavioral design is to create products, environments, systems, or policies that subtly steer people toward making better decisions (to save money rather than spend it or to improve exercise habits) instead of restricting their freedom of choice. It’s a design approach that has various influences, including but not limited to the ones discussed here.
Cognitive Psychology and Decision Making
At the heart of behavioral design lies cognitive psychology, which studies how people perceive, think, remember and learn. Daniel Kahneman introduced the distinction between fast, intuitive thinking (System 1) and slower, more deliberate thinking (System 2)—a crucial framework to understand human decision-making. Behavioral design uses these insights to shape environments that navigate intuitive choices and support deliberate decision-making when needed.
In this video, Daniel Kahneman explains the concept and framework of thinking fast and slow:
Behavioral Economics
Behavioral design draws heavily on the research findings of behavioral economics, which studies the effects of psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors on the economic decisions of individuals and institutions and how those decisions vary from those implied by classical economic theory. By challenging the traditional economic theory that assumes human rationality, behavioral economics introduces the idea of "bounded rationality," where cognitive biases and heuristics limit decision-making. Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein developed the "nudge" concept—subtle cues or modifications in the choice architecture (the way in which choices are presented to people that influence their decisions without restricting their freedom of choice). This method aims to simplify decision-making that aligns with individuals' long-term goals and interests.
Learn more about what a nudge is in this video:
Social Psychology
Social psychology explores how the presence of others influences an individual's thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Behavioral design incorporates principles like social proof, where people follow others' behaviors to guide their actions and commitment devices. This involves making future commitments publicly to reinforce behavior change. These principles are crucial for creating social environments that foster positive behavior change.
Habit Formation and Change
The study of how habits form and change is vital for designing products and services that encourage positive and lasting behavior modification. Charles Duhigg's exploration of the habit loop (cue, routine, reward) offers a framework to integrate products and services into users' daily lives and influence long-term behavior.
Charles Duhigg explains further in this video:
Ethical Considerations
The ability of behavioral design to influence behavior raises important ethical questions. It requires a delicate balance between promoting positive behavior change and preserving individual autonomy. Designers and policymakers must ensure that interventions are transparent, voluntary and genuinely serve the best interests of their target audience.
What’s the Impact of Behavioral Design on User Experience (UX)
Behavioral design profoundly influences user experience—the insights gained from behavioral science help to create intuitive, engaging and effective products and services. This approach not only places the user at the center of the design process but also meticulously integrates psychological insights to craft experiences that align with natural human behaviors. Here's how behavioral design reshapes UX across various dimensions:
User-Centered Design and Cognitive Biases
At the core of behavioral design is a commitment to understanding and prioritizing user needs, motivations and behaviors. Designers use empathy to create solutions that are both functional and engaging. With cognitive biases and heuristic insights, such as the tendency to overvalue immediate rewards, designers can anticipate and influence user decisions. For instance, apps that promote saving or healthy habits make the benefits of long-term behaviors feel immediate and tangible and encourage users to adopt more beneficial habits.
The South African Insurance and Financial Institution Discovery has a rewards program, Vitality, which motivates its users to eat healthy, be more active and drive more safely. This promotional video explains in more detail:
Simplification, Clarity and Feedback
A key principle of behavioral design is the emphasis on simplicity and clarity to reduce cognitive load and decision fatigue. Clear, straightforward presentation of choices and the simplification of complex tasks enable users to make better decisions with ease. For example, fitness apps like Fitbit use rewards and progress tracking to provide timely and relevant feedback, which encourages users to maintain their exercise routines by making the feedback loop between action and reward as short as possible.
Habit Formation and Ethical Considerations
Behavioral design encourages the formation of positive habits with products and services that easily integrate into daily routines. Habit-forming apps, for example, send regular reminders or prompts to encourage consistent usage, leveraging the understanding of triggers, actions and rewards that drive habit formation. Ethical considerations are crucial to ensure these design practices enhance user well-being and trust without manipulating them. Designers must navigate the fine line between influencing behavior for the users' benefit and manipulation to ensure transparency, user consent and respect for autonomy.
The popular language learning app, Duolingo, sends a variety of different reminder notifications to encourage their users to practice the language they’re learning.
© Duolingo, Fair Use
Personalization and Higher Engagement
Personalization and adaptation to individual behaviors, preferences and needs make products and services more relevant and valuable to users. This increased relevance can lead to better outcomes as users receive recommendations and content that match their unique goals and preferences. Techniques such as gamification, personalized content and rewarding systems further increase user engagement by making interactions more enjoyable and meaningful, fostering loyalty and long-term engagement.
Applications like Netflix and Spotify personalize their content in accordance with user preferences and behaviors.
© Netlix and Spotify, Fair Use
How to Apply Behavioral Design Techniques to UX
A variety of behavioral design methods can be used to influence user behavior and enhance user experience. Here are some commonly used techniques and how to use them in UX design.
1. Nudges
Nudges are subtle design cues or features that encourage users to take certain actions without restricting their freedom of choice. Designers can use nudges to guide users towards beneficial behaviors subtly. This might include placing the most environmentally friendly option as the default choice in a selection menu, or highlighting the most popular plan on a pricing page to guide the user's choice.
Google Flights is a good example of nudges—it highlights carbon emissions for flights. Users can see the environmental impact of their flight choices and this encourages them to select more eco-friendly options without restricting their choice of flights.
Google Flights even allows users to sort flights according to emissions.
© Google Flights, Fair Use
2. Choice Architecture
This involves how choices are organized and presented to users to influence their decisions. Designers can make certain choices more appealing or easier for their users to select all by the way they are structured. For example, simplifying the number of choices available can reduce decision fatigue and help users make decisions more easily.
