12 thoughts on “Week 4: Creating Persuasive Technologies: An Eight-Step Design Process”
I really dig the BJ Fogg Kool-Aid. He’s my people. He gets it.
He makes a lot of great points including that the best designers are advocates of simplicity as well as getting those with a psychology background involved in evaluating successful examples is great idea – which I absolutely agree with despite being unable to stomach the academic literature put out by this discipline (as is seen in my response to Bandura’s article).
Needless to say, his greatest point is his emphasis on simplicity. Eliminating as many variables as possible in controlled model allows us to focus on real value and ensures future and scalable success.
You can tell he isn’t BS-ing because he practices what he preaches. He’s written the piece with simplicity in mind. Come on – before you made it past the introduction you know what he wanted to tell you already. If that’s not persuasive, I’m not sure what is.
Compare to Bandura… This is precisely why design thinking is needed in health care. Although I would go so far as to suggest that we have had the caliber of Bandura’s mind on the healthcare crisis as of yet – I’m lead to believe that there has been an opposite yet equally incoherent thought process applied. Approaching this whole area really can benefit from “The Fogg.”
More please.
looking back at last week’s behavioral change design challenge i realize i broke the cardinal rule of good design :: simplicity.
so, i wanted to re-design my experiment to focus on a specific audience (not myself) and to simplify the target behavior. following the 8-step design process fogg describes for behavioral change i began the following procedure ::
STEP 1 ::
Target Behavior ::
walk up the stairs
Target Behavior Specified ::
walk up the stairs once a day
STEP 2 ::
Audience ::
students at ITP; 20-something; early adopters
STEP 3 ::
Why aren’t they performing the target behavior? ::
Ability barriers ::
Time
Physical Effort
Social Deviance (crowds tend to migrate around the elevator entrance)
Non-Routine
Motivation elements ::
Pleasure/Pain
Hope/Fear
Acceptance/Rejection
Triggers ::
No spark or well-timed trigger
STEP 4 ::
Use a familiar technology ::
Audience is technological savvy
But experience must be immediate (barrier of adding more behaviors, ie downloading a mobile app, etc.)
From early studies with DIY health class, some of knowledge about design of successful persuasive system might be simple, specific, appropriate technology channel
use, precise restrict to targets, measurable, and targeting a small success,etc. This reading clearly explain how to approach a persuasive technology channel and establish a system for being succeed in today’s ubiquitous media era. Literally there are some progress to achieve the persuasive experience. Persuasive Technology Channels will suggest people to utilize a channel they choose and integrate other channel to encourage people to have another experience. This progress will motivate people do persuasive experiences. There are two concerning points of views when you design a persuasive products; 1. psychology of persuasion 2. persuasive technology by working with existing solution.
According to the current situation of lack of history of design persuasive technology, people need to adapt methods from other fields. Approaching a successful result from creating persuasive technologies needs to be understood that many trials and failures will follow. And we need to set up sort of track-able, measurable behavior changes. Thus, small, simple tests will leads to growing success eventually. With today’s technology the writer explains behavior changes through eight step design process.
1.choose a simple behavior to target. From experiences for design for changing behaviors project, I realize the simple, and easy way is the best method. People need to understand in a short time, and react right away. It will draw more people if the result and any kind of reaction people can see and measure after their behaviors.
2.choose a receptive audience. This process step is very important. Especially, someone are already familiar with the channel I chose, and be enthusiastic to do tasks. The target won’t be all type of people. They will must be specific targets.
3.Find what prevents the target behavior. Too much resistant, no motivation, or lack of abilities must be hard to aim. Over and over rebuild the target behavior will lead a success.
4.Choose a familiar technology channel. In terms of target characteristics, or specific channel use, we need to choose an appropriate way. Friendly, easy, simple test will affect to change target’s behavior. 1-4 steps may be mixed according to project’s circumstance.
5.Find relevant examples of persuasive technology. The solution must be various and has many options to meet a successful persuasive technology. There are already existing solutions and references, many professors persuade. Use them as references, and examples that reduce risks of creating persuasive technology for specific target.
6.Imitate successful examples. Sometime, personally, I feel guilty to imitate something for get a better results. However, this world is rotating and exchanging things around to proof, improve, and get better results. Imitation solutions already examined by professionals will make design progress fast and neat. For my team project, ‘Smile’, I believe that understanding psychological meanings and methods of getting smile and looking up some examples, already succeed in achieving to change people’s routine life to be happy.
