The Experience Strategy Podcast: The Seven Essential Behavior Change Principles

March 15, 2022

To listen. click HERE

Today we are joined by Julie O’Brien Ph.D., a behavioral scientist working at the intersection of wellbeing and technology. Julie shares insider knowledge into how companies of all sizes can use science to improve their customer experience. Tune in as Julie shares the seven most important behavior change principles for Experience Strategists.

voiceover: [00:00:00] Welcome to the experience strategy podcast, where we talk to customers and experts about how to create products and services that feel like time well spent. And now here are your hosts experience nerds, Dave Norton and Aransas. Savis

Aransas: welcome to the experience strategy podcast. I'm Miranda Savis. And today we are joined by Julie O'Brien.

Julie is a behavioral scientist with an entrepreneurial spirit. She has deep expertise in all facets of human behavior, from energy efficiency, to political participation, to health, and she uses data and insights to build products and solve problems. She's worked with many of them. The world's leading brands to create innovative behavior led customer experiences.

And we've asked her to join us today [00:01:00] to help us sift through the noise and identify the seven most important behavior change principles for experience strategists to consider this year. Is to help you as an experienced strategist, whether you sit in the experience team or the operations or marketing team, even to think what these principles might mean for your company, big or small, no matter what kind of experience you're creating.

So do you late, thank you for being here first and foremost. We're so excited to have you. Yeah,

Julie: I'm happy.

Aransas: So start off, if you will, by telling us just a little about behavior change and how it is used, but you in particular to inform the product services and experiences that you've designed in.

Julie: Yeah. So, um, I think there's, there's a couple of [00:02:00] things that would be maybe important to start out with.

So one is that behavior is everywhere. Um, everything that we think about and care about, and, and often the challenges that really result in sort of the population level. Challenges that we want to solve for are all rooted in everyday behaviors and actions that we take. Um, and often we have really high hopes for behaving in ways that are different than what we're doing right now.

Um, but the challenges that behavior changes generally really, really. Um, behavioral scientists like to think about the action intention gap, and it's this idea that we all have the very best of intentions. We have high hopes for what the world could look like at a population level in our own lives. Um, but it's really hard to get there.

And so there's something about behavior. That's kind of funny in a way, because. It defines everything that we do all day long. And [00:03:00] yet we have a hard time understanding what drives behavior, um, and often an even harder time understanding how to change behavior. Um, so that's really what I do. And what I think about all day long is what are the behaviors that really matter, um, in the particular context that I'm working with.

Um, and how can I better understand those behaviors using psychology and any other related discipline that can help me figure out what's really beneath the surface and then how to design solutions or experiences to help people reduce the action intention gap and achieve the outcome that.

Dave: So really it's kind of dealing with, oh, let me see if I understand this correctly.

Your job is to understand the action intention gap or what or aspects of what is related to behavior change. Share those insights. With a team or are you part of the [00:04:00] team that actually develops the solutions, the services and the experiences. Can you talk a little bit about the dynamic between your role and innovate?

Yeah.

Julie: So I think innovation can happen at a few different levels. And my team is involved in, in each level, in one level or from one perspective, my team is helpful in shaping the process of innovation. So if I think about what we can learn from behavioral science, there are kind of two really valuable.

Applications or ways that behavioral science can help us collectively build more effective solutions and experiences. Um, and one is through the methods or the process of behavioral science. And so, you know, if you think about the way that you might approach designing a new solution or innovation, um, Existing approaches that people could follow, where you try to foster divergent [00:05:00] thinking and explore alternatives to reality.

That might not be obvious in the moment. Um, and what behavioral science does as part of that process is it lends a layer of precision. So it starts with the end in mind. So what is the outcome that you are hoping to achieve? Um, and then you work your way to the behaviors. What are the actual actions that somebody might take in order to achieve that outcome.

And then you start to try and understand those behaviors. So we would call this a behavioral diagnosis. You might do an activity like behavior mapping, where. You try to get really, really granular and really dig deeper around the problem that you're trying to solve. Um, and then once you have a really good sense of what the problem is, you try to understand the barriers that are going to get in the way.

