The Best Behavioral Design Content
The Habit Weekly Anniversary Edition 2020
Habit Weekly is a newsletter that makes it fun and easy to get smarter about habits and behavioral design. Trusted by 10,000+ behavioral designer readers around the world, the newsletter has now managed to deliver a hand-picked list of the best behavioral design content to inboxes around the world every week for 104 weeks straight!? In other words, for two years! 😅🎉
This is a cause for celebration, and I thought what better way to celebrate than combining all of the best content from the past 12 months into this amazing behavioral design bundle.
Before you get started reading, I just want to give a moment to all of the fantastic content creators in this growing behavioral design community. It’s been a joy to provide them with a platform, especially since there are so many wonderful people around the world that are making incredible contributions to the field. To that point, check out the Habit Weekly Awards for the best content creators over the past year (as voted by the readers).
I hope you enjoy this special collection, packed with all of the best behavioral design articles, podcasts, videos, and resources! Cheers! 🥂🍾
— Samuel Salzer (founder & editor of Habit Weekly)
OVERVIEW OF THE CONTENT COLLECTION
---------------------1. Editor's Pick 💡
2. Best Articles 📝
3. Best Podcast 🎧
4. Best Videos 📺
5. Best Resources 🛠
6. Fun Facts ✅
EDITOR’S PICK 💡
Interactive Case Study: Lemonade
This is one of the first interactive case studies aimed at providing a new way of learning about Behavioral Design. In this case study, you’ll learn about the behavioral design behind Lemonade plus the best from the EAST Framework — all in one fun and interactive format. Enjoy!
BEST ARTICLES OF THE YEAR 📝
Cognitive Biases Influencing Purchase Behavior and Decision-Making
Google knows a lot about us. They obviously know what we search for, but it doesn’t stop there. Remember, they are also the leading ad platform in the world and follow our behavior all the way to the end of the purchase journey. This article shares some of the things they have learned using behavioral science and the decision-making model they developed along the way.
How to Find a Behavioral Design Job (During a Pandemic)
This is a must-read resource for anyone looking for work opportunities in behavioral science and beyond. However, even for me, I found this tremendously enlightening and it helped me better understand the current state of the field.
Why Triggering Emotions Won’t Lead to Lasting Behavior Change
A fantastic article discussing how nudges must be modified to create habits and long-lasting behavior changes.
How Google Got Its Employees to Eat Their Vegetables
Another one about Google. Learn how the tech giant has applied behavior-change strategies to transform their cafeterias in a bid to encourage their employees to eat healthier.
Social Proof In UX: An Ancestral Habit Demoted To Dark Pattern
This is a thoughtful look at social proof from a design perspective, packed with great examples and cases.
The Benefits of Statistical Noise
Ruth Schmidt is one of the most important voices in our field, always providing valuable insights and new perspectives. In this great article, she discusses how our enthusiasm for clearing out noise across many contexts sometimes leads us to throw out useful — even vital — information, especially when top-down approaches dominate bottom-up contributions to define what matters.
BEST PODCASTS OF THE YEAR 🎧
Habits 101 — Your Curated PodCourse
This is a curated selection of podcasts and the first part in a series of PodCourses that I’m developing to explore themes and concepts from behavioral design and beyond. This one is about providing you with a fun and easy way to learn all about building and breaking habits.
A Spoonful of Sugar: With Guests Ayelet Fishbach, Dan Ariely, Lynne Gauthier & Nancy Strahl
This podcast episode looks at the science behind different strategies of making difficult or boring things easier by adding an element of fun.
Building Better Habits And Breaking Bad Ones
Who doesn’t love Hidden Brain? It’s a great podcast. This episode considers the everyday things we do, over and over and over again, often without thinking (hint: habits).
How to Change People’s Minds
This is a fantastic listen as Jonah Berger lays out his formula for removing barriers to change. Bonus points for great storytelling!
Why Are We So Weird?
An honest, open discussion about diversity and inclusion in behavioral science and beyond. With Cerita D. Bethea, Neela A. Saldanha & and Grace Lordan.
