Behavioral Science and Design can give us better outcomes...
Let me break it down...
Behavior Science gives us an evidence-based and systematic approach to understanding the things that drive behavior, which is better than relying on gut feelings, intuition or a gpt hallucination.
This is where we use theories, models, and frameworks that will help guide us and give us the foundation for creating products, services, and experiences in a more structured way.
This approach helps us create a more solid hypothesis, which is both good for the people and businesses we work with and for.
However, as a practitioner you have to remember that the insights we get from Behavioral Science alone are not where you stop, we need to rely on other methods and approaches to help us deliver the solutions in the right way.
Essentially, we can't truly create great experiences without having a solid base of behavioral insights to draw from, and likewise we cannot deliver a great experience if we don't know how to translate those insights into products and services that people will actually engage with and ultimately lead them to better outcomes.
So, if you are creating products and experience say in the health space, I recommend you mix the way you work - it has change the way I work and it will change the way you work as well.
Now, there are many books you could combine, but here are two I own and recommend:
1. The Handbook of Behavior Change – Edited by Martin S. Hagger, Linda D.
Cameron, Kyra Hamilton, Nelli Hankonen, and Taru Lintunen It is a comprehensive reference on behavior change theories, frameworks, and interventions - can serve as a great reference and not to be read from cover to cover.
2.
Health Design Thinking
Creating Products and Services for Better Health (2nd Edition) – By Bon Ku, MD & Ellen Lupton Explores how design thinking can be applied to healthcare to improve user experience and outcomes. - This is a recent purchase as I work on health projects from time to time and I like to see what is out there for inspiration.
It is a very visual book, with nice examples and also includes different case studies - again, a good reference book for inspiration.
Remember the best chance we have of doing good work is to mix methods and to integrate behavior change with other ways of working so you can create better experiences.