Um, and these are the barriers that you want to design your solution around. So I think of this as problem solution matching where. There's many, many good solutions in the [00:06:00] world, but for an innovation to be successful, you want to find the solution. That is a really good fit for the problem that you're trying to solve.

And so behavioral science offers a methodology and an approach that can help people. Better evaluate all possible solutions to pick the one that has a higher chance of

Dave: working, you know, as you described that the, the idea of behavior mapping, um, identifying barriers, I can't help, but think of, uh, the role of design thinking and developing, uh, journey maps and so forth.

Can you talk a little bit about the relationship between behavioral mapping and journey map?

Julie: Yeah. So I think they're, they're actually really similar. And I think one of the challenges for the behavioral science world kind of as a field is to figure out how to more seamlessly integrate with existing design approaches, like design thinking.

Um, I think what we, what we [00:07:00] can say is that there's an additional lens that could be added to a process like journey mapping, where. The same sets of activities would still happen, but you might also think that. At each moment in that map or in that journey, what are the specific behaviors that you want to try and encourage, or that you think might be problematic for someone?

So it's sort of like adding a layer of a little bit of extra precision and focus around. The specific actions that are going to be required to follow through. So I think that's one distinction. I think the other distinction, when I think about, uh, you know, design thinking more globally, is that in some cases there's no right answer or no right solution.

So, you know, if you want to come up with a much more enjoyable. Customer experience where the existing experience is pretty good and you want to kind of amp it up and, you know, make people enjoy their experience a bit more. You can kind of go in many, many different directions and [00:08:00] all possibilities could still be good in terms of improving the overall experience.

But if you want to solve a problem where people are not necessarily acting in their own self-interest or, um, you know, where there is something like an action intention gap. So let's say, uh, you know, we want to help people live healthier, exercise, more, lose weight, something like that. There are some solutions that will be really effective, but there's also solutions that will be less effective.

Um, and there might even be solutions that make it even harder for people. And so if we're trying to design in a world where there is kind of a right answer and a wrong answer, then we want to have some lens for evaluating what we're ideating and the ideas that we come up with so that we can say, you know, these are the ideas that we think actually address the underlying challenge.

And we can see that in our solution, which gives us a bit higher confidence in what we're designing. So I think that it adds this layer of [00:09:00] sort of decision aid, where we can look at what we're doing and say, this looks like a good idea on the surface. And we have some, some sense that it's actually going to reduce the underlying challenges that make it hard for people to act in their own best interest.

Aransas: So many applications to this, it, my mind is spinning as you speak. And I can only imagine that you see this type of thinking as being pretty essential to customer success and to product success. Why, why is it important for companies to integrate behavioral science and behavior change principles into their work?

Julie: Yeah. I mean, so you're right. I do think it's incredibly important. And I think, I mean, I think for the companies that have done this well, it's a game changer and for a few reasons, one is that I think you end up designing a solution that actually [00:10:00] makes sense with the way that humans behave. So if you kind of understand the fundamentals of how humans operate.

Then you're going to design something that actually fits within the ecosystem of how humans operate. Um, I think from a process perspective, behavioral science, because it brings this extra layer of precision. It actually helps us learn faster and iterate more quickly. So I like to use the analogy of pharmaceuticals.

Let's say we are. Uh, pharmaceutical company and we are trying to help people have fewer headaches or get over their headaches more quickly. We could come up with lots of different ways of creating headache medicine. It might be a liquid form. It might be a gel capsule. It might be a pill that has a brown sugary coating on it.

And if we don't really understand the mechanics of what actually makes headaches go away, we're going to have a really hard time evaluating whether the [00:11:00] liquid is better or the gel is better, or that brown tablet is better. But if we have gone through a scientific process and we now understand that it's ibuprofen, that's the active ingredient.

That's really going to make that headache go away. Now we know exactly what has to be there and every single type of medicine that we develop. And so it's the same kind of analogy for products or services or experiences where if we can hone in on that active ingredient, then we can move much more quickly because we know what we need to keep.

And we know what we don't need to keep with every iteration.