BEST VIDEOS OF THE YEAR 📺
Behavioral Design TED Talks
One evening, I found myself falling into the virtual wormhole of watching TED talks on YouTube. There’s apparently a lot of them… This eventually led me to create this compilation of some of the best TED talks around behavioral designs. I hope you find it enlightening.
Editorial note: I’ve chosen to leave out some great talks where the science they’re based on has failed to replicate. The funny thing is that these talks are by far some of the most popular, so you’ve probably already seen them… 😅 🙈
Overview of Behaviour Change Frameworks
Bri Williams runs through the landscape of behavior change models and frameworks, including MINDSPACE, EAST, BMAP, COM-B, and the Habit Loop.
Saving Nature With Behavioral Science
Erik Thulin, Behavioral Scientist at Rare, shares a three-step process for applying psychological insights to overcome the challenges we face in acting cooperatively, so humanity and nature can thrive.
TED | Listen time: 14 min | #Sustainability #Behavioral Science
Priming Is a Mess
Great video exploring some of the mess around priming research.
Behavioural Data Science of Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace
This talk by Ganna Pogrebna showcases several projects, which use behavioral data science to analyze, predict, and, ultimately, increase diversity in organizations and society.
BEST RESOURCES OF THE YEAR 🛠
Behavioral Design 2020 and Beyond
Curated collection of opinions, predictions, and thoughts from leaders in the field of behavioral design in 2020 and beyond. Includes 10 recommendations for all behavioral designers looking to make the most of this new decade. The article “Imagining the next decade of behavioral science” is a great companion read.
Designing for Behaviour Change Toolkit
This is a new guide to using behavioral economics with service design. Great read for anyone building and designing products and services.
Behavioral Science Graduate Guide
Are you a Behavioral Science graduate or maybe just looking to enter the field? This guide is for you! Whether you are looking to enter industry or academia, this guide created partly by myself is filled with resources and advice on how to get into the behavioral science field.
Best Films — Behavioral Science Edition
The list of movies and TV-shows you didn’t know you needed. Here’s your unofficial selection of the best films and TV-series helping us better understand human behavior, without leaving our armchair (or couch).
The Little Book of Green Nudges
This behavioral science and nudge theory book contain 40 ready-made green nudges — simple measures that make it easier to make green choices. These nudges can be applied in many areas, including university campuses, which can deploy them to encourage returning students and staff to embrace more sustainable behaviors.
The Behavioural Drivers Model
New framework for social and behavior change programming from a great collaboration between the PENN SoNG team and UNICEF.
The Behavioral Economics Guide 2020
One of the things I look forward to every year is the release of the Behavioral Economics Guide. It’s packed with great cases of behavioral economics in practice plus resources, guest editorials, and more.
FUN FACTS ✅
I had a quick look at the stats for the newsletter, and here are some fun facts that I came across:
- The first issue of Habit Weekly was sent to 12 people, all of which are still loyal subscribers. Extra big thanks to you guys! 🙌
- Habit Weekly is currently read by people in 100+ countries, including readers from Tanzania 🇹🇿, Kuwait 🇰🇼, Iceland 🇮🇸, and El Salvador 🇸🇻.
- Top countries with the highest readership are the US 🇺🇸, the UK 🇬🇧, Australia 🇦🇺, and India 🇮🇳.
FINAL WORD
This year (as with the first year of Habit Weekly) has been one heck of a journey, and I feel very fortunate to serve this community to the best of my abilities. While I’m far from perfect, I genuinely do my best to provide all Habit Weekly newsletter subscribers with something worth reading every week. It’s been a pleasure to serve you so far, and I much appreciate your support and help in growing this behavioral design community together.
And as always…. Please feel free to send me an email with your thoughts, questions, or suggestions for improvements. I’m always happy to receive your messages.
– Samuel
Samuel Salzer is a behavioral strategist, author & keynote speaker helping value-driven organizations around the world to create habit-forming products and services using insights from behavioral economics and applied behavioral science.
For questions or queries, get in touch here.