7.Test and iterate quickly. I think this must be the next step for our smile project. In a reading, starting with fast and easy test and repeating test that assist designers to learn of designing for persuasion. With setting up low expectations for trials that keep designers motivated and courage themselves to go on the next stage. Try a measurable targeting behavior changes in a simple and fast trials repeatedly.
8.Expand on success. Expand target to wide scope of ones that can be a time matter, another target, or motivating something else with. Keep the base line of a targeting behavior and add more intensive, or progressive behaviors later.
Conclusively, Keep small, simple feature and goal to meet a successful, ambitious goals
I loved this article. I am disappointed that I have read very little of his material in the past. As an interaction designer this is gold. I always knew that focusing on simplicity was key but in makes much more sense to design something from a singular behavioral experience. Fogg lays this out in 8 clear steps:
1. Design for a simple behavior: “two word behavior”. Some behaviors seem simplistic but acutally very difficult to change.
2. Choose a receptive audience: Pick people who are likely to engage with your product.
3. What prevents the target behavior: What are the environmental impacts
4. Choose a familiar technology: Use technology that is accessible.
5. Find relevant examples for persuasive technology
6. Imitate successful examples: There are examples everywhere of products that work amazingly… Research them and use their techniques.
7. Test and iterate quickly
8. Expand on success.
The key is defining simplicity on the behavioral level first. I like how Fogg explains how even if a behavior sounds simplistic like: “stop smoking” it can be difficult to change the behavior. This article also reminded me of what our class is based on “the first order persuasion loop”. The first order loop is spot on for representing the cognitive process the user experiences while changing a behavior. It was nice to read about some techniques to help us in our design process to apply to the systems we develop for behavior change.
I think in this article was written to push the designer to understand how their end goal is decided by the different step. As designers we are forced to focus on the process to facilitate the end user experience. Fogg outlines the steps that are necessary for developing for and improving upon a design idea. The over arching theme I see for Foggs research is that everything is a behavior, and the world can be described in instances of behaviors; those behaviors can be shifted. As designers how can we incorporate this notion in every product we create?
BJ Fogg offers yet another useful and easy-to-understand framework, this time in the form of an eight step process for creating persuasive technologies. Complete with a diagram and good stories and examples of each step, it was an organized and clear look at a specific process to design experiences that influence people. I enjoy reading BJ Fogg’s work because he presents his ideas in a clear and simple manner and they are always very actionable.
Picking a receptive audience, choosing a simple behavior, and finding out what prevents the behavior are the steps we go through before deciding what the technology channel should be. Then we go through a process of finding relevant examples, adapting them to our situation, and going through quick iterations to learn what works best. Once we are successful, we can proceed to expand upon our success by continuing to experiment systematically with new variations – like doing science. The eight step process offers a concrete roadmap for a designer to follow – and that is awesome.
The overarching theme is that we can change the world as long as we focus on the small things first. Keep things simple and easy when starting out; go for the smallest possible change, build on the success of others, and expand only when we start seeing our own successes. That way we can learn from our experiences and have a solid foundation from which to grow. This is a valuable mindset that will continue to stay with me long after the class is over.
I found this reading much much more concise and informative than the book reading. I also appreciated all his insights into exceptions to rules and such. Again I took notes while reading in order to jot down main ideas.
THE EIGHT-STEP DESIGN PROCESS
persuasive technologies: tech that changes what we think and do (eg. prius)
hard to create entirely new persuasive techs (like it’s hard to create new behaviors)
- scale back ambitions of target behavior change
- achieve small successes first
- fail fast (prototype early)
” Large projects will succeed
when built on a foundation of many small, measurable successes”
8 step design process
1. Choose a simple behavior (leads to ambitious behaviors)
eg. reduce stress level –> stretch for 20 seconds
small goal can be: an approximation or a step to the larger goal
approx: stretching contributes to de-stressing
step: getting a papsmear = step 1
2. Choose a receptive audience
persuade someone not everyone
eg. pick someone who is likely to want to improve this behavior (eg. a blue behavior not a green one)
3. Find what prevents the target behavior (what’s the problem?)
lack of motivation, ability, trigger
4. Choose a familiar tech channel
unfamiliar tech = bad, unless it serves to increase motivation/ability
5. Find relevant examples of persuasive tech
is it successful?