Dave: You know, I love everything that's going on in behavioral science. And I think it's such an important component to experience strategy. And I think a lot of our listeners, when they, when they hear you say something like you, uh, you make a design that fits, they immediately think of human factors.

Right, which is a discipline that's been around for a number of [00:12:00] years. And I wonder is behavioral science becoming the new form of human factors? I mean,

Aransas: And for those who are not familiar with human factors, Dave, just take a second. Okay. And to find what you're talking

Dave: about. So human factors, um, really took off in the early two thousands and was focused a lot on ergonomics on the way that simplifying things for people, understanding the sequence that people needed to follow, really trying to understand the body and the mind working.

Interacting oftentimes with technology, um, that was the goal of human factors.

Aransas: Great.

Julie: Thank you. Yeah. So I think that human factors is actually part of behavioral science. Behavioral science is really a broad interdisciplinary field that draws on [00:13:00] many different perspectives that all help us understand human behavior, um, in general.

And so human factors is one of those perspectives that I think is, um, reflected in many of the ways that behavioral scientists think about, about human behavior. Um, I have a framework that I developed after doing work across many different domains where, um, in my experience, what I was finding was that people would ask me things like, well, what's so special about diabetes or what's so special about exercise or how does.

Um, you know, how do we now evaluate political behavior? And what I learned through all of these experiences is that there's something just really fundamental and human. That's actually not related to any of these domains. And I think that that's what behavioral science can teach us. So the things that really stand out to me is like the broad stroke lessons from behavioral science are that one.

Humans are cognitive misers. So we make really snap [00:14:00] judgment and we're

Aransas: coming up with things like that.

Julie: Cognitive,

Aransas: cognitive misers, those labels though is just like, oh, thank you for being so efficient.

Julie: I know. Say it all like to work. There's an extra skill involved in the framing of behavioral science concepts, like the ostrich effect, which is my personal favorite.

Perfect. Yeah. Um, but really the idea is that, and I think a lot of human factors actually reflects this understanding of the way that we, the way that we process information are in our environments. We have to be very selective about. What we dedicate our conscious resources to. Um, and so we're not actively deliberately processing most things.

We're only deliberately processing the things that are right in front of us. And so what this means is that many things are happening. On autopilot or behind the scenes. So this [00:15:00] is why we have things like habits, because habits help us take a behavior taken action automatically without thinking about it.

But part of the challenge for behavior changes, then that many of the behaviors we want to change are happening automatically. So we may not even be aware that they're there and we might not really understand what's driving. So one broad stroke sort of lesson from behavioral science is that humans are cognitive misers.

I think one additional one that is really important and maybe not captured as articulately in human factors is that humans are also driven by emotions. Um, but not always. Rational or sort of, um, ways that we fully understand in the moment. So, you know, emotions are evolutionarily beneficial to us. They give us information about our environments and how we should respond to things that are.

Happening immediately in our environment, but [00:16:00] sometimes we draw the wrong conclusions about what those emotions are telling us. So you could think about, um, you know, getting on a treadmill and your, your blood pressure is, or your heart is pumping and you're now kind of physiologically aroused. Um, and then you get an email from a coworker that has sort of an undertone that kind of irritates you, um, because you're on that treadmill and you're already aroused.

You might actually overreact. Because you think about your arousal, you look at the email and you think this is so irritating. I can't believe that they did that. And that's an instance where we're not drawing on the right information in our environments to come up with the appropriate reaction, because in the moment we're just making a gut response based on that physiological feeling that we have and whatever the easiest interpretation.

So that's one really important lens that behavioral science brings is to help us understand that emotional experience that isn't always rational, but still [00:17:00] informs sort of how we navigate.

Aransas: I love this. And as you're talking, I'm frantically taking notes, trying to capture, I think what these big behavior change principles are that really any company can use to improve the product, even if they don't have the luxury of employing a behavior change scientist, like you.

And here's a few of the ones I've, I've captured so far. So you'll, you'll tell me where I'm right and wrong and what we need to add to this list. So the first one I've got it. Identify the action intention up and pay attention to what people are actually doing, not just what they want to do. Secondly, identify friction.

