Are we starting too late in the process when we design for behavior?
Should we instead of starting at the point where we define a target behavior, start at the point of discovering what the Job To Be Done is and what the unmet needs are?
This is the exact question I have been thinking about for a while, and although I need a bit more time to finish my framework on just how Jobs to be Done (JTBD) and the Outcome-Driven Innovation Process can converge with Behavioral Science + Design to help deliver real value and make innovation more predictable.
Tony Ulwick has a great article where he describes innovators who try to:
1. Make things people want "Innovators who try to create products that people want typically study the complexities of value creation through the lens of managerial science."
Managerial science is the study of business problem-solving and complex decision-making.
2. Make people want things "Managers who try to figure out how to motivate and entice customers to buy the products they create typically study the complexities of customer behavior through the lens of behavioral science."
My view on this is that Behavioral Science can and should be in the former, where it is informing and helping to make things people want - together with JTBD, and thus help with decision making.
The reason I believe that Behavioral Science is seen as the latter is that all too often the behavioral insights needed are used only at the end of a project when the rest of the business has already defined things.
This is what I hear from many teams, and this is how it is sometimes perceived.
That means that Behavioral Science, in some sense, does not get a seat at the table, and that has to change in my view.
I like the quote Michael Hallsworth used in an article on Behavioral Scientist " Perhaps we will have succeeded if at the end of the next decade, we aren’t talking about “behavioral insights” as a separate idea..because it’s been absorbed into the standard ways of making policy and designing services." - this to me is what we should be striving for.
In my goal for behavioral science to be absorbed, I have been reading the following books on Jobs to be Done most recently.
This time on Kindle
1. Competing against luck - Clayton Christensen 2. The Lean Product Playbook - Dan Olsen 3.
On Innovation - Harvard Business Review 4. What Customers Want - Tony Ulwick 5. Jobs to be done playbook - Jim Kalbach 6.
The Secret lives of customers - David Duncan 7. When Coffee and Kale Compete - Alan Klement 8. Jobs to be done - also by Tony Ulwick 9.
The Statue in the Stone - Scott Burleson
These are giving me a good grounding and I am now trying to find where things like COM-B, Self Determination Theory, and other aspects of Behavioral Science fit to enhance and build upon the knowledge others have kindly shared to truly help companies innovate.
#innovation #servicedesign #productinnovation #digitaltransformation #behavioralscience #behavioraldesign