Designing for Behavior Change, 2nd Edition

Chapter 10. Crafting the Intervention: Ability, Timing, Experience

My wife has a Fitbit—a small exercise tracker that hooks onto her clothing, displays progress on a screen, and sends over detailed information to a computer or smartphone.

The Fitbit does many things right to help encourage exercise. It automates two very annoying (and therefore action-inhibiting) parts of the exercise process: it automates the process of tracking how much exercise the person has had, and it automates uploading that information onto a computer or phone. Those are examples by shifting the burden of work from the user to the product (aka “cheating”).

The device also uses a number of other behavioral techniques to help people exercise. For example:

• It reminds people to exercise. It gives random Chatter messages on the screen; I still smile as I remember when I first saw the message Walk Me; that is, it provides a (funny) cue.

• It provides immediate and meaningful feedback. Shortly after my wife got it, I remember her looking at the screen and seeing she’d walked something like 9,945 steps. She just started running around the room, to break the 10,000-step threshold. That is, it creates urgency (Timing) by establishing a near-term goal—even if it’s arbitrary. Even though the benefits of exercise are long term and abstract, a 10,000-step goal is immediate and real in the present.

In the previous ...