What's getting in the way of people doing what they want to do. And three look for the solutions that make it easy. To do for people to do what they want to do for keep in mind, the humans are cognitive misers. So keep things simple. I know you and I always worked, uh, with a rule of three. Don't ask them to do more than three things at a time.[00:18:00]

Um, if at all, and one is probably even better. Um, and five, remember that emotions are not reasonable. They are situational and contextually driven do or change.

Julie: Well on the emotions piece. I think the interesting thing is that we're also motivated to maintain emotional stability. And so sometimes that means we really seek out positive experiences because we're kind of in a fog and we want to improve our mood.

And so we may actually act in the way that. Rational in the moment because we're seeking out that positive experience. Um, and the same can be true of having too much positivity. It's very arousing. It could be exhausting. And so we might want to actually seek out like a calming experience to bring us back down to baseline.

Um, and so we're, we're influenced by our emotions, but we're also motivated by our emotions. So our emotions are this really complex and interesting feature of. [00:19:00] That's sort of shapes both how we interpret our experiences and then also how we choose experiences. So I think, um, you know, the next broad stroke, uh, lesson from behavioral science is that humans are both egotistical and really self-centered, but also really deeply social.

Um, you know, there's sort of the classic Harlow monkey study where. Uh, these poor orphaned monkeys were put in a room where they had this option of a warm and snugly mother who did not provide food, um, and was not actually a real mother, but sort of, you know, a pretend to stand in mother, but that did offer warmth and companionship or.

A very cold sort of wireframed mother that offered no warmth and companionship, but did offer food. Um, and what these researchers found was that these poor orphaned baby monkeys preferred the warm and comforting mother over the mother that would actually feed them [00:20:00] and keep them alive. Um, and that really signals to me how deeply, deeply social humans are.

And I think we all learned this in COVID being isolated from other people is extremely challenging and extremely hard. Um, but that also means that we are highly attuned to what other people are doing. And we're highly attuned to how we're doing. In reference to other people. So if we think about a lot of the applications of behavioral science has showed up in things like social norms.

So I used to work at a company called Opower and we would tell people how much energy they were using compared to their neighbors. And this is a really effective strategy for getting people to use less energy in their homes. I

Aransas: love this story. I've heard you tell us, go ahead. Sorry. I get

Julie: excited. Well, what we found was that, you know, one, it doesn't really feel great to know that you're using more energy than average.

Um, but the [00:21:00] reason that it doesn't feel great is because it creates this discrepancy between. Who you are right now and who you want to be. And your definition of who you want to be is provided by other people that you care about in your community. So it's this really nice example of how at the same time, we're really attuned to our own placement in a social structure and making sure that we are also defining our goals and the future state that we would like to reach according to other people's placement in that social stress.

Dave: So fascinating. I love where you're going with a lot of this and it's so useful. And I think it's really interesting that so many companies are focused on behavior change these days. And it's not just, uh, the WW news of the world or the newsrooms of the world, but it is across so many different categories [00:22:00] where companies are starting to say.

We need to figure out how to, uh, motivate people in the right way and really accomplish, help them to accomplish their goals. So it's really, really fascinating. One of the things that I'm interested in and just wrote a blog article on is this idea and Aransas, you bring this up all the time, the idea of agency and how important agency.

Is to the individual. What are your thoughts about agency and how it factors into behavior change?

Julie: Yeah, I think agency is a really, really interesting topic. Um, and then the, actually it sort of refers back to this idea of humans are sort of at the same time egotistical and very self-centered. We really liked the idea.

Being unique individuals who [00:23:00] have chosen all of the good outcomes that we've, that we've acquired in life. Um, while at the same time, we also really are part of this larger social structure and we're highly subject to the influences of other people. Um, and I think agency is a really. Interesting example of how we love the idea of agency when it serves us well.

So we are motivated to view our life and our successes in terms of the effort that we have put in, or the smart choices that we have made. And so that's an example of where desiring agency makes us feel as though we are choosing the good outcomes in life that we might want to get to. Um, but there are moments where we actually.

