Presented at Impact: 2018 Canadian Service Design Conference, November 29 & 30, 2018 (Montreal, Quebec) What people say, what people do and what people say they do are three different things. Behavioural Economics (or B.E.) is the scientific study of psychological, emotional and cognitive factors on economic decisions, the belief that human beings are not entirely rational in their decision making. B.E. provides service designers with a new way of measuring the impact of our designs, prototypes and ideas by expanding our understanding of the problem through a deep exploration of behavioural barriers, as well as providing us with new ways of measuring the impact of our prototypes through a rigorous testing methodology.

1. Why Can’t We B.E
Friends?

2. Why Can’t We BEEE Friends?

3. A little about us
ADA LE, PhD
Senior Associate
Behaviour Economics
BEworks
@adale
PATRICK BACH
Director,
Service Design
CIBC
@bachpat
Trust

4. We’ve Dabbled…

5. “No one wants Service Design.
They want their problem solved”
–
Jakob Schneider, SDGC18 // Author ‘This is Service Design Doing’

7. All services are fundamentally about placing
bets on Human Behaviour.
Not as easy as Carrot + Stick = Change

8. What People Say
What People Do
What People Say They Do

9. What is Behavioural Economics?

10. Behavioral Economics is the scientific study of
human behaviour and offers powerful new ways to
create and measure change
Bounded Rationality:
Our decisions are constrained by time, mental energy,
and limited willpower
Heuristics and Biases:
We make shortcuts in our decision-making process.
Use mental rules of thumb called heuristics, but we are
vulnerable to biases

11. Behavioural Economics – Nudging Behaviour

12. Why do some countries have higher organ donation rates?

14. FACT:
Human beings are inherently
biased and don’t always make
logical decisions.

15. FACT:
(Most) Designers are ill-equipped
to navigate the complexities of
human psychology and
behaviour.

16. How might we…
deepen our understanding of human psychology to enable us
to design better services?
more clearly identify bias and cognitive barriers to yield better
outcomes in our service experiences?
collaborate with a different discipline to become better
Service Designers?

17. Service Design (in a nutshell)

18. Research
What Designers Look Like What Behavioural Scientists Look Like

19. Our interviews found that
customers did not feel
confident making a
decision & their mental
models of the product
match.
Case Study: Value Prop Research
Scientific literature review
suggested several root
causes such as
Divided Attention and
Fragmented Memory.

20. Research – B.E In Action
• No competing attention
• Better encoding into memory
• Better comprehension & recall
• Items competing for attention
• Scattered focus
• Poorer comprehension & recall
V.S

21. Research – B.E In Action
+
• Deeper psychological
understanding of the
research findings
• Codify human behaviour
• Informs how to create better
service design prototypes

22. Prototyping
What Designers Look Like What Behavioural Scientists Look Like

23. We co-created a new call
flow with customers to
provide better advice and
ensure customers
understood the product.
Case Study: Call Center Flow
Behavioural Scientists
completed a diagnostics
of our prototype and
identified over a dozen
biases and cognitive
barriers.

24. Prototyping – B.E In Action
Identify ways to
optimize the
prototype based
on behavioral
economics
Salience & Urgency
Color is used sparingly to draw
attention to the message that the
deadline has passed and to convey
increasing urgency
Consistency
Customer’s history of timely
payments is highlighted to trigger
the desire for consistency
Chunking
Information is chunked so customers
only read messages that are
personally relevant to them
Salience & Urgency
Use color sparingly to draw
attention to the deadline
and create a sense of
urgency.
Chunking
Information is chunked so
customers only read
messages that are relevant.
Consistency
Customer’s history of timely
payments is highlighted to
trigger the desire for
consistency.

25. Testing
What Designers Look Like What Behavioural Scientists Look Like

26. We tested a new
brochure to support
customers in their
decision making and
make the product more
tangible.
Case Study: New Sales Document
We tested over 12 different
conditions with surgical
focus to maximize
product comprehension
and trust.

27. Testing – B.E In Action
Ability to measure key metrics
(comprehension, trust, intention to
purchase etc…)
Laser focused testing on key behavioural
outcomes with multiple conditions

28. CHALLENGE
ASSUMPTIONS
PROBLEM
ORIENTED
BehaviouralEconomics&ServiceDesignshare several
similarprinciples&mindsets.
HUMAN -
CENTRED
RIGOROUS
TESTING

29. Key Takeaways
Ada says:
Patrick says:
“Be open to leveraging new methodologies and perspectives!
What Makes Service Design so powerful is its multi-disciplinary
approach to problem solving”
“Human behaviour isn’t something you can necessarily intuit, by
employing Behavioural Economics you can leverage bias to help
people make better decisions”

30. THANK YOU!