Bi-weekly meetings with us to help you detect or unravel behavioral problems your product is facing and align the stakeholders' expectations. We will look at your available usage data, your development backlog, and academic bibliography to prepare a meeting that will get us working on a particular issue.

By the end of the two hours, you should have actionable feedback to create changes (often in the form of experiments) to your product. There will be a consensus between stakeholders on the current most significant problem to solve, the development priorities, and the results of previous experiments.

A week before the meeting, one member of your team (usually your PM or PO) will propose a theme or problem to solve on your product usage or development path. If no theme is proposed by that time, we will take the time to review your data (if available) and present a theme ourselves. We will have a short meeting to get an introduction of the subject, receive the materials, or to help you brainstorm and prioritize problems in your product

We will prepare a meeting to showcase the problem and present concepts and ideas that might inspire solutions. This meeting will use different dynamics to get all stakeholders to think about the problem under a behavioral lens and develop a possible solution to implement in your product so it can be measured. In further meetings, we will take the time to review the impact of these interventions.

The service is available as a monthly retainer (biweekly meetings) or single meeting: 

         1000 USD + taxes per month.
         600 USD + taxes per single meeting

Work on your product's problems from a behavioral perspective

Ingenious

Consultation

Most of our actions have costs and benefits at different time points. Some actions have immediate benefits and future costs: watching another episode of that series we love now and leaving the chores for later, taking on debts to please ourselves and then paying interest, or pretending that the doctor did not alert us about the sugar levels in the last checkup, keeping up a diet rich in sugar and carbohydrates. Other actions have immediate costs and future benefits: running 5k, going to all your medical check-ups, or studying hard for an important test. Immediate rewards seem disproportionately higher than future rewards. This phenomenon is known as time discount.

Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash

The fact is, we value current benefits more than future ones. Psychologists and behavioral economists call this peculiarity of human behavior present bias or impulsivity, something that happens to all of us. If present bias were the only way to make decisions, we will always choose to enjoy immediately rewarding activities now and save costs for later. Of course, when the time comes to decide once more we would postpone the costs again. And so on and on. But we know that there are ways to escape present bias. Let’s see one way that happens.

Behavioral economists distinguish between people who are aware that future benefits are less attractive, and those who assume that when the time comes, will be able to bear the costs. The former are called "sophisticates" and the latter "naivetes." Everyone suffers from present bias, but the former group is aware of it. For this reason, the sophisticated sometimes choose to restrict their future selves so that they can no longer indulge themselves.

A commitment device is a formal or informal contract that has some cost in the present and that we assume in order to put limits on our future actions. The cost can be mostly psychological or economic. Psychological cost means that breaking the contract will bring guilt or shame. For example, we promise our partner that we will not throw vegetables in the trash during the next month. We brush our teeth early to avoid snacking later, or we drink water before going to bed to make sure we will get up early in the morning. 

Economic costs may or may not be monetary. Professors at some universities offer a course format that forces students to turn in assignments on time (and if they don't make it, grades will be punished) instead of being able to defer turnarounds until the last day. Buying a bitter-tasting nail polish costs some money, and we do this to avoid falling into the habit of biting our nails. At the extreme of the spectrum, there are companies that receive money that is only paid back if the objective we have set is met within the term we define. If we can't keep our word, they donate the money. These forms of commitment with an associated economic cost are known as hard commitments.

Although the distinction between sophisticated and naivete is theoretical, field studies show that only a small portion of people agree to use commitment devices. And other studies show that they are not foolproof. Let’s go over a couple of examples that address these points.

In one field experiment, a group of 2000 smokers was offered to open an account where they could transfer a desired amount of money every month. If on the sixth month they passed a urine test for nicotine, they would be returned the money, otherwise, money would be forfeited to charity. Only 11 % of those offered the product accepted to open the account. People who were offered the product were overall more likely to quit smoking (about 5 percentage points more likely). Those who deposited money more often or in bigger amounts had even greater chances of success. Even though these numbers show that just a small proportion of smokers want to accept a hard commitment device to stop smoking, these values aren’t bad compared to other cessation products. 

Soft commitments can be achieved in the absence of monetary transactions. In a study carried to evaluate the effect of public commitment on weight loss , participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: no commitment, short term or long term (the weekly weights of the participants of these two latter groups were publicly displayed for half or all the treatment period). As in the previous study, the experimental groups showed better outcomes. In these cases, while people in the control group were able to achieve a weight loss corresponding to 90% of their goal, people in the experimental groups were able, on average, to fully achieve their goal. Interestingly, the effect depended on a psychological trait known as susceptibility to normative influence. That is, the more you care about what others think, the more effective the public commitment is.

