Behavioral Design

This is a theme course of DfI theme 1: Design for Human Interaction.

Have you ever tried to lose weight, spend less time on your phone to have more meaningful conversations, or stop procrastinating to improve your grades (and stress levels)? These are just a few examples of the goals we may set ourselves in life, but we often have difficulty reaching. If we want to achieve these goals, we need a sustainable change in behavior, which requires motivation and perseverance. How can products, interventions or systems enable and support you to reach those goals? Do we need external coaches (human or digital)? As a designer, can you imagine a journey that allows people to achieve these goals? And if so, how do you embody (physically or digitally) this journey, to make sure users are engaged to interact with your design, and engaged to change their behavior? These are the questions we will explore in Behavior Design.

In this course you will take a behavioral design approach to understand and explore a behavior, and (re)design an intervention to support behavior change. You will combine knowledge, skills and methods from behavioral science, psychology and design research.

We have structured this course around frontal lectures, workshop activities and coaching sessions. You will work in groups and the assessment will be based on your groupwork and your individual contribution to this group assignment.

A health(care) case is available for Medisign students who wish to take this course as a Medisign Elective.