Behavioral Design: An Overview

What is Behavioral Design (also known as Behavior Design)?

Behavioral Design is the practice of influencing people to do a desired behavior using behavioral science research and methods.

Just as a product designer uses different tools, techniques, and principles to create a product, a behavioral designer uses science-backed tools, techniques, and principles to get people to change their behavior.

Behavioral design draws on several fields:

1. Persuasive Technology (also known as Captology)

Persuasive Technology is a subfield of study that emphasizes utilizing technological tools and systems to create digital environments that guide and encourage users to adopt specific attitudes or behaviors. It was developed by BJ Fogg of Stanford University.

2. Psychology or Behavioral Psychology

Psychology explores the scientific study of the mind and behavior. Behavioral Psychology is a branch of psychology that focuses on the scientific study of observable behavior, particularly the role of environmental stimuli and consequences in shaping actions in humans and animals.

3. Behavioral Science

Behavioral Science is an interdisciplinary field that examines human and animal behavior through the integration of insights from psychology, sociology, anthropology, and other disciplines, focusing on the interactions and relationships between individuals and their environment to predict, understand, and influence behaviors.

4. Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is a multidisciplinary field that explores the design and use of computer technology, focusing on the interfaces between people and computers, and how to create intuitive, efficient, and user-friendly interactions that enhance user experience and satisfaction.

Behavioral design and behavior design are often used for this broad practice. Fogg Behavior Design is also the name of BJ Fogg's particular system. The name of a system should not be confused with the whole field or with independent evidence that every application will succeed.

What does a Behavioral Designer do?

Behavioral Designers analyze products, marketing campaigns, and other things that are supposed to change behavior, and determine what the behavioral blockers are. Based on this analysis, Behavioral Designers make science-backed recommendations for how the product can be changed in order to drive the desired behavior.

Here are some things that Behavioral Designers do:

• Behavioral Analysis: Analyze an existing product, marketing campaign, or deliverable with a focus on how it will influence human behavior.
• Wireframes: Create wireframes of designs that are likely to solve behavioral issues and influence behavior.
• UI Design: Create high fidelity designs that appropriately incorporate behavioral science principles.

To accomplish these tasks, Behavioral Designers use field-specific methods (like Behavioral Auditing), but also draw heavily from other disciplines, like Design Thinking, UX research, UX design, and Human Computer Interaction (HCI).

Is Behavioral Design the same as UX Design?

The two fields overlap significantly, but they are different. Behavioral Design can be thought of as UX design enriched with behavioral science principles.

Both fields use research. The useful distinction is the question being investigated: how people experience and use a design, and whether it supports the particular action and outcome intended. Individual practitioners often do both kinds of work.

However, Behavioral Designers also consult on non-product projects, such as marketing and HR initiatives.

How can you use behavioral design to build better products?

Behavioral Design is effective for improving existing products. However, it's not the most effective discipline for building better products from the ground up. This role is best served by Behavioral Strategy, which should ideally precede Behavioral Design. Behavioral Strategy focuses on ensuring that products are built around the right behaviors, often referred to as "Behavior Market Fit." If a product is built around behaviors that are sub-optimal or inappropriate for the target audience, it will likely fail, regardless of the quality of its UX or Behavioral Design.

If a project was initiated without a Behavioral Strategy, it's often necessary to start from scratch, undergoing a comprehensive Behavioral Strategy process.

Read the diagram

Understand the people and the problem they want to solve. Compare possible behaviors before designing a product. Then make a suitable behavior easier to perform. This is the author’s proposed design sequence, not a guarantee of effectiveness.

Sources: Behavioral Design: An Overview

A behavioral design example: make a service usable before adding reminders

Imagine a local repair service whose customers often miss the technician's visit. The team wants fewer wasted visits and more completed repairs. Its first idea is an app that customers must install and check each morning. A notification plan follows almost automatically.

But that sequence has skipped the important question: is checking another app the right behavior to ask of these customers? This is a hypothetical example. I would compare several ways to achieve the outcome before committing to the product.

Compare possible behaviors

Customers could confirm a visit in an app, reply to a text with a suitable time, or choose a narrow appointment window when they book. The app requires installation and ongoing attention. A text reply requires a usable phone and a message the customer understands. A booking window requires the service to keep a sufficiently predictable schedule. These are different demands on both the person and the business.

Suppose interviews and observation show that many customers cannot wait at home all day. They already receive reminders; remembering is not the main problem. In that setting, I would reject app installation as the first solution and investigate whether choosing a workable window would help. Better notification design cannot give a shift worker control over their schedule.

