Much has been written on the utilitarian concept of Form Follows Function and how Emotional Design can be used to create a bond between a product and its owner. This article focuses on using behavioral science to modify your product such that the modification encourages behavior that is beneficial to the customer.
Behavioral design uses a stimulus to cause people to act in a predictable manner. The red coils of an electric stove-top are one example. The red color changes people’s behavior by causing them to keep their hands away from the coil. Remove the stimulus and people will burn their hands. To create value, this behavior must be beneficial to the customer not just the parent company. In this case, it is beneficial to the customer to prevent burns.
Identify Customer Needs:
The first step in behavioral design is to identify the needs of your customers. People don’t want to take airplane rides because they are fun. They fly to get to a destination quickly so they can perform some other task. Closets are not a storage location for clothes, they are a place where people create an image for others to see and select the appropriate protection from the elements.
How do customers use your product?
The second step is to understand how your customers interact with your product. Do people turn the stove on before they place a pot or afterwards? If you pick up an office phone with your dominant hand, then your weaker hand must dial the number. Also pay attention to how people abuse your product. Does the laundry basket get so full that the clothes do not fit into the washing machine causing people to overload the washing machine? Is food left to rot in the bottom crisper drawers because people don’t see the food? Do people leave old unread email in their inbox for several years?
Create Stimulus:
The third step is to include a stimulus that modifies the behavior in the second step that helps people meet the needs from the first step. Putting a mark on the closet rod tells people when their closet may have too many clothes.
The stimulus can be created by using the following cognitive biases:
Default Heuristic: People often accept whatever the default choice is. To protect people from losses in the stock market, online brokerages should set a default stop loss.
Framing: Modifying the way the people view the world. Showing people where to place a heater increases the efficiency of the heater.
Anchoring: Introducing a value that people use as a reference of normalcy. Telling people to set their watches to the new timezone on intercontinental flight helps recover from jet lag quicker.
Eliminate Mental Calculations: When people try to make a mental calculation, they are usually wrong. Provide guidance that helps people make accurate calculations and therefore make better decisions. If there is one inch of milk left in a milk carton, can I give my two children a glass of milk each at bed time and in the morning or do I have to go shopping tonight?
The important part about the stimululas is that is it should not have a significant impact to the cost of the product. It should be something simple such as color coding, relevant information or a modified UI. These are not engineering solutions.
By using cognitive design companies can improve the value of their products, increase differentiation and help customers meet their needs with very little increase in cost of the product.
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