We still have a lot to learn in order to design better commitments. And even thogugh they are not bulletproof, commitments are an interesting option to include in the behavioral designer toolbox. 

Pay now or pay later

now or

later?

We expect this system to do more than get actionable data of the children, enhance the visibility of social worker actions and share the good news (including the small wins). This should motivate social workers and reduce their burnout

Helping children by helping social workers do their job

Ieladeinu

our children

From Tinder to a "Marriage app," our process helped meet at Chabad understand their strengths and needs to create a unique product that will get people married. 

How do you design a Marriage app instead of a dating app?

Dating

Marriage

If we want to learn about Gamification, what best than studying what people that make games? Chris Crawford is a legendary game designer who has come up with this constructivist definition of a game:

Chris Crawford's definition of game and Gamification.

We have been helping researchers develop the technological tools they need for more than eight years. We won't lie to you: we have seen some grant applications succeed, and many fail. But every time that happened, we learned something new.

We have condensed all our insights into this toolkit designed to help researchers integrate technological solutions into their grant applications.

Toolkit for including digital products in your grant application

How can a product designer use conscious design to affect behavior? Let me introduce you to one of our enemies, the harmful behavior that produces joy. Smoking, drinking, watching tv,  cheating, you name it... In my practice, I call them Sirens.

SIRENS: In Classical Mythology, a monster part women and a part birds known to lure sailors to destruction using their seductive singing to crash the boats into the rocks.

A Siren is a temptation that appeals to our primitive self even when we recognize them as prejudicial to ourselves. This is one of the most obvious behavior problems we all can relate to. When we sit down and reflect on the actions, the things we deem do not correlate with what we end up doing in everyday life. Our rational, cold thinking self cannot keep our irrational part in line, and we end up taking some actions we bowed not to do.

The brain dual system theory can explain this phenomenon.  It states that we have two functioning systems in our brain, a rational conscious self in charge of planning and logic and an automatic system that seeks to satisfy the immediate needs and keeps us functioning (if you haven't heard about this one, go to the source). Our conscient system is expensive to use, so our body only uses it when it's strictly necessary. 

Luckily, classical Mythology also teaches us how to deal with sirens. 

When returning from the Trojan war, as told by Homer in the Odyssey, Ulysses escaped the siren lure using behavioral design. When approaching the islands where sirens dwell, aware of the danger they propose to the ship and their crewmates but not willing to lose the chance to savor the Siren's song, Ulysses devised a plan. He instructs his men to tie him to the mast, ordering them to ignore whatever he may say while under the sway of the spell, and order them to stuff their ears with beeswax to dampen all sounds. When the sirens sing their irresistible song, Ulysses fights to follow them to certain death but cannot do so, thanks to the actions he took earlier.

Using his rational thinking Ulysses restrain himself, knowing that an irrational version of himself won't be able to fight the temptation of the sirens. This same strategy has been used to design products that allow you to make pacts with yourself and help you keep them. One of my favorites and one of the most literal takes on this strategy is K Safe, a box that only opens after some time has passed.

Another ancient strategy to deal with this problem is using an amulet to help you drive the sirens away. An amulet is a magical small piece of jewelry that protects the wearer against a particular evil, danger, or disease. 

Unfortunately, magic is not a force that can be relied on, but you can use an object to make your rational system pop out of sleep and help you remind your logical decision. It does not to be tangible, for me when I stopped smoking because my wife was pregnant, was the thought of becoming a dad. 

To choose your amulet, you should be aware of how to wake your rational side effectively. System 2 (rational) is awaked by the unexpected or powerful stimuli, so choosing something you really dislike or especially bright could work better. Most famously, Mementos Mori is a charm that reminds the user that they are mortal and usually depicts skulls and bones.

I haven't seen any product design following this strategy, so I have worked on a design for a physical product that uses this concept as a base, but it is still not commercially available. If you are interested, let me know.

There are times when an amulet is not enough, and there is no possible way to restrain yourself ahead of time. In those cases, we use the help of other people to help us be better. Jane McGonigal's SuperBetter has a strong component of peer support. In Superbetter, you recruit allies (friends, family, and community) who help you keep on track while improving your quality of life.