Use research to test the explanation

Examine missed visits, ask customers what happened, and watch people book an appointment. A customer who misunderstands the date needs something different from a customer whose employer changes their shift. Use those observations to build a prototype that lets people choose and change a window, then test whether they understand the options. The research-methods guide explains why an interview, usability test and controlled experiment provide different kinds of evidence.

Measure the repair, not just the reply

A feasible trial could compare the new booking arrangement with the existing service for eligible appointments. Define success before examining the results: completed repairs without another visit, missed appointments and time customers spend waiting. Track technician travel and scheduling costs too. A higher confirmation rate would be encouraging, but not enough if customers still miss the visit.

Keep the comparison fair. Seasonal demand, staffing changes or different service areas could distort an uncontrolled before-and-after comparison. If the new arrangement helps, examine whether the improvement persists and whether customers with less flexible schedules benefit. If it does not, return to the explanation or the behavior choice. A failed test is a reason to learn something, not to add another psychological trick.

Make the customer's interest part of the design

The service should explain what confirming means, provide a usable way to reschedule and avoid suggesting that a visit is guaranteed when it is not. Customers should not have to accept unrelated marketing to manage a repair. These choices follow from the purpose of the project: helping people obtain a repair, not extracting a click that looks good on a dashboard.

This example illustrates the selection-first approach behind Behavior Market Fit. It is a way to organize judgment and testing, not a claim that this invented service change has been proved to work.

Why should project and product managers care about behavioral science?

A product is only as successful as its ability to change or harness behavior. If people don't use a product, it might as well not exist.

If a product is built based on an accurate understanding of human behavior, it is far more likely to succeed than one that isn't. Thus, behavioral science research should inform all product decisions—especially strategic ones.

This is why Behavioral Design is gaining traction among professionals in project and product management. The insights this field offers into human behavior are increasingly becoming prerequisites for achieving conversion, engagement, and retention.

Behavioral Design is about understanding human behavior

Understanding human behavior is essential for effective behavior change. Over the years, the field of Behavioral Design has developed its own models to help practitioners quickly understand the behavioral issues in any given product or situation.

What are the 4 behavior models?

The Fogg Behavior Model

Created by BJ Fogg, founder of the Stanford Behavior Design Lab, this model breaks behavior down into three components.

The Behavioral State Model

This model has eight components and is tailored for more advanced practitioners. It includes cognitive and personality elements not present in the Fogg Behavior Model.

The Hooked Model

Note: this model has issues with scientific and empirical accuracy

This model was created by one of BJ Fogg's bootcamp students, Nir Eyal. It attempts to create a model that explains why some products become habit forming while others don't. However, this model has a variety of problems and is not supported by scientific research.

The COM-B Model

This framework focuses on three key elements—Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation. Though it offers insights into how behaviors form and can be influenced, it's generally too high-level and simplistic for practical application.

By utilizing these models, Behavioral Designers can identify the factors that may be inhibiting the desired user behavior for a specific product or project. Once these issues are understood, it becomes possible to develop solutions for each. These solutions can range from simple design tweaks to innovative approaches that require deeper thought and execution.

Using a model without mistaking it for an answer

COM-B can organize questions about capability, opportunity and motivation. In the repair example, a customer's inability to stay home may be an opportunity problem. That category does not reveal which appointment arrangement will solve it. The original Behaviour Change Wheel paper develops an organizing framework; it does not establish that applying the framework guarantees superior outcomes.

Fogg's model focuses attention on motivation, ability and a prompt coming together at the moment of action. It can help examine a missed confirmation when a customer wants to confirm and can do so. It does not replace research into why a proposed action is unsuitable. For the broader comparison, see behavior change models compared.

Behavioral Designers conduct research and change user behavior

Before creating behavior design interventions, it's necessary to undergo a research process to understand the behavioral and psychological dynamics at play.

During the research phase, the goal is to better understand:

• What users think
• Other behaviors users are engaging in
• What's easy and challenging for users
• Users' concerns and goals

There are various types of research studies that Behavioral Designers can employ, many borrowed from UX research, including:

• User interviewing
• Journey Mapping
• Task analysis
• Cognitive mapping
• Experience mapping
• Tree testing
• Card Sorting
• Diary Study

What are examples of Behavioral Design patterns?

In the UX design world, design patterns are routinely employed. These are established ways of constructing elements of the user interface that users will find familiar. Using design patterns ensures that the product is user-friendly. There's no need to further complicate matters by inventing new, non-standard UI elements that will likely confuse users.

In contrast, design patterns are less applicable in Behavioral Design. A quick way to assess the competency of a Behavioral Designer is to ask about their favorite Behavioral Design tactics or patterns. Skepticism is warranted if they provide an answer, as behavior change is context, user group, and situation-specific; there are virtually no "one-size-fits-all" approaches. Simplicity and social proof are common starting points, but even these need a specific reason to expect them to help.

