Master | Course | Sep ’20- Nov ’20
Design for Behavioral Change
Type
Elective
Given By
Panos Markopoulos
Harm van Essen
Team
Aster van Kaam
Veerle van Wijlen
IN SHORT
This course aimed to me with the knowledge and skills that pertain to the design of technologies that can help people change behaviours without coercion, manipulation or deceit. It bridged between psychological and design theories, ethical analyses and their practical application to design cases.
Our intended behavior change is influence the behavior of individuals around protecting their environment against corona by wearing a face mask in public contexts. By focusing on education and environmental restructuring, our design aims to improve attitude, self-efficacy and perceived competence towards wearing a mask.
The concept is an AR mirror that is located inside a supermarkets at the entrance (at the swing gates) Based on whether or not a customer is wearing a face mask, the mirror adopts a different state.
Having defined the intended behavior change, a COM-B analysis was performed in order to determine the most suitable behavior change techniques. It was found that psychological capability, social opportunity, reflective motivation and automatic motivation need to be established.
LEARNINGS
I chose to follow Design for Behavioral Change to learn more about underlying theories, how to apply these when designing and how to evaluate the effectiveness and impact of a design in regards to the behavior change of the user.
The balance of theory and application in the course is something that helped me a lot in achieving my goals. Learning about the different theories early on in the course and being tested on my knowledge with the midterm provided me with a solid base for the rest of the course. I noticed I was able to ground our decisions very well, and assess the importance of each theory within our design case.
