Behavioral offense and defense

A topic from . The book is currently available at cost.

The ideal of behaviorism is to eliminate coercion: to apply
controls by changing the environment in such a way as to
reinforce the kind of behavior that benefits everyone.
— B.F. Skinner

The people who use your software are not perfectly rational beings. There are ways of shaping their behavior, and there’s also lots to look out for. In this way, behavioral design seeks to change users’ behavior or take advantage of how they think and, by doing so, boost the value people derive from an experience. These are some prominent thought leaders and schools of thought behind the practice:

● Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein found that if you structure how people make choices, nudging them without restricting them, they can make better ones.

● Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky posited that while people are largely and needfully automated thinkers, their decisions are influenced by numerous biases. The key to helping people make better decisions is to help them manage or avoid these biases.

● Behavioral economics is more broadly concerned with bounded rationality. Forget about biases: people make good decisions given what they know. Give someone more information, and they’ll make better decisions.