Find 9 examples: 3 similar behavior, 3 similar audience, 3 tech channel
6. Imitate successful examples
Do not be afraid of doing something similar to another
Innovation comes after solid foundation (step
id ‘secret sauce’ – psych power
7. Test and iterate quickly
success correlated with trial #s
8. Expand on success
scale up: make behavior more difficult, expand to new audience, expand distribution
B.J Fogg’s work alone is a compelling reason to enter into behaviour persuasion. He’s taken a hitherto unmeasured area and gives it clear, simple rules. I realize how much I get stuck on the first and probably most important point: Start small. It goes against the very way that I think and work, and yet it is indisputably the most crucial aspect, and one that trips me up with regards to my personal and work goals. Echoes of Fogg’s idea can be found in other instances. For eg, Tim Brown of IDEO writes in his book, “Change by Design” that the prevailing mantra at IDEO is “ Fail often to succeed sooner “. Anthony Robbins is known to emphasize the idea of “Take Action, check if it’s working. If it is, keep refining. If it isn’t, change it. These ideas seem self-evident, but I realize in hindsight how little I’ve put them to use. For eg, in my current project, I find myself stuck with the behaviour change that I’ve chosen. I thought that asking people to track whether they’ve exercised or not that day on a spreadsheet would be fairly simple. It turns out however that after the initial enthusiasm fades, it’s not that simple. The idea was to get people to get healthier so I started with a simple enough step : Measure, become aware. As Tim Ferris mentions in his book, when you measure something, you can change it. All I wanted to do was get people to track whether or not they were exercising daily so that they could visualize it and become aware.
But after reading this article, I realized that the problem lay with the technology I chose. Using Google Spreadsheet was the most obvious solution but it was definitely not the most intuitive. I could send them a trigger asking them to track, but the steps they needed to take to go to gmail, log in, and fill out the spreadsheet made this very high ability. I need to change the medium I’m using.
All in all, Fogg’s ideas have immense clarity and gets me excited about behaviour change. Even with regards to my own health, I’ve been trying to lose about 8kgs for a long time now. I always start with this vague, open goal. Now, using Fogg’s ideas, all I’m starting with is tracking how much I exercise and what I eat. That’s all. One small tiny step.
Well, I was about to write a post very similar to Frankie’s, but to avoid redundancy in this thread, I’ll try to branch out a bit.
When I worked as a video editor the past few years, I had a quote on the white board in my office that said, “Incremental effort can achieve exponential results.” I kept it there to remind me that there wasn’t a quick leap to the finish line of a particular edit. Instead, there was a process involving small, calculated tasks that would eventually lead to a whole much greater than the sum of its parts.
What is so great about Fogg’s article here is that he has clearly outlined the small, calculated tasks necessary to achieve success in the world of Persuasive Technology. I’m beginning to think Fogg’s design steps expand far beyond Persuasive Tech and can be applied to practically any design situation.
Either way, reading Fogg’s work is seriously empowering in that you wonder how you managed to get by without knowing this stuff. As Fred mentioned, his articles themselves are agents for behavior change in that they manage to boost the reader’s feelings of self-efficacy when it comes to successfully executing this type of work. His final quote hammers this home by saying, “Many small successes create a foundation of talent and insight for achieving more ambitious goals.”
Is there much to say about this article? It’s a pretty nuts and bolts guide to the adoption of Fogg’s model in the design of persuasive systems. The key thing I took away from it is the insight that most people are incredibly optimistic when they design a persuasive system – they think that people will make significant changes simply because the capability for that change to be made exists. Fogg’s point that small, incremental changes – which can be measured and refined over time – can build to significant changes in behaviour is welcome, and is echoed in Karen Pryor’s work on positive reinforcement of small behaviours. One point that I maybe had a problem with was the direction to “imitate” examples of persuasive systems seen elsewhere – which is in my experience sometimes useful, but can also lead to stagnation and lack of understanding when constructing systems. People like Jakob Nielsen would advocate using design patterns likely to be autonomically interpreted by a user carrying out a scenario – but at some point breaking away from a pattern can lead to new, more fluid forms of interaction. I suppose there’s a time for adherence to pattern and a time for exploration – knowing which approach is best can be more difficult than Fogg makes out.
