Presented to California Nutrition Education Program

Nir Eyal December 13, 2011

Behavior by Design

Come on now, who do you think you are? Bless your soul, you really think youre in control?
- Gnarls Barkley

Who knows who is Gnarls Barkley? Are you in control? or greater factors at play?

If this topic sounds a little bit like mind control and brain washing, it kind of is. Its not as explicit as a this box of brain wash, but Im about to show you how others persuade you to act the way theyd like you to act. This happens subtly and slowly, but the result is the same ... behavior change by design. Your behavior, and the behavior of your clients, is being meticulously shaped by those who want to inuences what they buy, what they eat, and how they spend their time. Today, Im here to talk about how others inuence and persuade your decisions And what you can do to gain control of your decisions and help your clients do the same, specically when it comes to making decisions about nutrition and health.

A bit about me

But rst, a bit about me. I am a behavior designer and I work with Dr. BJ Fogg at the Stanford Persuasion Lab teaching groups about how to apply his academic work outside the lab. That being said, I should mention that as far as the presentation Im giving today, much of the work youll here is not only from the Stanford lab, much of it comes from my own research and work experience. Let me tell you a bit about what I did professionally. Previously, I founded and sold two technology companies, the last of which was an online advertising business, which heavily used the methods of persuasion Im about to reveal to you to inuence the purchase of all kinds of products. My clients included some of the top consumer brand names in the world. One reason I particularly wanted to be here to speak with you today I understand that many of you work with young people and educate them to make better nutritional decisions. Well, as a child, I was clinically obese. At the age of 12, my parents took me to an obesity center, known then as a fat camp, where I stood about a foot and a half shorter and weighed 20 lbs more than a do today. At 12 years old, I didnt understand how my behavior was being designed by others, but I knew something was there, just below the surface. Youve likely had that feeling too. Well its not just in your imagination. Marketers have gotten better at designing our behavior for us, and in many ways weve lost control. And here are the results...

America the obese

2010

Source: Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, Centers for Disease Control

the results are catastrophic. 1990 - most of the country had obesity rates of under 15% Today, we have a dozen states where 1 in 3 people are clinically obese. This is an epidemic and it comes at a price, not only in lives but in dollars and cents.

91% of US health care expenses are attributable to chronic conditions

(diabetes, heart disease, cancer and obesity)

Source: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Center for Financing Access and Cost Trends

91% of our healthcare costs are related to obesity there are demographic factors at play as well. But clearly, preventable diseases, those brought about by human behaviors, make up a huge, costly, and most importantly, preventable, burden on our people and our nation. Most disturbing to me however, is the impact on children...

Obesity in children aged 6 to11 1980: 6.5% 2008: 19.6%

Children are highly persuadable and they have suffered disproportionately... The obesity rate in children over the past 30 years has tripled. Again, all because of behaviors. Behaviors, which are inuenceable, malleable, and preventable. So whats going on? What is inuencing these behaviors?

You are way outgunned. ... get used to it.

Image source: http://media.photobucket.com/image/ronald%20mcdonald%20with%20gun/darkcrisis123/300061.jpg?o=2

I think part of the problem is that we are way outgunned. McD global marketing budget in 2010 was nearly $2 Billion 2-5 YO sees 2.8 TV ads for fast food every day; 6-11 sees 3.5; and teens (12-17 years) see 4.7, 7 / 365 sugar industry is a highly subsidized, powerful political lobby. Biz have more incentive to sell us things that make us unhealthy, than you have resources to combat their messages. If you ght them on their turf, youll loose. But its not just food thats the problem, in fact, everything in society is becoming more addictive...

Everything is becoming more addictive

Businesses are getting better at forming and increasing habitual behaviors and this is only going to increase. Smart phones, Facebook, Farmville, and other technologies that didnt exist a decade ago, but have made millions of people addicted. We spend millions of hours friending, texting, and planting virtual crops, yet cant nd the time to go on a 15 minute walk outside. everything being sold to us is getting better, tastier, more fun, more addictive. Companies leveraging our primal desires - social belonging, sweet tooth, our sexual needs - giving us more of what want - faster, better and cheaper than ever before. Heres an example...

