Do you know the “active ingredients” in the solutions you provide to your customers or employees?

Image taken from my Behavior Design Basics course

If you build a solution for a customer or an employee, you need to know what that solution is comprised of, otherwise how can you know what is working and what is not working? (and what to fix)

This is where the Behavior Change Techniques Taxonomy can help you and your team think through what “ingredients” or components of the solution should and should not be included.

These 93 techniques include categories such as:

-Goals and Planning
-Feedback and Monitoring
-Social Support
-Shaping Knowledge
-Comparison of Behavior
-Associations
-Reward and Threat
-Identity
-Self-Belief

These are really important things to think about because they can be used to help design the right solutions and save you from chasing the shiny wrong thing.

Do note, that these are techniques, they are not what your final design is going to look like, but they are there to help guide those who are designing solutions, so they make sure they include them.

Now, you need to also know how to translate a BCT into a design — for example:

You find that Goal Setting (a behavior change technique) is a component you want to include.

How do you design for that goal-setting scenario?

You could take a few different routes:

1. You decide the goal (you may take away autonomy here)
2. You let the person decide the goal (they may not know how to choose a goal)
3. You combine and give some guidance as well as some freedom

Which is best? It depends really on what you are trying to achieve, and what the context is, but it is super important and it matters.

I just finished some sessions with a team and they were able to ideate using the Behavior Change Techniques and found some interesting concepts that we will be expanding and designing on.

I believe it is important for the teams to get comfortable using the BCTs and really think about the solutions they could be developing to solve their challenges.

I have been working on services and products for a long time, and I have to say that this way of working is by far the most outcome-driven way I have so far come across.

If your company wants to get started with a behavior change project or if you want to learn the basics of behavioral science — get in touch!

P.s If you need help enabling Behavior Change to enhance your customer and employee experiences have a look at my Behavior Design Basics Course —  It’s a self-paced online course and gives you a practical understanding of how to add Behavior Science to your projects.

Robert