Using behavioral science to improve your product | Kristen Berman (Irrational Labs)
Kristen Berman, CEO and co-founder of Irrational Labs, discusses how behavioral science helps companies build better products. She shares insights on human psychology, common biases, and real-life case studies like TikTok and One Medical to drive engagement and behavior change.
Deep Dive Analysis
17 Topic Outline
Introduction to Irrational Labs and Behavioral Science
Understanding Behavioral Economics and Behavioral Design
Fintech Budgeting Experiment: Counterintuitive Results
When Increasing Friction Can Boost Conversion
Kristen Berman's Journey into Behavioral Economics
The 3B Framework for Behavior Change
Addressing Cognitive Barriers in Product Design
Designing for Immediate User Benefits
Ethical Considerations: Incentives and Exploitation
Case Study: Reducing Misinformation on TikTok
Behavioral Research and Problem-Solving Strategies
Case Study: Increasing Doctor Appointments at One Medical
General Rules for Improving Product Flows
The Concept of 'Right for Wrong' Motivation
Getting Started with Behavioral Design Principles
Behavioral Design Bootcamp Overview
Lightning Round: Books, Podcasts, and Influencers
9 Key Concepts
Behavioral Economics
This field combines psychology and economics, recognizing that people make decisions with emotion, are present-biased, and follow social norms, but do so in predictable ways. Understanding these patterns allows for intentional behavior change.
Behavioral Design
This practice uses insights from behavioral economics and psychology to apply them to real-world problems. It involves designing products and services that effectively influence user behavior and drive engagement.
Behavioral Diagnosis
A detailed process, akin to a journey map on steroids, where every single step a user takes to achieve a desired behavior is mapped out. This helps identify the specific psychologies driving decisions at each step, revealing what people actually do versus what they say they will do.
3B Framework
A model for behavior change that summarizes key psychologies for product managers and marketers. It involves defining the specific 'Behavior' to change, identifying and reducing 'Barriers' (logistical and cognitive), and increasing 'Benefits' (especially immediate ones).
Present Bias
The human tendency to prioritize one's current needs and desires over future ones. This means that for people to take action, they often need an immediate reason or benefit, even if the long-term advantages are clear.
Uncertainty Aversion
A cognitive barrier where individuals tend to avoid making decisions or seek alternative options when faced with uncertain outcomes. This often leads to inaction or choosing a perceived 'safer' path.
Status Quo Effect
A cognitive barrier reflecting the tendency for people to stick with their current state or default option. This is because it often represents the path of least resistance, making it difficult to motivate them to do something different.
Completion Bias
A psychological tendency where people are motivated to finish tasks or sequences. This bias drives satisfaction from checking off items, seeing progress, or reaching the end of a process.
Right for Wrong
A concept in behavioral design where people are motivated to perform a desired behavior (the 'right thing') for an immediate, often unrelated, incentive (the 'wrong reason'), rather than solely for the intrinsic or long-term benefits.
9 Questions Answered
Behavioral economics combines psychology and economics, recognizing that people make decisions with emotion, present bias, and social norms, but in predictable ways, which allows for understanding and changing behavior.
Behavioral design uses insights from psychology and behavioral economics to apply them to real-world problems, helping companies design products and services that effectively change user behavior and drive engagement.
Budgeting features often fail because the behavior required (reducing spend) involves too many difficult steps and cognitive effort, making it unlikely users will adhere to it consistently, as revealed by a behavioral diagnosis.
Yes, sometimes increasing friction by asking users engaging questions can increase conversion. These questions make users think about the product's benefits, increasing their motivation to complete the flow.
The 3B framework guides behavior change by first defining the specific 'Behavior' to target, then identifying and reducing 'Barriers' (logistical and cognitive) to that behavior, and finally increasing the 'Benefits', particularly immediate ones, to motivate action.
Ethical design hinges on incentives; product teams should set KPIs and incentives focused on customer outcomes and behaviors, rather than just short-term metrics, and increase the duration of incentives to encourage long-term customer benefit.
By introducing friction at the point of sharing, such as adding a label to unverified content and displaying a 'Are you sure?' pop-up, platforms can slow users down and prompt them to reconsider their decision, thereby reducing misinformation shares.
'Right for wrong' refers to motivating people to perform a desired behavior (the 'right thing') by providing an immediate, often unrelated, incentive (the 'wrong reason'), rather than relying solely on the long-term, intrinsic benefits.
Teams can begin by conducting a workshop to define the 'uncomfortably specific behavior' they want to change, and then perform a 'behavioral diagnosis' to map out every detailed step of that behavior and identify underlying psychologies.
24 Actionable Insights
1. Define Specific Target Behavior
When aiming for behavior change, define the target behavior with “uncomfortably specific” detail, focusing on post-login actions rather than just login, to ensure clear objectives.
2. Perform Behavioral Diagnosis
Conduct a detailed “behavioral diagnosis” by mapping every user step with screenshots and identifying the underlying psychologies at play to understand actual behavior and pinpoint intervention opportunities.
3. Redesign Environment for Behavior
Understand that behavior change comes from altering actions and redesigning your environment, not just setting goals, to effectively drive new habits.
4. Understand Predictable Human Behavior
Learn how people make decisions with emotion, present bias, and social norms in predictable ways to design effective behavior change interventions.