Fogg makes a compelling argument for designing simple systems that build towards more substantial goals. The 8 steps to his process are:
1. Choose a simple behavior to target
2. Choose a receptive audience
3. Find what prevents the target behavior
4. Choose a familiar technology challenge
5. Find relevant examples of persuasive technology
6. Imitate successful examples
7. Test and iterate quickly
8. Expand on success
As such, this process is many ways complements agile software development systems. These also put a heavy emphasis on iteration and moving from core ideas to less important ones. Given that technology has already enabled this type of innovation, it is wise to also focus on building on other people’s successes rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.
In practice, I think the earliest steps in the process are the hardest to do well. While many people talk about the substantial challenges facing this country and our broken health care system, it is still hard to build successful systems. This is in part due to the complex nature of any health care system as well as the realities of changing behaviors.
This is a practical to-do list to take into account when designing a behavior change. What is funny is that I realized that everything could be a behavior change. So I’m thinking that the difference is the way in which your phrase the problem, and as I see it, the eight steps proposed by Fogg could be turn into a business model. This reminds me of the “Design Squiggle” by Damien Newman from the firm Central. http://v2.centralstory.com/about/squiggle/ The design embodies the characteristics of the design process which includes: Research and Understand, follow be design business and model prototypes and ending with the implementation of the business model design.
This is another interesting Fogg read. I started to asked questions about the nature of persuasion. “what is persuasion? What makes us less/more persuadable” Is there a threshold or system that we can use to better understand. Some of the goals seem broad. “Yay, lets reduce stress!” But then the idea of small goals have a multiplying effect seems to come into play.
I think prototyping was a key element. Testing and designing quickly was my biggest takeaway from the Fogg. I like the idea that the design “is a process”. Breaking it down into understandable steps makes us more successful as designers of persuasive systems.
I really dig the BJ Fogg Kool-Aid. He’s my people. He gets it.
He makes a lot of great points including that the best designers are advocates of simplicity as well as getting those with a psychology background involved in evaluating successful examples is great idea – which I absolutely agree with despite being unable to stomach the academic literature put out by this discipline (as is seen in my response to Bandura’s article).
Needless to say, his greatest point is his emphasis on simplicity. Eliminating as many variables as possible in controlled model allows us to focus on real value and ensures future and scalable success.
You can tell he isn’t BS-ing because he practices what he preaches. He’s written the piece with simplicity in mind. Come on – before you made it past the introduction you know what he wanted to tell you already. If that’s not persuasive, I’m not sure what is.
Compare to Bandura… This is precisely why design thinking is needed in health care. Although I would go so far as to suggest that we have had the caliber of Bandura’s mind on the healthcare crisis as of yet – I’m lead to believe that there has been an opposite yet equally incoherent thought process applied. Approaching this whole area really can benefit from “The Fogg.”
More please.
looking back at last week’s behavioral change design challenge i realize i broke the cardinal rule of good design :: simplicity.
so, i wanted to re-design my experiment to focus on a specific audience (not myself) and to simplify the target behavior. following the 8-step design process fogg describes for behavioral change i began the following procedure ::
STEP 1 ::
Target Behavior ::
walk up the stairs
Target Behavior Specified ::
walk up the stairs once a day
STEP 2 ::
Audience ::
students at ITP; 20-something; early adopters
STEP 3 ::
Why aren’t they performing the target behavior? ::
Ability barriers ::
Time
Physical Effort
Social Deviance (crowds tend to migrate around the elevator entrance)
Non-Routine
Motivation elements ::
Pleasure/Pain
Hope/Fear
Acceptance/Rejection
Triggers ::
No spark or well-timed trigger
STEP 4 ::
Use a familiar technology ::
Audience is technological savvy
But experience must be immediate (barrier of adding more behaviors, ie downloading a mobile app, etc.)
