I had the privilege of talking to Dr.BJ Fogg on the phone for 15 minutes and I learnt a lot about behavioural design. The aim of this post is to share my learnings with the community.
Dr. BJ Fogg founded the Persuasive Tech Lab at Stanford University. He is also very well known for The Fogg Behavior Model. The Fogg Behavior Model shows that three elements must converge at the same moment for a behavior to occur: Motivation, Ability, and Trigger.
In 15 minutes we covered three interesting topics;
- Simplicity and behavioural design
2. Habit formation
3. Future research in behavioural design
Simplicity and Behavioural Design
- Behavioral design is all about focusing on making the action easy to do — simplicity.
- Think Gmail>Send Email or SnapChat > Send Snap.
- There there are 5 things that hinder simplicity and make something hard to do: Time, money, physical effort, cognitive effort, routine.
- BJ Fogg summarise this well in his talk on Symplicity.
- Think of simplicity as 5 links in a chain, the weakest link in the chain determines the level of difficulty of completing the action.
- Focus on the weakest link in the simplicity chain first.
- If people find actions hard to perform, drill down deeper into what’s making the action hard.
- If a product makes a person change their routine then it’s not simple. Successful products fit into people’s existing routines.
- Perception is also a barrier for people. For example, someone might have 5 minutes to complete a survey, but they perceive that they only have 30 seconds. Phrases like, “This survey will take 90 seconds to complete” are likely to overcome this.
Habit Formation
- For a habit to stick the context and the cue to the habit must be clear.
- If a habit is not easy to remember rehearse it. Going over the habit wires it into the brain.
- The Tiny Habits program designed by BJ to promote positive behaviour change uses small celebrations to wire habits into the brain.
- Elite athletes also use rehearsal and celebrations to gain and develop mastery in their field.
- Habit formation is a skill. Rehearsing/celebration is what accelerates habit formation.
BJ Fogg’s Research
The three behaviour change principles that need to get out into the world according to BJ Fogg:
- Simplicity changes behaviour — make something easier to do and people are more likely to do it.
- Behaviour grows over time — small behaviour change leads to greater behaviour change.
- Change leads to change — behaviour change in one area leads to positive change in other areas.
I learnt a lot about behavioural design from talking to BJ Fogg for 15 minutes. If you are also interested in speaking to BJ I encourage you to also book a time.
Additional Gems
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