Behavioural Design - sometimes written as behavioral design in American English - is the discipline that combines psychology, design, technology and creativity to understand why people do what they do - and how to get them to change. It is a field rooted in behavioural economics, but with a strongly practical orientation. Behavioural Designers design choices, experiences and interventions that positively influence human behaviour.

In this article we provide a comprehensive introduction to Behavioural Design. You will learn what it is, how the method works, why ethics are crucial and how you can apply it in your work and personal life.

Behavioural Design is about influence

Everything in our daily lives revolves around behaviour change. Whether you work in marketing, policy, HR, product design or health - everywhere you are trying to get people moving. You want customers to choose a different product, employees to embrace a new way of working, citizens to live more sustainably, or voters to make a more considered choice.

Behavioural Design offers a pragmatic definition: Behavioural Designers combine psychology, design, technology and creative methods to understand why people do what they do, and through experimentation to figure out how to get them moving.

What distinguishes Behavioural Design from traditional approaches is its starting point. Instead of beginning with what you want to communicate or sell, you begin with the person. You immerse yourself in how people think, decide and act - and design from there.

Behavioural Design is a method

Behavioural Design is more than a collection of tricks or insights. It is a systematic method that builds on Design Thinking - the innovation method originally popularised by IDEO.

The Design Thinking process from IDEO as the basis for Behavioural Design
Design Thinking from IDEO: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test. Behavioural Design builds on this with behavioural psychology.

Design Thinking is about deeply understanding the user, redefining the problem, broadly ideating on solutions, building prototypes and testing with real people. Behavioural Design adds a crucial layer to this: the science of human behaviour.

Combine the method of Design Thinking with behavioural psychology and you get Design Thinking on Steroids.

Where Design Thinking helps you design innovative solutions, Behavioural Design helps you understand why people do or do not make certain choices - and how you can influence those choices.

The ethical side of Behavioural Design

Every powerful method comes with a responsibility. Knowledge about how the human brain works can also be misused. Think of so-called dark patterns in UX design: interfaces designed to mislead you, make you spend more or keep you scrolling longer than you want.

But dark patterns are just the tip of the iceberg. Knowledge of unconscious influence is deployed daily by populists who play on fear, by tech companies building addictive products and by businesses manipulating consumers.

At SUE we believe this is a problem best fought by sharing knowledge as widely as possible. Our mission is clear: use the superpower of behavioural psychology to help people make positive choices in work, life and play. Based on this mission we take on assignments - but we also regularly decline them.

The dark knowledge of influence is out in the open. Those who are best at it unfortunately often use it for the wrong ends. By training more people in ethical behavioural design, we shift that balance.

Behavioural Design is about designing choices

At its core, Behavioural Design is about one thing: designing choice situations. That sounds abstract, but it is everywhere. How do you present a menu, a form, a proposal or a store shelf? Every presentation of options is a choice architecture - and every choice architecture drives behaviour.

Multiple levels of influence

Influence operates at multiple levels. You can shape behaviour at the level of:

  1. Attention - How do you ensure people notice what you offer in the first place?
  2. Curiosity - How do you make them curious enough to look further?
  3. Perception - How do you influence how they perceive and evaluate something?
  4. Experience - How do you design an experience that reinforces the desired behaviour?
  5. Behaviour - How do you ensure they actually take the step?
  6. Habits - How do you turn one-time behaviour into a recurring pattern?

Thinking fast and slow

The scientific foundation of Behavioural Design comes largely from the work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Their research showed that people have two thinking systems: the fast, automatic System 1 and the slow, deliberate System 2.

The implication is enormous: the vast majority of our thinking - an estimated 98% - is unconscious and automatic. We think we are rational beings who occasionally make an emotional mistake, but it is precisely the opposite. We are emotional beings who occasionally do something rational.

Richard Thaler, who received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2017, translated this insight into practical applications. His concept of nudging - subtly steering choices without removing options - is one of the best-known applications of Behavioural Design.

Persuasion is a persistent mistake

One of the most important insights from behavioural science is that rational persuasion almost never works. Yet it is precisely what most organisations do: more arguments, more information, more explanation.

The problem is that this attempts to address System 2 - the slow, deliberate thinking system. But most decisions are made by System 1. The art is therefore not to persuade people, but to make it easy to do the right thing.

Behavioural Designers think outside-in

Most organisations think inside-out: they start with their own product, service or message and try to convince the world. Behavioural Designers flip this around. They think outside-in: they start with the person and work back to the solution from there.