If you really want to be controlled by your peers, offer them a reward for catching you not keeping your promise. Let's say I want to run every Tuesday; I can tell my friend that if I don't show up to run with him, I must pay him ten bucks. Next time I want to skip a day, I will have more motivation to show up and a penalty of money and pride if I fail to do so, and most importantly, somebody to force you to be true to your commitments.

A commitment device is how we call these strategies as a whole when you restrict yourself, modify your environment, or allow others to take punitive actions to help you achieve your goals. I tried to show you some ideas on how a designer could use these things to get people to change. Do you have any commitments your users want to do, but they fail to stick to them? Let us know!

Original lousier version at http://nachoparietti.com/the-sirens/ (2016)

The Sirens: Product design strategies that get users to keep their commitments.

This half a day course is designed to introduce an organization into the world of behavioral design. It will allow your collaborators to identify potential problems that can be resolved using this field and create simple (but effective) changes to your product or service.

Our introduction covers three principal models to think from a Behavioral perspective. These models, proposed initially for behavioral economics, are the base to design interventions. We will also share our way of combining these three into a methodology that creates better products.

The second part of the course is track-dependent. The organization must choose one of the following paths or develop one specifically for the case. Each track provides further information relevant to a particular subject and includes a group exercise to help the team apply what they have learned.

How to define a MVP using behavioral design - Start up / Spin off

How to get people to act using messages- Governments / Large Organizations

Behavioral design for Research projects. - Universities / NGO's

We will conduct an interview with one of the organization's stakeholders to survey some of the team's problems. Together we will craft a custom syllabus for the day, including a custom exercise based on your organization's issues.

Custom track (4hrs course + planning with stakeholder)

$2500 + $80 per participant

The course is 100% remote and can be attended up to 15 people in one instance.

Introduce your organization into the world of behavioral design.

Behavioral

Introduction

The goal of this track is to help the entrepreneur decide where to to focus their effort based on the behaviors he is trying to create on the different actors that interact with the product.

During this workshop the audience will learn to use a set of models to discover the priority list of a minimum viable product. Using examples during the course the attendee will learn to:

Find the behaviors that allow the product to grow, nurture and reproduce.

At the end of this course a start up or spin off project will be able to follow a method that focus on what matters, driving the behaviors that are crucial for product success.

How to define a MVP using behavioral design

Start up

Spin off

The pandemic brought many challenges for public policy design and implementation. One the government of Colombia faced was to promote that the beneficiaries of Ingreso Solidario opened digital accounts to operate with their benefits without leaving their homes. 

An IADB (Inter-American Development Bank) team, lead by Bridget Hoffmann PhD and Diego Alejandro Vera Cossio Phd, asked us to help them to produce SMS and scripts based on Behavioral Science.

The program nudged beneficiaries into opening digital accounts while stressing the importance of staying at home during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

To do so, we merged choose-your-own-adventure games scripting and literature research on factors that drive compliance with covid prevention measures.

The result was a series of scripts built on the concept of architecture of choice, straightforward to follow, and very convincing. We also created a series of text messages to notify the users before the first phone call and follow-up after opening their accounts.

We hope this small action prevented some unnecessary covid infections in Colombia and that similar scripts can be used to avoid cases in other sites.

How do you prevent Covid relief beneficiaries of queuing in the bank?

Colombia

IADB

Denver Health is one of the most important medical centers in the United States.Thousands of people flock annually waiting for the most appropriate solutions to recover their health and live better. But every medical treatment is a human decision and can be inaccurate, so Denver Health had to innovate.

 How to push medical staff to address change and ensure the quality of life of Denver Health patients? 

Although  doctors know a lot about medicine, they are humans and can not remember  everything. Many times that leads to misdiagnosis. That's why they  joined ingenious and designed an Official Guide in Denver that  accompanies them step by step in diagnosis so that it is accurate and  nurtured by the best practices of all doctors, providing support,  accuracy and information to ensure the quality of life of their  patients.

Denver Health also opened the tool to the whole  population, giving back to the community the work we do for other  clinics or private users to use and nurture the knowledge collected by  Denver Health staff.

How to influence opioid prescriptions given by doctors?

Denver

Health

We helped the IADB (Inter-American Development Bank), Uruguay’s Public Health System (ASSE) and three other government agencies (IM, AGESIC, Cancer Committee) to develop a process to carry out research for the adoption of a new HPV (human papillomavirus) test to screen underserved communities for cervical cancer. This study  was lead by IADB country specialist in healthcare Mario Sanchez

We worked with a broad team of researchers to optimize processes while retaining the scientific value of the study. Our participation helped select and craft tools and protocols to aid the collection of data and overcome any difficulties that may arise in the experience, not related to the study, but that could have hampered its objectives. 

