Normally, our clients ask for our help in cases where users don’t act in the manner that the company intended to.

‍

Some clients expect that a big change in KPIs will be achieved by a fairly small “behavioral garnish” - a minor reframing to the micro-copy, an additional notification at just the right time, an incentive at a key moment in the flow, and so on.

In essence, they think that the food they made is good and it just lacks the visual appeal necessary for people to eat it.

‍

While there are some situations where those things are true, our experience teaches us that those scenarios are few and far between. When we get called in, there’s usually something deeper going on - something that cannot be solved simply by adding a few “edible flowers” or “fresh herbs” on top of an already prepared dish.

‍

When we encounter situations like that, we try to get to the core drivers of the current behavior - to understand why people act in the way that they do today. Usually, upon doing so, quite critical “behavioral flaws” emerge. At this point we try, together with the client, to tailor the product or marketing to tackle those mis-matches in hopes of creating the user behavior that the company seeks to accomplish.

‍

But there’s another way, a better, more effective and efficient way - “cooking with the behavioral perspective”. It means that during the process of product development there’s an individual at the table who has an intimate understanding of how user mindsets, context, capabilities, biases and so on shape behavior in the real world.

This alternative way of doing things creates a more robust human-centered product strategy that in turn drives the desired user behavior within your product.

‍

This method increases the chances of a successful product launch and reduces the chances of needing to rebuild the product when eventually business KPIs aren’t met.

‍

So next time you’re building a product or feature that you suspect might ask users for a not so trivial behavior, consider adding the behavioral perspective to your recipe. The result won’t just look better, it’ll taste better too.

‍