Changing behaviour is difficult. Here's some help!

Pippa Updated by Pippa

Want to change behaviour? Follow some best practices from the Behavioural Sciences.

Designing impactful messaging is a challenge. But insights from the behavioural sciences can help guide you to create more influential content.

Here are some resources that can help you get started:

EAST: Four Simple Ways to Apply Behavioural Insights from the Behavioural Insights Team

Make it Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely (EAST). This framework is based on four simple principles that are based on the Behavioural Insights Team’s own work and the wider academic literature. While not an exhaustive list of all the ways you can change behaviour, this framework is a fantastic tool to get you started. Download the Publication here.

BCT Taxonomy App

This app is an easy-to-navigate and fully searchable version of the Behaviour Change Technique Taxonomy v1 (BCTTv1) published by Michie et al. (2013). Comprising 93 behaviour change techniques (BCTs) with labels, definitions and examples, organised into 16 groupings to increase speed of use, the taxonomy is a valuable tool for anyone involved in designing, reporting or evaluating interventions to change behaviour. Find the app here: Android and Apple.

Fogg Behavioral Model by BJ Fogg

Developed by Dr BJ Fogg of the Stanford Behavior Design Lab, the Fogg Behavior Model shows that three elements must converge at the same moment for a behavior to occur: Motivation, Ability, and a Prompt. Understanding how these elements work and how to influence them will help you design great content to get your users to change their behaviour.

While behavioural science can provide us with some great insight into what techniques can work, don't forget that the only way to really know whether these techniques work for your audience, in your context is to test them yourself.

Find this overwhelming? Don't worry, we're developing Playbooks that you can use in your service that use these behavioural insights to drive behaviour change that we'll launch in Turn soon. Watch this space!

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