Hello there!
For the last 6 years, I have been actively involved in product development. One of the most unobvious is choosing the right processes to achieve the results that the product, service, and team are facing.
In IT product development, team processes are constantly transforming and changing. Teams grow and then can split into smaller teams, and different priorities and resource shortages can arise. So you have to be flexible and selective about the methods you choose to achieve each goal.
For example, when you make the first version of your product, the UX team focuses mainly on user needs. And you follow the classic scheme: need — solution. But in existing products containing many functionalities (which may conflict with each other because of clutter, or there is a need to remove some features because they become redundant or costly to the business) a proper development process is needed.
In this case, you need a development process that considers the user’s needs and the new business requirements. You need to introduce the user to the new functionality or retrain them. How do you build a process by which you can implement, test, and promote solutions that change user behavior?
Key methods and processes for the UX team
There are several key methodologies in the industry for building work in UX design teams. Among them I would single out:
- Agile UX
- Design Thinking
- User-Centered Design
- Lean UX
- Behavioral Design Process
Most of the techniques focus on a new product or new functionality. In this article, I will cover all of them, and will elaborate on the Behavioral Design Process, which I researched and think is great for implementing and adjusting user behavior to an existing and evolving product.
Before going on to describe the Behavioral Design Process, let’s look at each method again to understand the specifics.
1. Agile UX
You’ve probably worked with Agile — it’s one of the most popular services and application development processes many IT companies use.
The main purpose of Agile UX is to create working solutions in a short period, usually sprints of 1–4 weeks. But Agile process creates difficulties for UX specialists’ work as qualitative research may not fit into such a system.
Conditions to use:
- The products frequently get updated
- Need to deploy solutions as early as possible
- Need of ensuring that useful products are developed at all stages
2. Design Thinking
The main objective of Design Thinking is to introduce new products and services. It is first and foremost a way of exploring the target audience's needs through in-depth interviews.
The team then comes up with innovative products and services to meet the needs by creating and testing numerous prototypes.
One disadvantage of this method is that it is too structured and linear. But from a business perspective, it is a very cost-effective way to focus the UX team on user requests.
Conditions to use:
- Requires the introduction of a brand new product
- UX Team has a lot of resources to interview
- Ability to create and test prototypes
3. User-Centered Design
User-Centered Design is a design method in which the UX team strives to work with as accurate a baseline as possible to develop the optimum product or service design.
In UCD, you base your designs on a clear understanding of users, tasks, and the environment. The main goal is to explore and take into account the entire user experience. Thus, your project team should consist of people from different professional fields.
It is within this methodology that the creation of personas and classification by user portraits is used.
Conditions to use:
- Explicit understanding of users, tasks, and environments
- UX team includes interdisciplinary skills and perspectives
- Users able to participate throughout the development process
4. Lean UX
The key idea when using the Lean UX method is to come up with logical design hypotheses and build MVPs and prototypes based on them to make quick decisions.
Once you have your prototype, you can start testing your hypotheses and leaving only solutions that meet your objectives. With this method, you save development resources as much as possible and should be as critical as possible about the development paths you choose. In essence, you always have a choice: either "It works" or "It doesn't work".
This is a radical approach to user experience design. As a result, you develop faster and move through the core features in a more focused way.
Conditions to use:
- Already using Agile UX
- You are not focused on deliverables, but you have expertise
- Need to save development resources
5. Behavioral Design Process
Here we are at the method that will help us implement changes in user behavior. The best way to do this is to use a Behavioral Design Process.
And now I'm going to cover each step in detail. This method will help you determine step by step what behavioral changes you want to make, how to translate them into specific measurable metrics, and develop a strategy and test possible solutions.
1) Describe the situation
- Get all the true facts
- Identify the target audience
- Understand mental models
- Agree on vision and purpose
- Define constraints that limit potential solutions
- Summarize and document
2) Decide on an action list
- Agree on ideal behavioral outcomes
- Analyze current behavior
- Analyze context, motivation, situation variables
- Evaluate the current tool, website, product, and system
- Document an action list that will lead to more ideal behavioral outcomes
3) Design behavioral solutions
- Match the action list with possible tools, and strategies from the toolbox
- Design project solutions to achieve desired behavioral outcomes
- Document projects and initiatives
4) Test prototype
- Prototype project or initiative
- Test, measure, evaluate
- Iterate and revise
5) Implement and refine
- Implement solutions
- Place continuous improvement check-point
- Collect and evaluate improvement and performance data
- Refine by going back to the first step
Summary
These are quite specific steps, exactly what you can do to influence user behavior. The strength of this method is that we put measurable metrics into each step. We can cut off the unnecessary when we'd rather choose a specific action to guide the user.
This method has extensibility and flexibility for a wide variety of areas, not only for digital product development but also for services and physical products.
The flip side of the process is that there are unscrupulous marketing agencies that use the data they obtain and manipulate customer behavior to achieve high demand for products. Every researcher is responsible for the ethical and humane mission of their work. We can't support companies that create products based only on the principles of the hygiene economy and, as an example, force their users to unnecessarily provide personal data about their location and other private data.
We need more than just user insight to effectively influence user behavior change: we need a process that helps us find the right way to change user behavior and the right technique for a particular audience and situation. And now you can try to use Behavioral Design Process for your product or service.
I see my mission as promoting the idea that any product is created for the user. And by implementing changes, we improve the mechanics and help achieve success. Yes, you are not your user, but you can be the one to help him with his daily needs.
Bibliography and resources
- Albergotti, Reed. 2014. "Furor Erupts Over Facebook's Experiment on Users." Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2014.
- Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 2008. Experiments in Ethics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Ariely, Dan, Jason Hreha, and Kristen Berman. 2014. Hacking Human Nature for Good: A Practical Guide to Changing Human Behavior. Irrational Labs.
- Booth, Julie. 2019. "Assumption Slam: How Not to Make an A** out of U and ME." Medium, April 26, 2019
- Clear, James. 2012. "Identity-Based Habits: How to Actually Stick to Your Goals This Year." In Atomic Habits. James Clear Holdings LLC
- Goel, Vindu. 2014. "Facebook Tinkers With Users' Emotions in News Feed Experiment, Stirring Outcry." The New York Times, June 29, 2014
- Karlan, Dean, and Rebecca Mann, Jake Kendall, Rohini Pande, Tavneet Suri, and Jonathan Sinman. 2016. "Making Microfinance More Effective." Harvard Business Review, October 5, 2016.
- Kwon, Diana. 2020. "Near Real-Time Studies Look for Behavioral Measures Vital to Stopping Coronavirus." Scientific American, March 19, 2020.
- Miltenberger, Raymond G. 2011. Behavior Modification: Principles and Procedures. 5 ed. Australia; Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing.
- Shariat, Jonathan, and Cynthia Savard Saucier. 2017. Tragic Design: The Impact of Bad Product Design and How to Fix It. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media.
- Susan M. Weinschenk. 2020. 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter). New Riders; 2nd edition.
- Wallaert, Matt. 2019. Start at the End: How to Build Products That Create Change. New York: Portfolio (Penguin Random House)._
Illustrations by Dejan Bozic pr PureSolution, Iconfinder._
About the Author
Evgeny Skakunov, Product Designer with practice experience in IT / Fintech.
Working with specialized domains and contexts, complex interfaces, and process improvement.
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