This highlights some really important things to consider in creating behavior change interventions - there isn't one “user journey“ - as Amy said many times, personalization will matter (and we can have a whole other conversation on what personalization means). There may be a “dose“ effect for some people where they need to accumulate a certain understanding before any message works and it is more about the dose than the personalization (or not) of the most proximal message.
Promoting agency – people's ability to form intentions and to act on them freely – must become a primary objective for Behavioural Public Policy (BPP). Contemporary BPPs do not directly pursue this objective, which is problematic for many reasons. From an ethical perspective, goals like personal autonomy and individual freedom cannot be realised without nurturing citizens’ agency. From an efficacy standpoint, BPPs that override agency – for example, by activating automatic psychological processes – leave citizens ‘in the dark’, incapable of internalising and owning the process of behaviour change. This may contribute to non-persistent treatment effects, compensatory negative spillovers or psychological reactance and backfiring effects. In this paper, we argue agency-enhancing BPPs can alleviate these ethical and efficacy limitations to longer-lasting and meaningful behaviour change. We set out philosophical arguments to help us understand and conceptualise agency. Then, we review three alternative agency-enhancing behavioural frameworks: (1) boosts to enhance people's competences to make better decisions; (2) debiasing to encourage people to reduce the tendency for automatic, impulsive responses; and (3) nudge+ to enable citizens to think alongside nudges and evaluate them transparently. Using a multi-dimensional framework, we highlight differences in their workings, which offer comparative insights and complementarities in their use. We discuss limitations of agency-enhancing BPPs and map out future research directions.
Should a person describe what they look like during a virtual meeting or webinar?
Response # of respondents % of respondents
Yes 363 31.8%
No 779 68.2%
The majority (68.2%) of respondents do not prefer descriptions of appearances in online meetings.
How to sound like Zendesk
Our product is an extension of our brand and we want it to feel like Zendesk. We use visual design to shape what Zendesk looks like, and voice and tone to shape what Zendesk sounds like.
Anticipated regret can indeed be a powerful motivator. When you think about what you don’t want in the future—and the picture in your mind is unpleasant enough—it can influence the decisions you make right now.
While anticipated regret sometimes comes across as fearmongering, it can be done more artfully. In behavior change communications, we can apply the right dose of this strategy to prompt a person to action.
Story revolves around transformation and change, defined as the “Transformational journey of a human being.“
First type: A character changes drastically for the better, exemplified by “A Christmas Carol“ and “Groundhog Day.“
Second type: A character remains steadfast in their beliefs, changing the people around them instead.
Third type: A character fails to change or realizes the need to change too late, resulting in a tragedy.
The essence of a story is determined by its support of transformation, guiding what to include or exclude in the narrative.
Our latest capability “Ask Viamo Anything” is providing access to the latest AI technology to the digitally disconnected – at no cost to them. It was built and will soon be offered on the Viamo Platform. Ask Viamo Anything works on simple mobile phones without internet access. And because of its use of voice technology, it can even be used by people with low literacy — leapfrogging text-based approaches and truly democratizing access.
Could this guide us towards a structured approach for assessing the level of community involvement in SBC programmes? At the highest level, “Citizen Control“, communities independently lead programmes with full decision-making authority. “Delegated Power“ and “Partnership“ designate significant community influence on programme decisions, either through majority control or collaborative governance. In contrast, “Placation“, “Consultation“, and “Informing“ indicate lower degrees of participation, where community input may be sought but is not necessarily instrumental in shaping outcomes.
Notifications are extremely beneficial to users, but they often demand their attention at inappropriate moments. In this
paper we present an in-situ study of mobile interruptibility
focusing on the effect of cognitive and physical factors on
the response time and the disruption perceived from a notification. Through a mixed method of automated smartphone
logging and experience sampling we collected 10372 in-thewild notifications and 474 questionnaire responses on notification perception from 20 users. We found that the response
time and the perceived disruption from a notification can be
influenced by its presentation, alert type, sender-recipient relationship as well as the type, completion level and complexity of the task in which the user is engaged. We found that
even a notification that contains important or useful content
can cause disruption. Finally, we observe the substantial role
of the psychological traits of the individuals on the response
time and the disruption perceived from a notification.
In their landmark 1959 report often referenced in leadership theory, social psychologists John R. P. French and Bertram Raven pinpointed five bases of power:
Legitimate: when people perceive that your rank in a formal hierarchy—e.g., manager, CEO, or president—gives you the right to “prescribe” their behavior
Reward: when people perceive your ability to distribute rewards for completed tasks or met goals
Coercive: when people perceive your ability to distribute punishments and disincentives (the opposite of reward power)
Expert: when people perceive your special knowledge or expertise, which causes them to defer to your expertise
Referent: when people feel “oneness” with you or a desire to be like you, leading to their respect and admiration of you
Referent power is considered the most potent because it doesn’t require that a leader micromanage, use coercion, or reward to influence others. People follow a leader with referent power based on who the leader is and how they behave. According to French and Raven, referent power has the broadest range of influence of any power, allowing it to be leveraged on a large scale.
Results indicated that emotional shift messages generated more talk than single-valence messages because they elicited greater emotional intensity and deeper message processing.
Out of the 93 behavior change techniques that can be used, on average only 7 were chosen, and the most common were related to:
1. Feedback on behavior
2. Goal setting
3. Action planning
As the study says: “within the “Goals and Planning” BCT group, only 3 out of 9 BCTs were utilized.
Start with the Quick 2+1™ to find your answer.
The next phase is to trust your intuition to Label™ and Mirror™ the circumstances or dynamics that may have led to the confrontation. Then use a little Dynamic Silence™ to allow room for a response from the other side. Once they respond, use mirrors and labels to encourage them to keep talking and gather the information you need to get to the heart of the matter.
In my research, I focus on three things that ran through people’s minds when they were working toward something. These three things are:
inner thinking, thoughts, pondering, reasoning
emotional reactions, feelings, moods
guiding principles, personal rules