Fact:
Donut 2.0 will be more better

Image source: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/donut+ice+cream+sandwiches

The donut. As if the donut wasnt good enough, or I should say bad enough. Someone thought of a way to make it even harder to resist. And this will be typical of the future by the way. So yes, this is a crazy example. obviously bad for you. But demonstrates a few principal you need to understand about the products that will inhabit your world in the future.

Fact:
Donut 2.0 will be more better

Image source: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/donut+ice+cream+sandwiches

1 - In capitalist societies, products will always get better. Thats the nature of free market competition, and thats a very good thing by the way. 2 - It will be increasingly more difcult to resist the temptation of these products and nally.. 3 - I intentionally used the grammar more better to emphasize that in our connected digital age, the pace of change is accelerating. That is to say things are getting better and more addictive, FASTER, that is to say more better And yes, that ladies facial expression is TOTALLY appropriate...

OMG!?

Image source: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/donut+ice+cream+sandwiches

She pretty well sums up the idea of a donut ice cream sandwich pretty well dont you think? The point here is that in the, pre-digital age, before SMS, Facebook and Twitter, this pace of change could only happen so fast. Think about it, how quickly can the market innovate donuts in Manhattan? However, digital communication changes all that. So why is everything becoming addictive faster and faster, and how is technology changing all that. Heres how...

Access + Data + Speed Youre hooked

Three things happening change the ability of products to be more addictive than ever, and fundamentally design and change our behavior. Industry is leveraging the science of behavior change + several new technologies = to make our lives even more tied to things were addicted to. 1 - Greater access to us. more connected than ever. phones give us more access to the world + access to those wish to persuade us, 2 - As we interact with these technologies and companies, data is being recorded and analyzed to be used to target us with more of what we want. web pages display differently based on our previous behavior and adapt to us to keep us hooked. 3 - And all unprecedented speeds. = instant feedback loops, reinforce behav and physically rewire our brains in new ways Do you think any of this will recede? or even slow down? Not a chance. The pace of all this will increase and everything will get more and more addictive....

Now Im depressed.

Image source: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/donut+ice+cream+sandwiches

OK, so are you depressed yet? Its a loosing battle, right? I wouldnt be up here if I didnt think there was hope. Do I think we should shut down McDonalds, and Coke? Ban new technologies that make addiction possible? Curb capitalism and get rid of the prot motive of large companies? Absolutely not! I believe in free choice and free markets and especially in innovation. In fact - the goods far outweigh the bads from these new technologies. The way to avoid behavior designed for you - understand the tools of the trade so you can combat their effects. Heres my key point for my talk today..

You can change behavior

You CAN change behavior. You are not powerless, need to ght re with re. You need to know what the marketers know about behavior design. You need to learn the science of behavior design and use it for good. Indeed, behavior design is in your power. For yourself and others, you can persuade people to change behavior and change their lives for the better. And Im going to show you how. Heres our agenda for the next hour or so..

Agenda: I. Thoroughly terrify you II. Behavior model intro III Designing persuasion IV. Creating habits

The rst part of my agenda today was already covered... to thoroughly terrify you about the mind games that are being played on you.

Agenda: I. Thoroughly terrify you II. Behavior model intro III Designing persuasion IV. Creating habits

Well, I think thats done, and we can place a check mark next to that one. Next - dive into the the behavior model so you can learn the fundamental elements Then - learn how the model can help you design behavior and persuade others to make better decisions. Finally - Ill show you some practical steps you can take to effect long term behavior change and create new healthful habits. Well also have QA at the end of course Hows this sound?

