Behavioural Design doesn’t stand alone. It works in harmony with other design sectors, and can increase the impact of other sectors. Behaviour change is an approach through digital products and services. Behavioural Designers work alongside digital product designers and service designers.

Behavioural design ft. service design

Behaviour change isn’t just for customers, it’s for Managers too.

Balancing the trade-offs between employee experience, customer experience and cost is difficult. Along the way, many companies lose sight of what makes people tick, and how each business decision has a big effect on customer behaviour. How something is written, how the experience is crafted and executed, all contribute to user behaviour change. It’s important that Behaviour Designers work together with Service Designers. If service designers plan and organise business resources in order to directly improve employee experience and indirectly the customer’s experience, behaviour design looks to improve decision making and actions along the way. Behaviour change is aimed at customers, but it is also aimed at organisations. Organisational habits, communication and decision making have as great an impact as the intervention targeted at the user. The one supports the other. People are vulnerable to the same hidden influence whether they are the customer or the employee.

Service Design and Behavioural Design have much in common. They both:

  • Aim to create value over a longer term.
  • Design for dynamic contexts.
  • Account for diversity of users.
  • View user actions in an ecosystem of cause and effect.
  • Map the cumulative effects of people’s experience on project success.
  • Address social influences on individual behaviour.

Behaviour design ft. Digital Product Design

Design influences behaviour. Whether it’s planned or not.

To design a product, you design behaviour. Customer reviews rarely comment on the look or feel of an app, instead they focus on what the app helped them do. Financial app - helped them save. Health app - helped them lose weight. Travel app - helped them get to the hotel hassle free.

To think behaviour first means product designers can identify new market opportunities. Ones that are focused on irrational actions as well as the rational ones product design currently targets. Break behaviours down to direct new features. When those features are matched with behavioural goals they gain traction. Behavioural design reveals the hidden factors that product design can use to meet the market's needs.