Why is designing for behavior important, and how can you do it?
I will take an example that is close to me for two reasons:
1. I used to work for a tourism board in #abudhabi 2. I live in #amsterdam, where over-tourism is a problem
Tourists and visitors tend to go to iconic locations or stay on major touring routes - this can lead to overcrowding, and sustainability issues and leave other areas in the region with fewer visitors and revenue.
So how can most tourism organizations distribute visitors in a better way ( this can also apply to a branch of a business for example) - which is something they have already expressed interest in doing?
This is a question that Anne Hardy and Kristy de Salas had and they decided to use behavior science to build an app to help solve this challenge.
One of the "barriers to this goal are that tourists may not be aware of the value of local regional areas, nor engage in learning about what nearby areas offer."
"the factors that were chosen related to issues such as knowledge of the region, perception of risk, time, money, travel group, peer referrals, social media influence, marketing, weather, ability to travel, physical ability and personal preferences"
The target behaviors chosen where
"Access and engage in logistical information on regional locations: To visit regional areas, tourists and leisure-seekers must be aware of the locations, and the distances and difficulties associated with travel to them
Access and engage in information that raises the perceived value of regional locations: Besides knowing about locations and how to get to them, tourists must also widely value a location to visit it in significant numbers
Access and share social information on regional locations
Learning where others have gone and seeing recommendations from others for new areas as well as sharing information about their own trips are behaviors that can raise the interest and decision making of tourists."
The solution components:
- Framework used: COM-B and Behavior Change Wheel - Motivation Theory: Self-Determination Theory -Mechanics: Gamification -Product: A Mobile App
On Gamification
"Gamification has been found to generally provide positive results in a meta-review of studies, however...unreliability is generally contributed to poor design that utilises generic points, badges and leaderboards, rather than thoughtful and user-centred design.
The former approach means that gamification is relegated to an extrinsic reward system, that can only motivate users’ participation so long as they are invested in the rewards, it fails to intrinsically motivate or to solve problems that could lead to change."
If you are thinking about use cases to bring more behavior design, I will leave the link to the paper, as well as a link to the behavior design framework I created.
#behavioralscience #behavioraldesign #servicedesign #productinnovation #digitaltransformation #tourism