1I. The Fogg Behavior Model

In order to introduce you to the behavior model, developed by BJ Fogg, lets think for a moment about What is a Behavior ?

be hav ior
/bihvyr/ Noun, Def: The way in which an animal or person acts in response to a particular situation or stimulus.

behavior is how we respond to stuff happening around us. Its what we do. Every minute of every day. Its the ACT of action, or inaction. Our behavior dictates what we buy, what we eat, do, and even what we think. These behaviors are particularly important to us because they add up. A series of behaviors, done PREDICTABLY, or so often that they are INVOLUNTARY is called what?

hab it
/habit/ Noun, Def: 1. an acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary 2. addiction

.. a habit. things we do nearly or completely involuntarily day in and day out ... these are the things that truly dene our life. People dont start eating poorly or healthfully overnight. It doesnt work that way. Our lives are products of the small behaviors we make effortlessly every day. But just as bad habits are formed through a series of nearly involuntary decisions, new, healthful habits must be formed to replace the bad habits. But this takes 2 things: 1 - time, a lot of time. new habits, one beh at a time 2 - a thorough understanding of how to create the individual behaviors that build to create new habits So we need to understand the base elements, the atoms if you will, of how decisions are made So lets dive into what makes us do the things we do, lets break down a single behavior...

Fogg Behavior Model B = m.a.t.

motivation triggers

ability
Behavior has three elements, motivation, ability and a trigger. Just remember, B=MAT In order for a behavior to occur, these three things must happen AT THE SAME TIME. As expressed by this formula. Dont worry this is not math. I see some of you getting nervous. B stands for behavior, and for a behavior to occur, we must have Motivation, Ability, and nally a Trigger Now lets look at each element of behavior one at a time.

triggers

A trigger = a catalyst activates a behavior. Triggers get our attention, they are verbs Example a ringing phone gets you to ... answer it your baby crying gets you to ... pick him up some times a trigger just has to be visible for it to produce a behavior... a delicious bowl of M&Ms just sitting (notice the verb) on the table, just minding its own business, gets us to ... have a candy. Can anyone think of of some more triggers? What are some other triggers in your life? ( - what got you out of bed this morning? - )

triggers triggers triggers triggers

triggers

triggers triggers

Our lives are full of triggers Many of these triggers use relatively new technologies This is important to recognize because these triggers are getting us to act and do things that we didnt previously do. Smart phones for example, allow us to not only know someone wants our attention, but we can talk, text, IM, or email with them right now. We can also go on the web from our phones and do all kinds of things we couldnt do so easily a few years ago. These kinds of triggers are called HOT triggers because they are immediately actionable. This is creating a lot of new behaviors and habits. Some good and others not so healthful. For example, we see people able to spend a lot more time playing games on their phone, which can lead to a form of gambling addiction. But I would also ask you to consider how these technologies can be used to trigger people to healthful behaviors. For example, many companies are experimenting with using cell phones, and the ability to trigger people anytime and anywhere, to take their medication, to track their activity levels, or many other behaviors. There continue to be many opportunities still to uncover and I encourage you to keep thinking about how using triggers in ways that werent possible before to persuade behaviors and create habits. Now, lets look at another part of the three things necessary to produce a behavior.

Factors of ability
Time Money Physical effort Brain cycles Social deviance Non-routine

ability
The next thing we need to be present in order to see a behavior, is a degree of ability. Ability relates to how much resistance there is to doing the behavior. In other words, how easy or difcult the behavior is, how much is in your way. A high degree of ability, to the right, means something is easy, there is not much resistance to an action. If it is closer to the axis, then ability is low, meaning there is a lot of resistance in the way of the behavior. To increase or decrease ability, that is to say, make something easier or harder, we can use the 6 factors of ability. These 6 things are the basic categories which we can manipulate to persuade a behavior. These 6 things, are all factors that make something difcult to do. Requiring the user to use more money, time, physical efforts, etc., to complete the behavior, makes the person less likely to do the behavior. Alternatively, minimizing these factors, making something cheaper, easier to physically do or mentally understand, increases ability and makes the behavior more likely. Something to know here. Each person has different needs and their ability varies by context. When youre designing behavior, the persons SCARCEST resource at that moment is the only one that matters. So you need to think about what makes the behavior hard for that particular person at that moment. Is the behavior too difcult physically? too hard to understand? or not part of their routine? Is it not socially acceptable to that person? You need to understand where they have the most friction to doing the behavior Now its time for a little activity. Id like you to turn to the person next to you and for one minute each, discuss a behavior you are trying to change, in yourself or the people you serve in your work, that can be inuenced by changing Ability? How can you make the behavior you want easier by reducing one of these six things? One minute each! Go!! (Get a few examples from audience)