Spotify uses choice architecture effectively by simplifying its user interface to guide users toward playing music, creating playlists, or exploring new songs with minimal effort. This reduces decision fatigue and enhances the listening experience.
3. Defaults
Defaults are pre-selected options that users are more likely to stick with due to inertia or decision-making fatigue. Setting beneficial defaults can lead to better outcomes for users, such as opting users into paperless billing by default to promote environmental sustainability or setting privacy settings too high by default to protect user data.
Gmail sets up a default setting to show images only from trusted senders which enhances security and user privacy automatically. Users can change this setting, but the default helps protect them from potential phishing attacks or unwanted content.
4. Feedback Loops
Immediate feedback on a user's actions can help reinforce desired behaviors or correct undesired ones. In UX design, feedback loops can be used to encourage progress towards a goal, such as visual indicators of progress in a fitness app or instant feedback when a user enters information in a form incorrectly.
Duolingo provides instant feedback on language exercises, immediately indicating right or wrong answers and suggesting corrections. This reinforces learning and keeps users motivated by showing progress in real-time.
Duolingo gives instant feedback to their users and uses a progress bar to encourage their users to finish a language lesson and move towards their goal.
© Duolingo, Fair Use
5. Gamification
Gamification applies game-design elements in non-game contexts to motivate and engage users. Techniques such as points, badges, leaderboards and challenges can make the user experience more engaging and encourage continued use of a product or service.
Fitbit incorporates gamification by awarding badges for different milestones (like steps walked or floors climbed) and allows users to compete with friends. This approach makes health tracking more engaging and motivates continued use.
6. Social Proof
Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people copy the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation. In UX design, this might include showing testimonials, reviews, or the number of users who have taken an action to encourage new users to do the same.
Amazon’s product pages display customer reviews and ratings prominently—this social proof helps potential buyers make informed decisions based on the experiences of others.
Amazon’s product page displays a product’s rating before its price and description.
© Amazon, Fair Use
7. Loss Aversion
Loss aversion refers to people's tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains. Designers can use this principle by highlighting what users stand to lose if they don't take a certain action, such as a discount expiring, to encourage prompt decision-making.
Booking.com often displays messages like "Only 2 rooms left at this price" or "Last booked 5 minutes ago" to highlight what users might lose if they don't book quickly, using loss aversion to encourage faster decision-making.
8. Commitment Devices
Commitment devices help users stick to long-term goals by making commitments in the present. In UX design, this could involve allowing users to set personal goals and reminders or to commit to future actions, like scheduling a workout session in a fitness app.
Headspace, a meditation app, allows users to set personal meditation goals and sends reminders to meditate, acting as a commitment device to help users stick to their mindfulness goals.
9. Personalization
Designers can tailor a user experience to individual users' preferences, behaviors and past interactions to make a product more engaging and effective. Personalization can involve customized content, personalized recommendations, or adaptive interfaces that change based on user behavior.
Google News aggregates news stories from various sources and customizes the feed based on the user's past reading behavior, search history and preferences to present the most relevant news articles.
© Google News, Fair Use
10. Scarcity and Urgency
A sense of scarcity (limited availability) or urgency (limited time) can motivate users to take action more quickly. This is often seen in e-commerce UX design, where messages like "Only 3 left in stock" or "Sale ends in 2 hours" encourage users to make purchases more promptly.
eBay uses scarcity and urgency in its auction countdowns—they show time running out on bids to encourage users to act quickly to secure their desired items before they are gone.
11. Accessibility and Inclusivity
Ensure your website is accessible to all users, including those with disabilities or who are neurodiverse. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) must be followed to ensure a site is usable by people with a wide range of abilities. This not only expands your audience but also demonstrates a commitment to inclusivity.
Apple's website exemplifies a strong commitment to accessibility by providing extensive support for screen readers, keyboard navigation and other assistive technologies to ensure that users with disabilities can navigate their site effectively.
12. Clear and Actionable Calls-to-Action (CTAs)
Designers should create CTAs with clear, compelling language that motivates action. Contrasting colors for CTA buttons and strategic placement on a site will guide users toward desired actions, such as signing up, purchasing, or learning more about a product or service.
Airbnb excels in this area by using prominent, easy-to-find CTAs throughout its site and app. It uses visually distinct and compelling CTAs such as the "Reserve" button or “List your space” CTA. These CTAs guide users smoothly through the booking process or the steps to list their property, which makes it easy and enticing for users to take the next step.
Airbnb’s CTAs are clear, compelling and visually distinct.
© Airbnb, Fair Use
13. Emotional Engagement
Successful user experiences should aim to be emotionally engaging. Designers can use visuals, stories and content that resonate with their audience. Emotional engagement can increase user retention and brand loyalty.
Coca-Cola's "Share a Coke" campaign is a prime example. Personalized Coke bottles sparked emotional connections by inviting consumers to share the product with friends and family, which boosted engagement and brand affinity.
The #ShareACoke campaign launched in Australia and New Zealand in 2011. Coca-Cola reported that over the duration of the campaign, sales increased by 7% in New Zealand and by 4% in Australia.
© Coca-Cola Company, Fair Use
14. Iterative Testing and Improvement
Continuous testing and refinement of a website or product based on real user feedback is crucial to apply behavioral design principles effectively. Designers can use techniques like A/B testing, user interviews and analytics to gather feedback and make data-driven decisions to refine and improve their user experience.
Slack embodies the power of iterative design based on user feedback. This collaboration tool regularly updates its features, interface and functionalities based on direct input from its extensive user base. Through A/B tests on new features and analyzing user interactions and feedback, Slack continuously improves its platform to meet the needs of teams and organizations better.
These behavioral design techniques, when applied ethically and thoughtfully, can significantly enhance user experience. They can make products more intuitive, engaging and effective at helping users achieve their goals.