Might not like agency so much. So if we don't succeed in something or if something kind of unexpected happens, those are the moments where we want to believe it was not agency that created the outcome. It was [00:24:00] outside forces. Um, and this is actually called the fundamental attribution error. And it's this idea that we sort of play around with the idea of agency or attribution, depending on how it makes us feel about our own successes and failures.

And so there is something to be said for how can we help people have this positive feeling of agency? But also recognize that sometimes agency is not necessarily the thing that will lead to the desired outcome that they want. And so I think behavioral scientists have a struggle really with figuring out how much do we allow people to choose when sometimes we don't choose well, and we have this action attention gap, because we might really care about the outcome.

We might really care about losing weight or being. In the future, but today what we really care about is being comfortable and sort of enjoying ourselves and having daily pleasures in life. [00:25:00] Um, and so the question of agency then becomes when does agency help us? And when should we give people this sense of agency or help them help them use their agency wisely?

Um, and when should we help people be okay with designing their environments and their lives to sort of help nudge them towards the outcomes that they want, even if it means in the moment, maybe they don't have quite as much.

Dave: And what is your answer? And you've got it

Julie: solved, right? Yeah. Right. Let's see.

It's really simple. Um,

Aransas: yeah, I mean, I think

Julie: we do know which is that you could have agency for. Entering into a solution. And so one of the things that behavioral scientists often struggle with is the morality of influencing decision-making. Um, and what we actually, there is some research on this. When you ask people upfront, [00:26:00] is this a choice that you want and is this an outcome that you want?

Um, then they're willing to kind of not have as much agency moment by moment. So there's this idea of a commitment device. There's a website called stick.com where you can choose to create a situation for yourself where you might be motivated or tempted to do something. That's not going to get you to your goal.

And so you sort of reduce agency for yourself in the future. But you're choosing to do that. And so I think that the important thing is removing agency is okay. When people are active participants in the removal of agency, it's not okay when it's sort of done without someone's consent or awareness or, you know, to help sort of push their behavior towards something that is actually not what they want or not getting to an outcome that they care.

Aransas: Yeah, to me what you're saying too. And this is certainly what I've found in my own work is it's about [00:27:00] linking the why and the behavior, and continuously coming back to why and refining, why, so that there is a meaning that is driving the, the challenge of, of altering or even just being aware of our behaviors.

Julie: Yeah, exactly.

Aransas: And I think that's where so many companies drop the ball, right? Assume they know what you want. And that's where that's one of the points Dave was making in his article is, is I believe that that companies, and, and I suspect you'll agree with me on this, but I believe that companies have this belief that like, if we can know all the answers, they'll be willing to pay us.

And I'm like, um, yeah, credibility. Expertise valuable.

Dave: Yeah. And of course you, you brought up [00:28:00] this idea of situation and context and environmental factors, uh, which are real it's the, um, those are, those are also real. Pieces to the puzzle. Right? What I like about what you're describing is, is that, and I hadn't really thought about it this way is that oftentimes agency is in conflict with situation.

Uh, so those two things work against each other. They don't always work together.

Julie: There is a famous, famous principle in social psychology, which is what I have my, my formal academic training in. Um, and it's this function that says that behavior. Is a function of the person and the environment, and you can never remove the person and you can never remove the environment and together they produce the behavior.

Um, and I think that often when we're designing products and we're designing experiences, we look at the person. So we look at the [00:29:00] persona or the segment and we try and describe them. And we try to look at their internal. Their personalities, their preferences, even their behavioral patterns in the past.

Um, but we often forget about the role that the environment also plays in determining what they're doing and what they're likely to do in the future. Um, and so I think you're absolutely right that there's this interplay and it's, it's a necessary interplay that you can't actually separate out. Um, because both things are always there.

Dave: Yeah. You know, I actually got interested in experience strategy years and years ago because I was studying context. I was interested in how the environment actually impacts the individual's decision-making rather than the opposite side where most companies or most people go, which is what's the individual's psychology or, or, or, or things along that line.