Motivators for Human Behavior

Sensation Anticipation Social Cohesion Seek: Pleasure Hope Acceptance Avoid: Pain Fear Rejection

So now you have some food for thought. Next is motivation Motivation = degree which the subject wants the behavior to happen. Motivation, also has six factors. These are the 6 reasons we do everything we do, and they fall into 3 categories: Sensation, Anticipation, and Social Cohesion (EXPLAIN SEEK and AVOID) Motivation is where we generally see the realm of messaging, and one common form of messaging is brand advertising. Lets look at some examples because brand advertising always does a really good job of nailing one of these in a pretty obvious way. See if you can gure out whats really being sold in these ads...Sensation, Anticipation, or Social cohesion

motivation

Probably the most used and reused motivator in advertising is?? ... SEX. It uses the motivator of sensation, through pleasure. And the most popular way to visually convey pleasure, is sex, example in these provocative ads for hamburgers for BK, Arbys, and Carls Jr. It looks ridiculous, right. What do hamburgers have to do with sex? Nothing except that sex sells burgers, particularly to young men. There is no doubt that this works. It works because it associates the primal human motivator of pleasure, with the product. Try another one...

This one is pretty obvious, HOPE but look at the subtleties like the presidents gaze. Where is he looking? The future of course! He looks legendary, iconic, even before we elected him Hes selling us hope - hope of a better future and a better president. Most importantly, anyone know where this poster was hung? In campaign headquarters, where it was meant to motivate campaign workers through the hope of victory in the election.

Unfortunately, Pepsi and other companies also understand this messaging and use it effectively to get us to buy their products

How about this ad? Its an add for helmet safety. What motivation factor is being used here? Fear, of course.

How about here? Whats being sold? Belonging to the team. Social acceptance. This is a big reason so much advertising money goes into sports. People want to be part of the team.

Motivators for Human Behavior

Sensation Anticipation Social Cohesion Seek: Pleasure Hope Acceptance Avoid: Pain Fear Rejection

So these six factors of motivation are levers we can use to increase or decrease motivation in people were designing behavior for and ourselves. Pleasure - Pain Hope - Fear Acceptance - Rejection

motivation

Fogg Behavior Model B = m.a.t.

motivation triggers

ability
So how does all this t together? At a xed point in time, if a person has motivation and has enough ability and a trigger is present, they will act, the will exhibit the behavior The downward sloping line is called the behavior threshold

Fogg Behavior Model B = m.a.t.

motivation trigger (SUCCESS!) trigger (FAIL!) ability
A behavior is triggered successfully above the threshold If a trigger occurs below the threshold, the behavior fails and no action is taken. A failure means there either wasnt enough motivation or there was too much friction associated with the activity, it was too hard to do. Remember B=MAT, at the same time, we need all 3
So what would we do if we want to create a new behavior? - More triggers, raise motivation, and increase ability What if want to stop a behavior? - Remove triggers, decrease motivation, and decrease ability Now, heres a quiz. what should we move rst? Where do we start? triggers, ability, or motivation? First - increase or remove triggers, thats the rst step, because even with all the motivation and ability in the world, we still need a trigger to ignite the behavior. But whats Next If we want to create a behavior, what do we do rst? Make something easier to do or make the person more motivated to do it? SHOW OF HANDS

Move ability before motivation

motivation

triggers

ability
move ability. works better than trying to increase or decrease motivation. Motivation is the hardest to move, and least effective. However, this is kind of counterintuitive because so much of our budgets are being spent on changing peoples minds, to increase motivation, as opposed to making the behavior easier to do. Think of all the PSAs, education, and outreach we do aimed at making people WANT to eat better. Im here to tell you that works but not very well. And it should really not be our focus anymore. Does education and motivation play a role? Sure, but we way over spend on motivation. And heres an illustration..

Which is healthier?