Simplicity

The term 'Simplicity' signifies good usability or UX, but it is sometimes erroneously presented as unique to Behavioral Design. All materials related to the behavior in question should be simple and easy to understand. For example, a 20-field signup form should be as short as necessary. This is just good UX practice, not unique to Behavioral Design.

Social proof / pressure

Social proof directs attention to what other people do or approve of. It requires a truthful, relevant comparison. Telling customers that other people confirm appointments is unlikely to solve a scheduling conflict. A 2025 review of social-norms messages in health found that its small positive average did not survive the authors’ publication-bias adjustment. This does not test every use of social information, but it is a good reason to reject a universal social-proof recipe.

What are examples of Behavioral Design?

There are plenty of great examples of real-world Behavioral Design. Here are a couple of well known, public examples:

The Walmart Behavioral Science Unit

The Walmart Behavioral Science Team applied Behavioral Strategy and Behavioral Design to address large problems across the company, such as checkout design, online engagement, customer retention, and new store innovation. Their work on improving the Sam's Club new member experience and the initiative known as "Sam's Now" is well-documented and widely recognized.

Health behavior change at Humana

BJ Fogg and I collaborated with Humana to create the behavior change framework presented at the 2011 World Economic Forum in Davos. This foundational work taught the company how to think about behavior change and how to apply Behavioral Design to their various business initiatives.

What are the ethics of Behavioral Design?

My starting point is to help people do things they want to do but struggle with. That means understanding what they value and what makes the action difficult. A business metric is useful only insofar as it reflects the intended benefit; more clicks or purchases are not automatically better for the person. This is why most of the world's most valuable technology companies are building utilities: tools that solve recurring problems. For example:

• Google

  Google provides answers to people's questions and helps them find resources.

• Airbnb

  Airbnb offers reasonably priced and unique places to stay.

• Apple

  Apple designs computers and phones that solve daily problems like navigation and communication.

• Intuit

  Intuit develops software for financial planning and tax submission.

• Meta (Facebook)

  Meta (Facebook) enables people to keep in touch with friends and family.

• Microsoft

  Microsoft offers software that people can use to run their computers and companies.

Unethical Behavioral Design "hacks" are ineffective

As I've written before, things like "nudges" are woefully ineffective. It is not easy to change human behavior, and claims of reliable hacks that get people to act against their interests deserve skepticism. That skepticism does not remove the designer’s responsibility to explain options honestly and avoid creating unnecessary obstacles to refusal or cancellation. Things like loss aversion framing, while useful in some circumstances, tend to not make a big difference in behavior or decision making in the real world.

It seems as if people who have the least experience in this field make the biggest issue out of potential ethical concerns. Fortunately, the "behavioral hacks" that concern many of these people are ineffective in the real world. In my experience, it's nearly impossible to get people to sustainably do things they don't want to do. Thus, I believe that Behavioral Design is all about helping people do the things they want to do but struggle with. This is an ethical and valid practice.

How do you start a career in Behavioral Design?

The best way to start a career in behavioral design is by learning one of the following:

• User Interface (UI) design
• User Experience (UX) design
• Data science
• Development (computer programming)

Behavioral Design insights and tools are most useful when applied by core members of the product design and development team.

An academic background in the behavioral sciences is not necessary to be a good behavioral designer. In fact, an academic background in the behavioral sciences might be a liability. The behavioral sciences in general (and social psychology and behavioral economics in particular), have been in the middle of a large replication crisis. This means that a significant portion of the studies in these fields cannot be reproduced.

The reliability of a particular finding must be checked against its evidence and replications; a single percentage cannot describe every part of these fields.

What about Behavioral Design and product management?

Both product management and project management can benefit from an understanding of human behavior. While project management focuses on the logistics and timelines, product management zeroes in on the user's needs and desires, aiming to guide users toward specific behaviors.

In the realm of Behavioral Design, taking a systematic approach is crucial for crafting effective interventions. Project management serves as a helpful tool in this process, enabling teams to organize tasks and timelines efficiently as they create solutions designed to influence user behavior. This same structured approach can be beneficial for product managers as they develop design interventions tailored to influence user actions and encourage behavior change.

For a short practical diagnostic, use the behavior-design checklist.

When evaluating whether people can use a design, see the practical user-testing guide.

Looking to work with a Behavioral Designer (or Behavioral Strategist)?

If you don't know whether you should be working with a Behavioral Designer, you can click here to send me a note. I'll give you my honest take on whether it would be worthwhile.

If you know that you'd like to get Behavioral Design or Behavioral Strategy help, you can learn more about working with me here.