Robert's Behavior Science & Innovation Digest #1

This is my weekly digest of Behavioral Science, Design and Innovation.

Each week I will cover 2 insights and 1 book recommendation

1.Gamification:

One common mistake with gamification is starting with the mechanics, such as including points or badges, and leaderboards without first understanding the behavior and psychology of your users. To avoid this, it's essential to start with a deep understanding of your user's context and needs before considering what elements of gamification to implement.

In a study on Gamification for Health and Wellbeing:

The techniques used in gamification should be used in a thoughtful and evidence-based way to promote positive health behavior change and not as a black box.

As I was researching gamification for health and well-being apps, I came across the following insights from a recent study:

The most commonly observed gamification elements were:

>Levels or progress feedback

>Points or scoring

>Rewards or prizes

>Narrative or theme

>Personalization

>Customization

The least commonly observed gamification elements were:

>Artificial assistance

>Unlockable content

>Social cooperation

>Exploratory or open-world approach

>Artificial challenge

>Randomness

The study also found that the application of gamification is not driven by health behavior change theory.

This is why it is important to understand the context and the behaviors of what you want to enable before you go and copy elements of gamification, behavior change techniques, and design.

2. Digital Products and Choice

To better design interventions that meet individuals' needs, it is helpful to identify the specific spheres of experience in which technology impacts well-being.

Four such spheres Ryan et al (2018) think are important are:

(1) interacting with the technology via its interface

(2) engaging with technology-enabled tasks

(3) the overarching technology-supported behavior

(4) a user's overall life

For example, a user may feel empowered by customizing the interface (sphere 1), engage through technology-enabled tasks (sphere 2), improve their physical health through technology-supported behaviors (sphere 3), and ultimately enhance their quality of life (sphere 4).

3. Book Recommendation

Rethinking Users - The authors are cultural anthropologists and industrial designers.

The book has 2 propositions:

1. "Our notion of the user is deficient because user's experiences of products and services come in many forms, most of which don't match up with this basic notion"

2. "Since our notion of the user is deficient, our products and services may be deficient as well"

I also liked their approach to experience:

Artifact + context + complex user ecosystem ---> user experience

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That is it for this week's digest. Let me know in the comments if you would like to see a longer summary, or if you would want me to add anything else in the coming ones.

I am going to work on making this a weekly digest of interesting topics I read and post.

Have a great weekend everyone,

Robert

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