Lets take a quick poll. Lets say I walked up to an unhealthy person, someone who is overweight, has eaten unhealthily for their entire lives, has type 2 diabetes. And I asked them, Excuse me which is healthier a cheeseburger or grilled chicken breast? How many people think the unhealthy person would say the chicken breast is healthier. Then I ask, Which is healthier? french fries or broccoli? How many people think the unhealthy person would say the broccoli is healthier. Of course they would. Another question - anyone think this person LIKES being unhealthy? Their clothes not tting right, the social stigma, the burden of living with the extra weight every day? Anyone think they lack MOTIVATION to be healthy? Of course not, believe me, I was there, and it stinks. Being unhealthy is not fun. So if no one likes being unhealthy, and we just conrmed that they already know the right things to do to get healthy. Why dont they get healthy? So maybe educating and motivating alone isnt working? Maybe its leading to frustration because we know what we have to do to get healthy but somehow, we just cant do it. Its because we dont have a motivation gap, we have an ABILITY problem. Getting healthy is too hard. ...But Im going to show you some ways to x it...

III. Designing Persuasion

Next well talk about how to design long term behavior change. How to design persuasion. Remember earlier how I told you that LT behavior change is all about forming new habits, behaviors which are almost completely involuntary. Well, long term change is all about new habit formation

DOT - done one time SPAN - done over a duration of time PATH - done from now on, a lasting behavior change

But to start a new habit, we must start with the rst behavior. To get that rst time behavior, all you need is to follow the behavior model of B=MAT that we discussed earlier. That one time behavior is called a dot. It happens once. And there are certain characteristics associated with designing for this behavior type. You must have a behavior done ONCE before it can be done for a period of time. If a behavior is done over a period of time, we have whats called a SPAN, characterized by its duration. If we want to create a behavior that lasts from now on, a lifestyle change, now we have a PATH behavior and we have a habit.

The important thing to recognize as were designing behavior, is that we have to move the subject from a dot, a rst time new behavior done once, to a path, a new habit. And we cant skip steps along the way, we must go from DOT to SPAN to PATH. Just telling people to jump into a lifetime of eating more healthy foods from now on, doesnt work. We havent shown them how to get there. We havent built new habits along the way. Which is what Ill be discussing next, how to form habits.

Routines form habits

Lets start by understanding how new habits form. Habits form from routines. To form a new habit, we must leverage the power of one of the six factors of ability, namely routine, to increase our ability and make things easier over time. How does this work? Remember how I said that routine was one of the six factors of ability? It turns out we can leverage the special properties of routine to change our behavior. Its a cognitive trick we can use on ourselves and others. Let me give you an example: Think of the last time you were in a meeting room or a class. Then you took a break. When you came back from your break, I bet you sat in the exact same seat. Of course you did. As a kid in school, you probably did this the entire school year once you picked your seat, in every class youve ever taken, in kindergarten, in high school, and in college. You sat in the same place every time, once you picked your seat. Why did you do this? Its routine. Routine helps us not have to think. Choosing a new seat requires cognitive work and if youll remember from earlier, brain cycles is one of the six factors of ability. Thinking is work. Thinking, even trivial questions like, where should I sit?, increases friction, decreasing our ability to act differently, so we just do the same behavior we did last time.

when doing < thinking = habit

So, when doing is easier than thinking, we do what we did last time. And we form a nearly involuntary behavior, also known as? A HABIT! So we can create a new habit when the cognitive load of making a decision is decided by the shortcut of being creatures of habit. By removing the thinking and choosing, and just doing it, we increase our ability to do the action. And over time the behavior becomes easier and easier. So... - The more regularly we do something - the less work we have to think about it - the easier it becomes - so the more we do it. And the cycle continues. This is how routines trick our mind into forming new habits and changing long term behavior.

Now lets look at a concrete example by looking at how one company has used the behavior framework o create new habits in its customers. Lets look at arguably the company of the decade, Facebook. They just announced a $100 billion IPO, the largest in history I believe. They seem like a pretty good company to learn from. What are they doing right? How did they get 1 in 6 people on earth to form a habit of using their site? Well, Facebook is a master of B=MAT, so lets dig deeper. First, Facebook uses Triggers effectively to achieve their target behaviors. Theyll do this in the following way. Say one of your friends grabs a photo of you and puts it on facebook. Well youre not even a member of Facebook yet, but youll get an email telling you youve been tagged in a photo and youll have at least some motivation to see the photo youre in. Well now youve signed up and lets say you havent used your account in a while. They havent quite got you hooked yet.