As part of the project we wrote a technical note and a blog post published by the IADB.

A process to carry out research for the adoption of a new HPV test

More testing

save lifes

The CHOICES model was designed for face-to-face administration by trained staff in clinical or community settings. However, scarce AIAN(American Indians or Alaskan Natives) community resources often preclude the delivery of even brief preventive interventions. Alternatively, mHealth interventions are proving expeditious in delivering behavioral change to those facing barriers to access.

This is why a team of researchers of CAIANH (Colorado School of Public Health) led by Carol Kaufman, Ph.D Michelle Sarche, Ph.D. and Umit Shrestha, Ph.D. have set to the task of  develop a technological adaptation of an Alcohol exposed pregnancy preventive intervention for use with American Indian and Alaska Native young women. WYSE is an app that aids the delivery of information and questionnaires to the target population while recording the data in an anonymous and secure manner. 

Creating a flexible platform for evolving content.

Project content and the development of the application was meant to run in parallel, so it was crucial that the product design of the solution was not dependent on the content it would contain. This meant the creation of a backend where researchers could create and edit the screens that would be shown to the users. This tool also incorporated conditional branching logic that affected what screens are seen by users, depending on past questions, the terms recognized using AI models on text fields inputted by the users and which one of the experiment arms the user has been selected to (control or experimental). The degree of flexibility of the resulting platform allowed for the new content to be incorporated into the app with little to no modification.

How do you digitize a method to prevent alcohol exposed pregnancies?

WYSE

CHOICES

Planning Advance Care Together (PACT),  a Cornell University project awarded a NCI R01/R37 Merit grant, mobile health (mHealth) application under the leadership of Weill Cornell Medicine (link). PACT will utilize mHealth technology to provide empirically-based features to meet the patient’s need to incorporate loved ones into the Advanced Care Planning (ACP) decision-making process. 

The app takes the form of a familiar “To Do” list. Each item includes a relevant question for the patient to answer. These answers are in turn used to populate a series of legal templates that the patient can use as a base to discuss the terms of his end of life decisions with a personal attorney.

The user can decide to ask the opinions of loved ones on some of the questions and add questions of their own. Involving family and friends asking them feedback is meant to provide the patient with fresh insights on his end of life arrangements and to help families and friend understand and respect the rationale behind each decision

Whenever a question is answered the user is asked to explain in a short paragraph why he has selected this option. This will be shared with the users that have input feedback (either on meetings or directly) and the system will ask the user if he wants to share it with others. The objective of this mechanism is to share the rationale behind each decision.

Creating a Pact with your family and friends.

Whenever a decision is made, the patient is asked to explain the rationale behind his decision so that when the time comes there is clear information for the group to act on. Similarly, when a companion is asked for feedback he is required to check a check-box that states that regardless of the final decision it will be accepted and respected.

We expect that a large proportion of the users will ignore the process because they don’t want to deal with their future. For this reason, when the app has not interacted in some time the app will ask one friend or family member if everything is ok. If everything is ok, the app will kindly ask them to talk to their loved ones about the importance of filling the documents. In case it doesn't it will send an email to all family and friends reminding them of all decisions the user has shared with them.

Design for end of life planning - Cornell University

Planning Advance Care Together

PACT

To take the lead on Behavioral design and create new methodologies to craft products means to be involved in the advancement of the fields that supports it. For this reason, we have been in touch with academia since our origins, and we even have partnered with researchers to create our own research. 

During these collaborations we found out that often researchers needed to translate models of behavioral change from theory into a product, and we have a knack for understanding their needs. Since then, we have been aiding in the development of products and prototypes designed to assist the  executions of research grants in several institutions of relevance.

Inter American development Bank (IADB - BID)

Coronavirus relief aid - BID Washington/Colombia

How to influence on physicians opioids prescriptions?

Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)

Examples of product design for researchers

Helping researchers

change behavior

Social workers in the child welfare sector deal with several challenges: a stressful job filled with heart breaking stories, coordination with several parties and organisms, field work away from the children they strive to generate a brighter future for, long hours that lead to job-family imbalance. They need much more than just a case managing system. They need a tool that helps them be efficient in their job while taking care of them.

Makes it easy to create new documents if working out of the office. Users can dictate and the system will automatically find relevant data.

Manages the data in the backend, making it easy to find whatever the user needs in just a few clicks.