5. Align Incentives to Behavior
Set team incentives and KPIs on specific customer behaviors that align with positive customer outcomes to ensure product development is customer-centric and avoids negative practices.
6. Highlight Immediate Benefits
To drive user action, highlight and integrate immediate benefits into products and features, recognizing that present bias makes current rewards more motivating than future ones.
7. Reduce Logistical & Cognitive Barriers
Systematically identify and reduce both logistical (e.g., form fields) and cognitive barriers (e.g., uncertainty, status quo) to simplify the desired behavior for users.
8. Utilize Default Options
Make desired behaviors the default option, especially for complex actions like saving, to significantly increase adoption by making it the path of least resistance.
9. Create Simple Rules of Thumb
Help users make decisions easier by creating simple rules of thumb, like “I don’t take Lyft on weekdays,” to reduce cognitive effort and increase adherence to desired behaviors.
10. Make Benefits Concrete & Immediate
Ensure users immediately experience and understand your product’s benefits by making them concrete and tangible, rather than abstract, to show how it fits into their lives.
11. Skepticism for Complex Features
If a user-requested feature, like budgeting, requires many difficult steps, be skeptical of its effectiveness and conduct experiments, as it may not change the desired behavior.
12. Add Friction to Reduce Action
To reduce unwanted behaviors, introduce friction by adding steps or prompts (e.g., “Are you sure?”) that slow users down and encourage reconsideration.
13. Ask Benefit-Oriented Questions
In signup flows, add easy questions that make users think about the product’s benefits, increasing their motivation to complete the flow and boosting conversion.
14. Avoid Hard Open-Ended Questions
Do not ask difficult, open-ended questions in user flows, as they create high friction and significantly decrease conversion; opt for easy, multiple-choice formats instead.
15. Combine Benefits with Setup
Engage users by asking questions that combine product benefits with setup choices, implicitly showcasing capabilities while guiding them through configuration.
16. Resume User Progress
For long user flows, send reminders to re-engage dropped users and ensure they are returned to their exact last point of progress to reduce friction and increase completion.
17. Reduce User Choice
Decrease the number of options presented to users, such as recommending a single choice or limiting available selections, to reduce cognitive load and improve decision-making and conversion.
18. Leverage Social Norms
Use social norms by informing users that others are performing a desired action, leveraging the “following the herd” bias to motivate their own behavior.
19. Motivate “Right for Wrong”
Encourage desired user behaviors by providing immediate, often superficial, “wrong reasons” (e.g., clearing an error message, getting a social reward) that act as powerful motivators.
20. Utilize Deadlines as a Gift
Implement deadlines to help users prioritize and complete desired actions, as this tactic consistently increases engagement and conversion by providing a clear impetus.
21. Conduct Literature Review First
Before tackling a new problem, conduct a thorough literature review using resources like Google Scholar to learn from existing research and avoid redundant efforts.
22. Test Interventions Relatively
When testing product changes, always compare multiple options against each other rather than evaluating a single option, to understand which design most effectively drives desired behavior.
23. Extend Incentive Duration
Increase the duration of incentives (e.g., annual instead of quarterly) to promote long-term thinking and decisions that align with the best interests of both the company and its consumers.
24. Interviews for Culture Fit
Conduct interviews to evaluate a candidate’s affinity and culture fit, but use skill assessments and trials as the primary tools for predicting actual job performance.
8 Key Quotes
But the good news is that we do these things in predictable ways. And once you understand how and why people behave, you can start to change it.
Kristen Berman
Sometimes any kind of work that we put on the user, we should be skeptical. We have to really prove that it's worth their time and then, you know, measure if they actually do it.
Kristen Berman
When you ask a question, you can insert an idea into someone's head. You can get them thinking about something different.
Kristen Berman
It's not enough to have a goal. It's like, it's not enough. You actually need to redesign your environment to change your behavior.
Kristen Berman
I like to say kind of, we are what we measure and it really matters what you measure.
Kristen Berman
When you want to get somebody to do something more, you make it easier. When you want someone to do something less, you make it... Put up barriers.
Kristen Berman
Deadlines are a gift, right? You're just helping people kind of prioritize this.
Kristen Berman
Behavior is contextual. So, you know, why we are religious about testing is because it's hard to drag and drop from different contexts.
Kristen Berman
2 Protocols
Behavioral Design Process for Problem Solving (Irrational Labs)
Kristen Berman- Conduct a literature review to understand existing research and what has worked or not worked for similar problems.
- Formulate a hypothesis based on the literature review and generate approximately 30 different ways to implement it.
- Conduct quantitative research by testing multiple variations (e.g., 5 different pop-up versions) with a large user group (e.g., 1000+ users) using platforms like Prolific, measuring relative effectiveness rather than just user preference.
- Select the most promising interventions to test in the actual product (e.g., two conditions plus a control).
- Launch the intervention in the product and measure its impact.
Applying Behavioral Design Principles for Product Teams
Kristen Berman- Define the Behavior: Conduct a workshop with your team to define the 'uncomfortably specific behavior' you want to change, ensuring everyone aligns on this specific action.
- Perform a Behavioral Diagnosis: Map out every single detailed step a user takes to get to the desired behavior change. This can involve creating a deck of 200-300 screenshots for existing products, overlaying the psychologies driving people at each step.
- Diagnose and Design Interventions: Use the insights from the behavioral diagnosis to brainstorm and design interventions that reduce identified barriers and enhance immediate benefits.