So, Facebook will automatically send this Trigger email to achieve their target behavior: Sign back into Facebook Note how this specic behavior -- signing in -- is the rst step of Facebooks larger goal: re-involve me in Facebook. Its very clear by this uncluttered email exactly what they want me to do. Hit the green button stupid! Theyre reducing cognitive load, making it super easy to understand what to do. Theyre also trying to increase my motivation by using my need for social cohesion to get me to act. Ive received messages and friend requests!! So I have sufficient motivation, my ability is high because its so easy, and the trigger is right there.

So I click and any link I push takes me to a specic page on Facebook, called Find people you know on Facebook. Thats smart! Instead of just logging inactive users into the main facebook page, they take them to a dumbed down page Taking them to the standard facebook newsfeed, would risk showing the user something complicated, unfamiliar and potentially hard to understand. Instead, Facebook takes inactive users, to a super simple page, where they can do something they are likely motivated to do. Pick pictures of friends you know. This showcases the value of the site while teaching people subtly how the site works, increasing their ability to actually use it and perceive it as easy to use. Theyve slowly taken the user from a one time behavior, to something they do more frequently. If a user fell off the wagon, and is now inactive, they make the activity easier to do, to re-engage the user by increasing his ability to stay on the path to becoming an active user. BRILLIANT. Only after the user has started to use the site and demonstrates that hes becoming more active...then..

They give access to the full site... Note how these steps move inactive users slowly toward Facebooks bigger goal -making Facebook a daily habit, a ritual, and perhaps an obsession. Facebook has gured out many ways to trigger a simple behavior than then leads to other behaviors. No one uses Triggers and the behavior model better than Facebook. The takeaway message for designers is that if people dont naturally take the next step in the behavior chain, then gure out how to get the next step to happen by making it easier, simplify. Step by step. Continue this process, until the chain works. ... and nally the user has a new habit

IV. Creating Habits

OK, now lets get very practical. Im going to give you a step-by-step guide to creating habits.

Youll get what you want by wanting to do what you need to do.

- Nir Eyal (me)

Youll get what you WANT, by WANTING to do what you NEED to do. The point here is that people will not do things they dont want to do. They need to enjoy what they do in order to do it. Otherwise, the motivation will just be too low. To get any new routine, you must nd a way to make the subject WANT to do what they NEED to do. The general principle of what Im about to share with you is this: lower the difficulty, thereby increasing the ability, to do a basic healthful action which will grow into a routine. When that routine takes hold and becomes a habit, it will produce long term behavior change. Its the method I want to teach you, not just the specic application. So youll have to personalize it for your needs Once you learn the method, youll be able to teach it to others and theyll be able to use it again and again and again. So remember, Youll get what you want, by WANTING to do what you NEED to do. So how do you get yourself to WANT to do something?...how do you...

How do you cultivate enjoyment?

... cultivate enjoyment of the things you need to do, to form habits? This goes for you, as well as others who you are designing behavior for.

Step 1. No goals

Step 1 - Have No goals. Goals are a big deal in our society Our society loves goals, and we obsess about Just doing it and not quitting and achieving things, otherwise youre a looser and a quitter. Im here to tell you that that kind of thinking hurts behavior change. Behavior change happens slowly, and if you mess up healthy behavior change with goals, youre shooting yourself in the foot. Lets look at some common health goals and youll see what I mean..

Common health goals: Im going to lose 20 pounds by summer. Im going to run a marathon. Im not eating carbs for a month.

