I consider myself really lucky to have learned so much about the power of behavioral science in product design at both Opower and HelloWallet. In fact, our Chief Behavioral Scientist at HelloWallet, Dr. Stephen Wendel, wrote a book on applying behavioral science to software products. We used the framework he created to improve our financial wellness products, so I spoke about it last year at an Action Design Austin Meetup. Here is a crash course summarizing one way to use behavioral science to encourage users of your product to get the most out of it
Knowing that people wouldn't use his framework if they didn't remember it, Steve came up with an easy-to-remember acronym and visual for it, CREATE:
Let's look at each in more detail using two real-world product examples: one where I took the action, and one where I didn't.
I use LinkedIn for a lot of purposes, mostly to learn more about new people I'm meeting, but also to stay up to date on professional news and product-related content.
Cue
I saw this on the home screen of my phone:
Reaction
"Oh man, better check what's happening on LinkedIn!"
Evaluation
"I like the content on LinkedIn - it's usually interesting and relevant. I'm sure this time will be no different."
Ability Check
"I definitely have the ability to open the app - all I need to do is tap on the icon."
Time Pressure
"I'm sure nothing is that urgent but sometimes there are interesting trending product management topics or news. I should see if that's the case."
Experience
"Let's see - oh, this person has a new job, I got a new connection request and my old friend sent me a message. Well, that was a productive use of 2 minutes."
What Happened?
This is actually an interesting example, because over time I realized that there was nothing urgent about the LinkedIn content I was reading, especially when I started to see notifications saying someone I don't know posted new content to a LinkedIn product management group. A month or so ago, I disabled push notifications on the LinkedIn app. However, I still check it regularly because it's on the home screen of my phone. So now the cue is just seeing the app icon, not the notification count on the icon.
I recently stayed at a HomeAway property during a vacation in San Diego. A few days after I got home, this happened.
Cue
I got this email:
Reaction
"Ugh create a profile?! I thought I already did that when I booked this place. This seems like a lot of work."
Evaluation
"If we use HomeAway again for our next vacation, it would be good to have a 5-star rating on my profile. But I don't know when the next time we'll rent a house is, and it's usually not more than once a year."
Ability Check
"I'm not sure if I can create a profile on my phone. Or if I have the time to do this right now - it will probably take at least 5 minutes."
Time Pressure
"Dammit, it says this link will only last for a limited time."
Experience
"OK, it's been 4 days, maybe I should do this now. Dang, it says the link is no longer valid. Oh well, whatever."
What Happened?
I would say I fell out of the funnel at the Evaluation phase, although I did notice their attempt to make this urgent under the CTA button. In this case, I didn't take the action because I didn't feel like the benefits (having a 5-star rating) outweighed the costs (time to create a profile). For what it's worth, I did actually take the action they wanted me to - click on the link to create a profile. But I couldn't complete it because they (arbitrarily?) invalidated the link after a day or two - perhaps an example where creating urgency failed to help them achieve the objective of having me create a profile so I'd be more likely to think about using HomeAway the next time we need to rent a place on vacation.
A few things to keep in mind if you do try to use this framework:
In case you'd like to see more from the actual Meetup talk, here are some additional materials: