Choice Architecture and Achieving Goals with Apps

The Apple Store offers nearly 2 million apps for download worldwide. Many promise to be personal assistants that help people sleep better, eat healthier, read more, or learn a new skill. But with so many different offerings, how do apps keep users coming back and achieving their goals? Through the art of persuasive design, app designers successfully utilize behavioral science principles to nudge users to do certain actions. 

Nudging is one of the most common ways science is used to influence behavior.  It refers to any influential change in your environment that doesn’t “forbid options or significantly change economic incentives” (Behavioral Economics). 

Receiving bonus points or hearing a celebratory ding after making a selection are examples of nudging in apps that can influence user actions. These features fall under the app’s greater choice architecture, which is the structure app designers create to set the stage for how users navigate the app (Behavioral Economics). There are various nudging techniques, or ways the choice architects design app features, that steer user behavior. 

Users respond to these techniques positively when they feel accomplished or generally satisfied. Apps that help build confidence through positive feedback, relatedness through social engagement, and self-actualization through behavior achievement strengthen the user’s positive associations with the activity and keep them coming back to the app. This idea is called the self-determination theory, which highlights that competence, relatedness, and self-actualization are the three basic psychological needs necessary to maintain psychological well-being during an activity (Behavioral Economics). 

Duolingo, a language learning app, is adept at nudging users to do certain actions and achieve their language goals. It is one of the largest language learning apps in the world with 9.6 million daily active users in 2022 (Statista). Using various nudging techniques, Duolingo keeps users feeling accomplished while satisfying their need for self-determination. 

Framing, a common nudging technique, works by highlighting either positive or negative attributes of a choice to make that choice appealing or unattractive. Duolingo frames the difficult process of language acquisition as an entertaining and rewarding game. User success in the app is measured by his or her ability to play every day to maintain their growing streak.  Duolingo reframed learning and practice into a streak-keeping game that relies on our natural competitiveness. 

The app also utilizes another technique called defaults, an interaction that is already set in the design and doesn’t require the user to make a decision. Upon starting a new language, content is arranged in trees that gradually stack lesson plans. This allows users to focus on language acquisition without worrying about the sequencing of content. This way, they aren’t confused about what they should learn next (Berman, 2021). 

Ultimately, Duolingo is an excellent example of how apps can convince people to achieve positive goals. But not all apps are designed in the best interest of the user. Sometimes persuasive design convinces users to continue bad behaviors, like making purchases (ie. Candy Crush) or perpetuating negative self-image through unrealistic beauty filters (ie. Snapchat). 

App design paves the way for a lot of behavioral design thinking. When it comes to using digital assets to influence user behavior, nudging is a great tool. But nudging techniques can be influential outside of the digital environment, influencing product, system, and service design. In future blogs, we will dive deeper into this, and see how behavioral design can and has influenced people across different sectors and environments.

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Writing By:

Odiraa Okala, Public Health Innovation Analyst 

Odiraa is a Master of Public Health Candidate at Saint Louis University in Missouri. He has a concentration in Behavioral Science and Health Education and has extensive experience in public policy and human-centered design thinking.

Nia-Simone Eccleston, Design Strategist Apprentice

Nia-Simone Eccleston is a 2022 graduate of the Georgia Tech Industrial Design program, BSc. She has many years of experience in journalistic writing and has contributed as a design researcher for various social impact projects.

Illustrations and infographic by Nia-Simone Eccleston

Behavioral Science and Tech Pilots: Google Glass Case Study

Two decades after Marty McFly Jr. wore video glasses in Back to the Future II, Silicon Valley hoped to change the face of eyewear. In 2014, Google piloted its first edition of smart eyeglasses. This wearable technology presents information, like weather alerts and text messages, directly in the user’s field of vision using augmented reality (Tech Target). 

Because it was a pilot and not a formal launch, the Google team focused on gaining insights into how the consumer interacted with the product, rather than having a perfected version of the glasses at that point (Bentley University).  This was a completely revolutionary technology that the public had not interacted with before, so Google needed to understand how their glasses could fit into people’s lives. This is where behavioral science became integral to the product launch.

“Behavioral science – from cognitive psychology, to behavioral economics, to social psychology – offers a framework to understand the impact that context and cues have on people’s decision making. The greatest innovation in the world will fail if it is not tailored to the context in which it will be used” (Kantar). 

It was pretty clear that soon after the glasses were released that Google had missed the mark. Consumers didn’t really understand how the glasses were supposed to be an improvement from the capabilities of their smartphones. The high-tech “phone for your face” was reminiscent of a Star Trek look that many considered geeky and unflattering to wear in public. Additionally, businesses and organizations worried that the glasses would record everything– a privacy concern for hospitals, casinos, and other places where confidentiality is important (Bentley University). 

Pilots are meant to have issues. Many times these issues translate to insights that the designers can iterate on to create a better and more useful product. By no means was the Google glass a total failure, but if certain behavioral design strategies were implemented at the beginning of the design process, the Google Glass team might have been able to realize the flaws in the product before spending millions of dollars in the piloting phase.

Based on behavioral science principles, we determined two important considerations necessary for the beginning stages of developing any innovation, whether it be a product, service, or system. 

1. Identify the problem you are trying to solve. 

Instead of identifying the problem that Google glass would solve, Google let the users define how the glasses could benefit their lives. When Google released the glasses, they asked consumers to “submit photographs and videos that communicated who they were and what they would do with their Google Glass.” (Market Week).  

Users didn’t respond well to this because they were overwhelmed by the number of options they had. This occurrence is studied in behavioral science and is referred to as choice overload or decision paralysis. When faced with too many options, users actually have a more difficult time choosing anything (The Decision Lab). In the minds of many consumers, having countless choices about what problem the glasses could solve actually ended up being a problem unto itself. 

2. Identify the target audience

In addition to not explaining what the glasses were for, the target audience also wasn’t clear.  According to marketing expert Laura Lake for The Balance Small Business, a target audience is the “demographic of people most likely to be interested in a company's product or service.” 

Google’s first round of testing was initially for software developers. Later on it was opened up to consumers that Google specifically recruited because they had won their contest for the coolest uses of the Google Glass (Market Week). Essentially, Google artificially created a target audience rather than discovering one.

While creating an audience was a deliberate marketing strategy, it likely introduced selection bias. Selection bias is the tendency for researchers to choose who their user group is, and “is usually associated with research where the selection of participants isn’t random” (Institute for Work and Health). If they had organically identified a target audience by doing an initial test on a random user group, Google could have more easily seen how the broad range of audiences responded to the glasses and chosen the most appropriate audience to design for. 

Conclusion

If you feel like these considerations are basic design-thinking principles, you are exactly right! We aren’t reinventing the wheel here, these considerations are popular because they work. Think of them as a launching point to position your offering in context to your user before committing extensive time and money to the project. 

Large companies like Google are not infallible, which demonstrates that even the most powerful technology still relies on the fundamentals of behavioral science in order to be successful in the market.  There is still a lot to be understood about where behavioral science fits into the design process. In the next blog, we will explore the focused and intentional use of behavioral design to achieve positive user outcomes. Be on the lookout for more content as we continue the series!

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Writing By:

Nia-Simone Eccleston, Design Strategist Apprentice

Nia-Simone Eccleston is a 2022 graduate of the Georgia Tech Industrial Design program, BSc. She has many years of experience in journalistic writing and has contributed as a design researcher for various social impact projects.

Odiraa Okala, Public Health Innovation Analyst 

Odiraa is a Master of Public Health Candidate at Saint Louis University in Missouri. He has a concentration in Behavioral Science and Health Education and has extensive experience in public policy and human-centered design thinking.

Introducing: Behavioral Science and Innovation

In our work supporting client innovation, we have seen great ideas fall flat because the design and implementation failed to address user reactions to the solution and, more importantly, how the solution would fit into their daily lives.  From technology startups to government departments, the importance of understanding human behavior is paramount to creating a solution that people actually want and will reliably use. 

Some companies have gotten increasingly good at determining what makes people change their behavior. Research around human decision-making has enabled them to produce products and services with real and sustained value for the end-user, encouraging positive behaviors such as eating healthier or reading more. Conversely, this research can be used to convince consumers to buy products or services that encourage negative behaviors, such as fast-food consumption or prolonged social media use. 

This research is called behavioral science. Properly defined, it refers to the study of human behavior through the use of “systematic experimentation and observation” (Chicago Booth).

This series is going to explore behavioral science as it pertains to innovative technology and strategy. As an impact agency, we are always looking for examples of innovative ways to approach a problem. Innovation, in the OSB definition, is actionable progress. Here at OSB, we stress the importance of finding the smallest, most viable element of a possible solution and testing it, iterating on that opportunity until we have something worthwhile. 

At OSB, we never claim to be subject matter experts, and we refer to behavioral scientists and researchers for the principles that inform our work. Throughout the series, we want to emphasize how anyone can draw from the insights of behavioral science and apply them to their own projects. 

Understanding human decision-making allows us to maximize the positive impact and value of a project. Under the umbrella of behavioral science exists behavioral psychology, economics, and design. In our series, we will be focusing on behavioral economics and behavioral design, the pillars that most impact our work. Their definitions are listed below.

Behavioral economics: the study of choices and how people make them in a world with limited resources, or scarcity (SUE Behavioral Design). 

Behavioral design:  “the systematic understanding of how people think and how they make decisions. This understanding forms the basis of designing interventions that lead to behavioral change” (SUE Behavioral Design). 

Throughout the series, we will provide case studies and examples that bridge the gap between behavioral science and innovation, focusing on how economics and design are pivotal to innovative thinking. 

We are excited to cover a range of topics that help push the conversation about the complexity of human behavior. If at any point in the series you have any questions, feel free to send us an email at hello@orangesparkleball.com

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Writing By:

Nia-Simone Eccleston, Design Strategist Apprentice

Nia-Simone Eccleston is a 2022 graduate of the Georgia Tech Industrial Design program, BSc. She has many years of experience in journalistic writing and has contributed as a design researcher for various social impact projects.

Odiraa Okala, Public Health Innovation Analyst 

Odiraa is a Master of Public Health Candidate at Saint Louis University in Missouri. He has a concentration in Behavioral Science and Health Education and has extensive experience in public policy and human-centered design thinking.