Here are some common health goals.. Why dont these kinds of goals work? If the idea behind forming long term habits is that they must be: - behaviors people want to do - that are enjoyable - so they do them for a lifetime Then of course these kinds of goals dont work... they are what I call BUT goals

BUT Goals: Big Un-fun Time boxed

BUT Goals are: Big Un-fun Time boxed and they dont work If you make goals with these properties, you will always give into the buts I have a goal not to eat too much, BUT its the holidays I have a goal to run today, BUT there was a great episode on TV I have a goal to eat more veggies, BUT I was in a rush. Well always loose at trying to make long term goals this way

A journey on a treacherous path is often brief.

Remember: A journey on a treacherous path is often brief. Whats this guy about to do? Fall off, right? If you are behavior designer, whats the lesson here? The lesson is - When it comes to behavior design.. Hard work doesnt work. instead...

Its ok ... take the easy path.

Design an easy PATH and decide on a journey. We need to design paths for people. Were rushing it by getting to the end goals and as behavior designers we will fail. Creating new habits requires a long multi-behavior path, and new habits form as a by-product along the way. We need to create an enjoyable path to create the desired habit. For example, Here are some Paths: enjoy a healthy lifestyle for me it was, cultivate a love of running The path is one that is timeless, youll never achieve the ends. Its also easy, and effortless. But how can this be? What does such a path look like? And how can it be easy? I thought behavior change was hard, right? Let me introduce you to your MEA.

Step. 2 Find your MEA

Step 2 is about nding your MEA. A MEA, is a behavior on your path, where you already have sufficient ABILITY and MOTIVATION. Remember, in order to cultivate a lifelong habit, you need to rst nd the ENJOYMENT. The MEA helps you do that. Your MEA is how you nd the smallest bit of joy to walk the new path youre on. Your MEA is your...

Minimum Enjoyable Action

Image source: http://cdulsky.deviantart.com/art/Little-Leaf-203750522

Minimum Enjoyable Action. Its the smallest things that is actually enjoyable to you. This will serve as your safety, if the behavior gets hard. And it is the sprout of the new behavior change. It will be the rst behavior on your path to long term behavior change and habit formation. So how do you nd your MEA? Well it has to be very small, very simple, and a little enjoyable. HERES THE IMPORTANT PART: Its so small, so simple, and just enjoyable enough, that you could easily do it for the rest of your life. See how important that is! You can do it for the rest of your life. You see .. our behaviors are like pearls

Layers of behavior

Image source: http://cdulsky.deviantart.com/art/Little-Leaf-203750522

If you were to cut a pearl so you could see a cross section, you wouldnt see layers unless it was fake, You would see rings A pearl, like a benecial habit, is formed through a very slow process of adding small layers to a tiny spec. That tiny spec is your MEA. And done over time, it expands and forms something beautiful. And leads to habitual benecial behaviors, and lifestyle change. But how do we nd our MEAs? One easy way to see if youve found your MEA, is the laugh test.

MEAs should pass your laugh test

Image source::http://www.ickr.com/photos/vanessaschrotenboer/3515588052/

When you think youve found your MEA, go in front of the mirror, and test your own reaction to the MEA. If you dont laugh at yourself for coming up with such an easy, simple and enjoyable behavior, then its too hard If you cringe, doubt, fear, sweat, pause, or gag. Its not minimal or its not enjoyable enough. The proper response to a MEA is Of course I can do that! I could even do that for the rest of my life, its so easy! Lets take an example. Everyone close your eyes. Im about to ask you a personal question, and since everyones eyes are closed, no one will be able to see your response. OK? Please raise your hand, if you oss every day?

Whats the MEA?

OK, open your eyes. For those of you who didnt raise your hands, You should know that ossing is the best thing you can do for your teeth. So lets say youd like to get on the path of enjoying greater dental health, namely by ossing your teeth. Were not going to all of a sudden declare that were going to oss our teeth every day. That wont happen So what are some possible MEAs?

Floss One Tooth

How about ossing one tooth? Is it easy? Enjoyable? Is it un-quit-able? That is to say, its so easy you could do it forever. Pass the laugh test? If so, then weve found the behavior where you have sufficient ability and motivation to create the rst tiny behavior in a future chain. See how different a MEA is from a BUT goal, there is nothing BIG, Un-fun, or Time constrained here. There is no destination. Even though we will get there in time. By design, the MEA should be tiny, fun, and FOREVER. The question I hear sometimes is What if I quit?