And so, um, I totally believe in [00:30:00] what you're, you're describing there, that there's this interplay between the person and the environment. And that's really what experience strategy should be thinking about. And I love the fact that we have these new tools that people are starting to take very seriously behavior change and behavior science as a discipline.

That should be informing how we design. Can I ask

Aransas: you a really tough question? Julie

people can Google these principles like this, this information it's it's out in the world. It's, it's been distilled, it's been shared it's loud and proud. You can, you can find these, these behavior change principles. These companies could. All easily be incorporating them, but they're not for the most part.

There's a lot of companies that are [00:31:00] still doing business as usual. And aren't considering the human being in the work. Why do you think that. And what they do this weighed in.

Julie: Yeah. I mean, I think the good news is that more and more companies each year are hiring behavioral science team. Um, and there's actually a group that is tracking this, um, it's the action design network and they have, they have a database of all the companies that have in-house behavioral science teams and the number.

I don't know exactly what it is, but it's something like in the hundreds, like four or 500 in the U S. Dedicated behavioral science team. So it's certainly an increasing trend where a lot of people are starting to pay attention and starting to see the benefits that it can bring. Um, I think, you know, change is hard.

It's another form of behavior change. It's really hard [00:32:00] to update the way that we think about things, especially when we have a long history of operating in a certain way. So I think often what behavioral science teams do is they have to create a culture change within the organization. So they're bringing a lens of expertise, but they're also bringing a new way of thinking and a new way of working that can be challenging.

Um, I think a lot of the lessons from behavioral science teach us that. Our assumptions and our intuitions are not always right. And it's really hard to have your assumptions questions. Um, and so part of what I think behavior, especially

Aransas: when you were told those principles were timeless and essential and would always be yeah, yeah.

Julie: Right. And in a world where they generally work. Okay. You know, you. Kind of totally fine based on the intuitions and the assumptions that you have. And so it is hard to update our way of thinking. Um, but I think that one of the really positive [00:33:00] benefits that comes from an organization that embraces behavioral science.

Is that you get a lot more intellectual humility. So you start to learn that your ideas are not tied to who you are as a person or your sense of self-worth, but it's just something that you can explore. And then. And then evaluate and then iterate from. And so it sort of frees people, I think, to think much more divergently and be much more creative because every failure is just a learning opportunity and it's no longer something that is tied to your value and your worth as a person.

Um, and I think that really fosters a much more open and creative and faster moving organization.

Aransas: I love that in essence, what you're saying is that. Integrating behavioral science is better for the customer. It's better for the teams and it's better for the organization. And I think ultimately that, that is what's going to [00:34:00] motivate the adoption of these ideas.

If you, if you had sort of final words on this that, that you would like for our audience of experienced strategists for companies large and small to hear. What would you say?

Julie: So I think that there's, there's a really amazing opportunity that we have to solve big and hard problems. I think behavioral sciences, one component of that, what I've also learned from being in the world of behavioral science is that.

Important for behavioral scientists to also have intellectual humility. I think there's a lot of great talent in organizations and in the world that are, that is not behavioral science. Um, and so our collective challenge and opportunity is to find the models that allow behavioral scientists to leverage their expertise alongside other forms of expertise that [00:35:00] are already there in companies.

So that there's sort of a situation where, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And I think that's, that's what will lead to real innovation and real progress on, on big, hard problems.

Aransas: Yes. It is, it is about diverse thinking and creating a, getting all, all the different brains around the table in order to solve the really tough problems.

Um, it's a beautiful note to end this on Julie. I could talk to you for a day about this stuff. I learned so much every time I talked to you and I just admire the work that you were doing and. As you, as you ended, this I'm reminded even more. So how much I admire the way that you do. So thank you for being a, a, a powerful, positive force in the world.

And thank you for spending part of your day with [00:36:00] us.

Julie: Oh, you're so welcome

Aransas: to our listeners. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. Please keep listening. Follow us. Wherever.

voiceover: Thank you for listening to the experience strategy podcast. If you're having fun, nerding out with us, please follow and share wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Find more episodes and continue the conversation with us at experience strategy, podcast.com.