Designing for Behavior Change: Applying Psychology and Behavioral Economics by Stephen Wendel

Author:Stephen Wendel [Wendel, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Tags: COMPUTERS / Web / Design
ISBN: 9781449367961
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Published: 2013-11-04T14:00:00+00:00

A Cautionary Tale: My 2012 Exercise Band

In 2012, a new wearable computing band hit the market. The product combined exercise and sleep tracking, with a band you wear at night and one you wear during the day. It sounded great, and I preordered mine — I received it right before Christmas. The product turned out to be an excellent example of what happens when a company makes something that is strongly focused on behavior change, but forgets to build a good product. (I won’t mention their name, since the company is continuing to revise and improve its products, and it isn’t the only company to build an exercise band that had problems in the early stages!)

My wife and I made the product into a twofer gift: I would use the exercise band, and my wife would use the sleep tracker. So, on Christmas day, I installed the app and started trying out the exercise band.

The product did a lot of things right, from a behavioral perspective. It automatically tracked sleep and exercise, which are difficult to do by hand. It had a simple, clean user interface. It helped me set reasonable goals to start with, and then provided constant feedback and nice rewards (little icons on the screen) as progress was made.

The next day I went into the office. After a long day of sitting on my duff, I checked how much exercise I’d had. I saw the screen shown in Figure 9-1.

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