Image source:: http://www.sodahead.com

So you stopped! HOORAY! That just means your MEA wasnt really a MEA after all. If it were truly a MEA, you would have WANTED to do it everyday. Make a new MEA but this time make it easier, simpler, be more lazy! So if ossing one tooth wasnt happening, try taking your oss out every night. It is important to stay open to experimentation and iteration when nding your MEA. Being lazier feels weird to people and un-natural. Its really not about being lazier, its about doing more by doing less. Now as we design behaviors for others, what does the MEA teach us? The MEA is a great way to understand if the user will actually do the behavior were asking them to do. Many times, behavior designers over reach. They want users to click, and sign up, and register, and tell a friend. The user just wont do all that stuff unless its a MEA for them. Be very clear on the action youre trying to target for your users and make sure its small enough to be done by the user very easily. So, now that weve covered the concept of the MEA weve already crossed the hardest barrier, weve created the rst behavior in a chain to form a new habit. The MEA showed us the simplest action where the user had sufficient motivation and ability. So whats missing? Triggers! Thats the third and nal step.

Step 3. Trigger and track

If we have motivation and ability, as we conrmed by our MEA, were just missing our triggers to make sure the behavior occurs enough times to create a chain. Thankfully, there are many ways to create triggers.

Place triggers for new behaviors in the path of current behaviors

One of the most effective places to put triggers for a new habit, is next to an old habit. For example, when I rst started on the path of maintaining a healthy body, my MEA was to step on the scale. So I put the scale, which the site of served as a TRIGGER, in the way of my current behavior of using the toilet rst thing in the morning. This scale by the way is a special scale, which actually leads me to another way of creating triggers, and I think this is extremely powerful.

Image source: WiThings

This scale is called a WiScale. Anyone heard of it? It automatically logs your weight every day and makes the data available only to you, on the web or on your smart phone. Which leads to the second part of this step. Tracking your MEAs, which is very important. Tracking, it turns out is a very powerful way to increase triggers and produce long term behavior change. The act of tracking, collecting data is very important, it can act as a master trigger.

Image source: 42goals.com

For example, I use a site called 42 goals, (yes, I dont like the name) to track my MEAs. I have all my MEAs tracked here and I constantly add new ones and take away old ones that have become habits. The act of keeping track, shows me all my other MEAs, and has lots of other triggers in it.

Image source: livi,com, healthmonth.com, greengoose.com, tocracy.com, mytnesspal.com

There are a huge number of websites and mobile apps that help with tracking behavior, here are some of them. Fitocracy, Greengoose, livify, health month, But dont forget, a piece of paper, or a calendar, works just as well. Thats the way I started and in many ways, the fact that a calendar sits prominently displayed on your wall, serves as a great trigger. So for us as behavior designers, what can we learn from the power of triggering and tracking? The lesson here is to rst start building for behaviors that you can measure. If you can measure a behavior, you can improve it. The act of tracking behaviors, makes the creation of a routine visible, it makes the act of stopping a routine a bit more painful. Imagine seeing a calendar full of check marks that youve done your MEA, how likely are you to want to check that box the next day. This is how we can increases the users ability to create new behaviors by creating a routine, triggering and tracking.

V. Conclusion

So in summary, I want you to remember that you CAN create long term behavior change in yourself and others. Ive given you the basic framework of the three elements of behavior, remember, B=MAT Ive shown you how single behaviors, called dots, move to span and path behaviors. And Ive shown you the 3 simple steps to creating long term behavior change, - No goals, MEAs, and trigger and track Now its your turn to use these methods to improve your lives and the lives of those you serve. Thank you.

Now..

QA and Feedback

http://goo.gl/UEEX2 nir@nireyal.com

Id be happy to take some questions and start a discussion. But while we do that, I love feedback and would love if those of you with smartphones could use this QR code or go to this URL where youll Bind a very brief 5 question survey. If you dont have a smart phone please email me at this address and please let me know any areas for improvement in my presentation today. OK, any questions or comments?