Provides traceability of the information, so no more lost data or missing information.

To see the science behind the scenes, take a look here.

The result is a tool that social workers and managers love! 

How we created an App for Child Protections Services

Design products

based on behaviors

The game is part of a research project carried out by the University of Colorado ACCORDS mHealth & Informatics Core. A team led by Susan Moore Phd, Bethany Kwan Phd, Joy Waughtal and Pooja Mehta Phd. set sail to find a way to reduce a need for a new liver transplant for liver transplantees.

Young liver transplantees who usually don’t remember their interventions are dependent on their parents to keep their medicine schedule on track. Researchers theorize that when these youngsters become independent from their parents they start to forget to take their pills, which could explain the increase in hospitalizations.

MedVenture is a survival game for cell phones where you help a castaway survive a chaotic journey while keeping your pill taking on track. The game and the study targets liver transplantees between 16 and 25 years of age from diverse backgrounds.

Based on a series of insights and proven strategies, Ingenious worked with the  team of researchers to design an experience that incorporated every aspect into a single unified experience that the patients can use to learn how to keep up with their meds schedule.

A game to change behavior

MedVenture

pill tracking

 TWBA\ contacted us to build a crazy idea for their client ADIDAS, energize Luis Suarez's shoes for the 2018 Russia World Cup.  The goal was to get people to feel like they had transfer their energy and good vibes to the actual shoes the striker was going to use on game day.

We help design a fully immersive experience where people were able to pass their energy directly to Luis Suarez's shoes.  Watch the video!

Energia para Suarez

How do you get people to be part of  an elite footballer world cup?

Camara

TWBA\

E-commerce is an ever expanding business across the global marketplace. As stores and retailers expand their selling channels, managing that diversification can be troublesome. That’s where metacommerce tools come in handy: they centralize business operations and integrate with other managing tools.

When Astroselling came to us, they had a great set of features and functionalities to deliver value. Yet, they were having retention issues. Why?

We used our Behavioral Insights Assessment to analyze the platform. A BI is a theoretical approach (that can be boosted with data analysis) that takes into account when and how features are presented, to discover what the users actually get from your product. Take a look at the science behind BI.

-Many key features had triggering issues, so they were outside the user’s attention span

- Certain features were presented at the wrong time, making them hard to use 

-Motivation in key steps was curtailed by long, cumbersome processes. 

-There were issues with labels, making it non intuitive to try out some functionalities.

These insights resulted in a product reformulation that is now growing quickly!

How we helped an e-commerce platform with retention issues

Insights

Oil change is fundamental for the maintenance of engines. In southeast Asia, there are plenty of old motorcycles. Maintenance in these motorcycles is essential to keep them running. Unfortunately, many motorcyclists forget to periodically change oil, or they simply ignore that oil must be changed.

Nowadays motorbikes owners must remember to check the odometer and notice that a certain amount of kilometers have been traveled. This method is prone to failures, users forget when was the last oil change and periodically check the oil level for leakages.

Oil Meter

Let see this problem from the perspective of the BJ Fogg behavioral model. In this model each time a user will execute a behavior humans take into consideration three factors, Ability, Motivation, and a trigger that forces the computation. If there is enough ability and motivation when the trigger fires then the behavior will be performed. 

In this case we the problem does not deal with ability, which would be represented by factors like money and time to make an oil change. Nor it has to do with motivation to keep the motorbike running and in good shape. The problem is a triggering problem, how to prompt the rider that an oil change is needed. 

The original problem was a triggering problem (the user does not notice that the oil needs to be changed) in some dated motorcycles.

The new problem is that in most vehicles the triggering mechanism for an oil change is dated.

This changes the scope of the problem and makes us question the objective public for this product.

The design has two distinct sections, the cap, and the dipstick. The cap is hollow and contains most of the electronics of the device, insulated from the heat of the oil tank using a thermo isolant that separates both sections. Here is placed the piezoelectric sensor that measures the vibration of the engine along with the microprocessor that deals with the logic required to notify the user. On the top face it contains a button that allows interactions with the user:

reset the timer when oil has been changed

Visually notify how close is the next alarm.

In the same place, there is a LED light that is used to communicate with the user such as

The dipstick has a float that when is not submerged in oil, notifies an alarm to the user until detected. Note that this alert will be processed by the cap only when the engine is off, due to engine movement, temperature, and safety conditions.

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Irrationalities

People are not doing the things I expect.

I’m planning a product or a new version.

I want to learn more about Behavioral Design.

Check our behavioral cards!