The most important tool for this is the SUE Influence Framework™, which asks five core questions to understand the behaviour of your target group:

  1. Job-to-be-Done - What goal is someone trying to achieve in their life?
  2. Pains - What frustrations and pain points does someone experience in their current behaviour?
  3. Gains - What are the positive consequences of the desired behaviour?
  4. Anxieties - What fears, doubts and barriers hold someone back?
  5. Comforts - What habits keep someone locked in their current behaviour?

By mapping these forces - through interviews with your target group - you discover where the real opportunities for influence lie. Not in what you want to communicate, but in what moves them.

Behavioural Designers design interventions with the SWAC model

After using the Influence Framework to analyse what is going on inside people, the next step is: designing interventions that trigger the desired behaviour. For this we use the SWAC model at SUE - a proprietary framework from The Art of Designing Behaviour.

SWAC stands for four elements that together determine whether behaviour change succeeds:

SPARK × WANT × AGAIN × CAN. If any one element is zero, nothing happens.

The crucial insight of the SWAC model is that all four elements work multiplicatively. If one element is missing, the product is zero - regardless of how strong the other elements are. Someone can be enormously motivated (WANT), but if the behaviour is too difficult (CAN = 0), nothing happens.

Where do you start?

A common mistake is to start with motivation. Organisations think: if we just persuade people enough, they will do it. But practice shows that SPARK and CAN are almost always the biggest levers. Choosing the right moment and making the behaviour easy has more impact than trying harder to motivate people.

This is also precisely why knowledge of Cialdini's principles of persuasion (social proof, scarcity, reciprocity) only becomes valuable once you first understand at which moment to deploy them (SPARK), whether the behaviour is feasible (CAN) and how to sustain it (AGAIN).

Behavioural Designers research, prototype and test

One of the biggest pitfalls in behaviour change is that professionals think they already know how their target group thinks. But people are unpredictable. The logic with which people make decisions is not the rational logic we expect.

The psycho-logic is a different logic

Rory Sutherland describes beautifully in his book Alchemy how human behaviour is often irrational but not illogical. People make decisions based on context, emotion, habit and social pressure - not based on cost-benefit analyses.

This means that as a Behavioural Designer you must always do your own research. You cannot rely on assumptions about your target group, however well you think you know them. With six targeted interviews you will surface a wealth of insights. And you will be surprised by how much of what you thought you knew turns out to be mere projection.

After the research you build prototypes of your intervention and test them with real people. Only when an intervention has proven effect do you scale up. This cycle of researching, prototyping and testing is the core of the Behavioural Design method.

Applications of Behavioural Design

Behavioural Design is applicable in virtually every domain where people make choices. These are the six most important areas of application:

  1. Consumer behaviour - How do you influence purchase decisions, brand preference and customer loyalty? Think framing, price architecture and removing buying barriers.
  2. Community behaviour - How do you get people to actively participate in a community, give feedback or share content?
  3. Financial behaviour - How do you help people manage money better, save or make pension choices?
  4. Voter behaviour - How do you mobilise voters, how do you influence political campaigns in an ethical way?
  5. Personal behaviour - How do you change your own habits around health, productivity or wellbeing?
  6. Team behaviour - How do you create support for change, how do you improve collaboration and how do you reduce resistance?

Wherever people make choices, Behavioural Design can make the difference.

Get started with Behavioural Design yourself

Want to learn to apply Behavioural Design? There are various ways to start:

  1. Sign up for the newsletter - Every week one insight from behavioural science in 1.5 minutes of reading.
  2. Read the book - my book The Art of Designing Behaviour, co-authored with Tom de Bruyne, provides a complete introduction.
  3. Follow the Fundamentals Course - In two days you learn to apply the complete method, including the Influence Framework and designing interventions.
  4. Book a Behavioural Design Sprint - Want immediate results? In a sprint of 5 days you solve a concrete behavioural challenge with your team.
  5. Follow a Deep Dive - Deepen your knowledge in a specific theme such as nudging, persuasive writing or behaviour-driven marketing.
  6. Start reading - Explore our blog with dozens of articles on behavioural science in practice.

Conclusion

Behavioural Design is the discipline that makes behavioural science practically applicable. By combining what we know about how people think and decide with the creative methods of design thinking, you get an approach that actually works.

It always starts with the person: understanding what moves people, what holds them back, which habits are in the way and which fears need to be overcome. From there you design interventions that make the desired behaviour easy, attractive and logical.

Not by persuading with arguments, but by designing choices so that the right behaviour becomes the path of least resistance.