STEP 5 ::
Find relevant examples
3 examples reaching target behavior ::
FitBit
Weight Watchers
Before/After photos
3 examples reaching target audience ::
Facebook
Instagram
Apple
3 examples using same technology ::
n/a (still choosing technology channel)
STEP 6 ::
Imitate successful examples
STEP 7 ::
Small rapid tests
STEP 8 ::
Expand on success
Creating Persuasive Technologies:
8steps process
From early studies with DIY health class, some of knowledge about design of successful persuasive system might be simple, specific, appropriate technology channel
use, precise restrict to targets, measurable, and targeting a small success,etc. This reading clearly explain how to approach a persuasive technology channel and establish a system for being succeed in today’s ubiquitous media era. Literally there are some progress to achieve the persuasive experience. Persuasive Technology Channels will suggest people to utilize a channel they choose and integrate other channel to encourage people to have another experience. This progress will motivate people do persuasive experiences. There are two concerning points of views when you design a persuasive products; 1. psychology of persuasion 2. persuasive technology by working with existing solution.
According to the current situation of lack of history of design persuasive technology, people need to adapt methods from other fields. Approaching a successful result from creating persuasive technologies needs to be understood that many trials and failures will follow. And we need to set up sort of track-able, measurable behavior changes. Thus, small, simple tests will leads to growing success eventually. With today’s technology the writer explains behavior changes through eight step design process.
1.choose a simple behavior to target. From experiences for design for changing behaviors project, I realize the simple, and easy way is the best method. People need to understand in a short time, and react right away. It will draw more people if the result and any kind of reaction people can see and measure after their behaviors.
2.choose a receptive audience. This process step is very important. Especially, someone are already familiar with the channel I chose, and be enthusiastic to do tasks. The target won’t be all type of people. They will must be specific targets.
3.Find what prevents the target behavior. Too much resistant, no motivation, or lack of abilities must be hard to aim. Over and over rebuild the target behavior will lead a success.
4.Choose a familiar technology channel. In terms of target characteristics, or specific channel use, we need to choose an appropriate way. Friendly, easy, simple test will affect to change target’s behavior. 1-4 steps may be mixed according to project’s circumstance.
5.Find relevant examples of persuasive technology. The solution must be various and has many options to meet a successful persuasive technology. There are already existing solutions and references, many professors persuade. Use them as references, and examples that reduce risks of creating persuasive technology for specific target.
6.Imitate successful examples. Sometime, personally, I feel guilty to imitate something for get a better results. However, this world is rotating and exchanging things around to proof, improve, and get better results. Imitation solutions already examined by professionals will make design progress fast and neat. For my team project, ‘Smile’, I believe that understanding psychological meanings and methods of getting smile and looking up some examples, already succeed in achieving to change people’s routine life to be happy.
7.Test and iterate quickly. I think this must be the next step for our smile project. In a reading, starting with fast and easy test and repeating test that assist designers to learn of designing for persuasion. With setting up low expectations for trials that keep designers motivated and courage themselves to go on the next stage. Try a measurable targeting behavior changes in a simple and fast trials repeatedly.
8.Expand on success. Expand target to wide scope of ones that can be a time matter, another target, or motivating something else with. Keep the base line of a targeting behavior and add more intensive, or progressive behaviors later.
Conclusively, Keep small, simple feature and goal to meet a successful, ambitious goals
I loved this article. I am disappointed that I have read very little of his material in the past. As an interaction designer this is gold. I always knew that focusing on simplicity was key but in makes much more sense to design something from a singular behavioral experience. Fogg lays this out in 8 clear steps:
1. Design for a simple behavior: “two word behavior”. Some behaviors seem simplistic but acutally very difficult to change.
2. Choose a receptive audience: Pick people who are likely to engage with your product.
3. What prevents the target behavior: What are the environmental impacts
4. Choose a familiar technology: Use technology that is accessible.
5. Find relevant examples for persuasive technology
6. Imitate successful examples: There are examples everywhere of products that work amazingly… Research them and use their techniques.
7. Test and iterate quickly
8. Expand on success.
The key is defining simplicity on the behavioral level first. I like how Fogg explains how even if a behavior sounds simplistic like: “stop smoking” it can be difficult to change the behavior. This article also reminded me of what our class is based on “the first order persuasion loop”. The first order loop is spot on for representing the cognitive process the user experiences while changing a behavior. It was nice to read about some techniques to help us in our design process to apply to the systems we develop for behavior change.
I think in this article was written to push the designer to understand how their end goal is decided by the different step. As designers we are forced to focus on the process to facilitate the end user experience. Fogg outlines the steps that are necessary for developing for and improving upon a design idea. The over arching theme I see for Foggs research is that everything is a behavior, and the world can be described in instances of behaviors; those behaviors can be shifted. As designers how can we incorporate this notion in every product we create?
BJ Fogg offers yet another useful and easy-to-understand framework, this time in the form of an eight step process for creating persuasive technologies. Complete with a diagram and good stories and examples of each step, it was an organized and clear look at a specific process to design experiences that influence people. I enjoy reading BJ Fogg’s work because he presents his ideas in a clear and simple manner and they are always very actionable.
Picking a receptive audience, choosing a simple behavior, and finding out what prevents the behavior are the steps we go through before deciding what the technology channel should be. Then we go through a process of finding relevant examples, adapting them to our situation, and going through quick iterations to learn what works best. Once we are successful, we can proceed to expand upon our success by continuing to experiment systematically with new variations – like doing science. The eight step process offers a concrete roadmap for a designer to follow – and that is awesome.
The overarching theme is that we can change the world as long as we focus on the small things first. Keep things simple and easy when starting out; go for the smallest possible change, build on the success of others, and expand only when we start seeing our own successes. That way we can learn from our experiences and have a solid foundation from which to grow. This is a valuable mindset that will continue to stay with me long after the class is over.
I found this reading much much more concise and informative than the book reading. I also appreciated all his insights into exceptions to rules and such. Again I took notes while reading in order to jot down main ideas.
THE EIGHT-STEP DESIGN PROCESS
persuasive technologies: tech that changes what we think and do (eg. prius)
hard to create entirely new persuasive techs (like it’s hard to create new behaviors)
- scale back ambitions of target behavior change
- achieve small successes first
- fail fast (prototype early)
” Large projects will succeed
when built on a foundation of many small, measurable successes”
8 step design process
1. Choose a simple behavior (leads to ambitious behaviors)
eg. reduce stress level –> stretch for 20 seconds
small goal can be: an approximation or a step to the larger goal
approx: stretching contributes to de-stressing
step: getting a papsmear = step 1
2. Choose a receptive audience
persuade someone not everyone
eg. pick someone who is likely to want to improve this behavior (eg. a blue behavior not a green one)
3. Find what prevents the target behavior (what’s the problem?)
lack of motivation, ability, trigger
4. Choose a familiar tech channel
unfamiliar tech = bad, unless it serves to increase motivation/ability
5. Find relevant examples of persuasive tech
is it successful?
Find 9 examples: 3 similar behavior, 3 similar audience, 3 tech channel
6. Imitate successful examples
Do not be afraid of doing something similar to another
Innovation comes after solid foundation (step
id ‘secret sauce’ – psych power
7. Test and iterate quickly
success correlated with trial #s
8. Expand on success
scale up: make behavior more difficult, expand to new audience, expand distribution
B.J Fogg’s work alone is a compelling reason to enter into behaviour persuasion. He’s taken a hitherto unmeasured area and gives it clear, simple rules. I realize how much I get stuck on the first and probably most important point: Start small. It goes against the very way that I think and work, and yet it is indisputably the most crucial aspect, and one that trips me up with regards to my personal and work goals. Echoes of Fogg’s idea can be found in other instances. For eg, Tim Brown of IDEO writes in his book, “Change by Design” that the prevailing mantra at IDEO is “ Fail often to succeed sooner “. Anthony Robbins is known to emphasize the idea of “Take Action, check if it’s working. If it is, keep refining. If it isn’t, change it. These ideas seem self-evident, but I realize in hindsight how little I’ve put them to use. For eg, in my current project, I find myself stuck with the behaviour change that I’ve chosen. I thought that asking people to track whether they’ve exercised or not that day on a spreadsheet would be fairly simple. It turns out however that after the initial enthusiasm fades, it’s not that simple. The idea was to get people to get healthier so I started with a simple enough step : Measure, become aware. As Tim Ferris mentions in his book, when you measure something, you can change it. All I wanted to do was get people to track whether or not they were exercising daily so that they could visualize it and become aware.
But after reading this article, I realized that the problem lay with the technology I chose. Using Google Spreadsheet was the most obvious solution but it was definitely not the most intuitive. I could send them a trigger asking them to track, but the steps they needed to take to go to gmail, log in, and fill out the spreadsheet made this very high ability. I need to change the medium I’m using.
All in all, Fogg’s ideas have immense clarity and gets me excited about behaviour change. Even with regards to my own health, I’ve been trying to lose about 8kgs for a long time now. I always start with this vague, open goal. Now, using Fogg’s ideas, all I’m starting with is tracking how much I exercise and what I eat. That’s all. One small tiny step.
Well, I was about to write a post very similar to Frankie’s, but to avoid redundancy in this thread, I’ll try to branch out a bit.
When I worked as a video editor the past few years, I had a quote on the white board in my office that said, “Incremental effort can achieve exponential results.” I kept it there to remind me that there wasn’t a quick leap to the finish line of a particular edit. Instead, there was a process involving small, calculated tasks that would eventually lead to a whole much greater than the sum of its parts.
What is so great about Fogg’s article here is that he has clearly outlined the small, calculated tasks necessary to achieve success in the world of Persuasive Technology. I’m beginning to think Fogg’s design steps expand far beyond Persuasive Tech and can be applied to practically any design situation.
Either way, reading Fogg’s work is seriously empowering in that you wonder how you managed to get by without knowing this stuff. As Fred mentioned, his articles themselves are agents for behavior change in that they manage to boost the reader’s feelings of self-efficacy when it comes to successfully executing this type of work. His final quote hammers this home by saying, “Many small successes create a foundation of talent and insight for achieving more ambitious goals.”
Is there much to say about this article? It’s a pretty nuts and bolts guide to the adoption of Fogg’s model in the design of persuasive systems. The key thing I took away from it is the insight that most people are incredibly optimistic when they design a persuasive system – they think that people will make significant changes simply because the capability for that change to be made exists. Fogg’s point that small, incremental changes – which can be measured and refined over time – can build to significant changes in behaviour is welcome, and is echoed in Karen Pryor’s work on positive reinforcement of small behaviours. One point that I maybe had a problem with was the direction to “imitate” examples of persuasive systems seen elsewhere – which is in my experience sometimes useful, but can also lead to stagnation and lack of understanding when constructing systems. People like Jakob Nielsen would advocate using design patterns likely to be autonomically interpreted by a user carrying out a scenario – but at some point breaking away from a pattern can lead to new, more fluid forms of interaction. I suppose there’s a time for adherence to pattern and a time for exploration – knowing which approach is best can be more difficult than Fogg makes out.
Fogg makes a compelling argument for designing simple systems that build towards more substantial goals. The 8 steps to his process are:
1. Choose a simple behavior to target
2. Choose a receptive audience
3. Find what prevents the target behavior
4. Choose a familiar technology challenge
5. Find relevant examples of persuasive technology
6. Imitate successful examples
7. Test and iterate quickly
8. Expand on success
As such, this process is many ways complements agile software development systems. These also put a heavy emphasis on iteration and moving from core ideas to less important ones. Given that technology has already enabled this type of innovation, it is wise to also focus on building on other people’s successes rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.
In practice, I think the earliest steps in the process are the hardest to do well. While many people talk about the substantial challenges facing this country and our broken health care system, it is still hard to build successful systems. This is in part due to the complex nature of any health care system as well as the realities of changing behaviors.
This is a practical to-do list to take into account when designing a behavior change. What is funny is that I realized that everything could be a behavior change. So I’m thinking that the difference is the way in which your phrase the problem, and as I see it, the eight steps proposed by Fogg could be turn into a business model. This reminds me of the “Design Squiggle” by Damien Newman from the firm Central. http://v2.centralstory.com/about/squiggle/ The design embodies the characteristics of the design process which includes: Research and Understand, follow be design business and model prototypes and ending with the implementation of the business model design.
This is another interesting Fogg read. I started to asked questions about the nature of persuasion. “what is persuasion? What makes us less/more persuadable” Is there a threshold or system that we can use to better understand. Some of the goals seem broad. “Yay, lets reduce stress!” But then the idea of small goals have a multiplying effect seems to come into play.
I think prototyping was a key element. Testing and designing quickly was my biggest takeaway from the Fogg. I like the idea that the design “is a process”. Breaking it down into understandable steps makes us more successful as designers of persuasive systems.