Rolling off the second week, I’ve been doing more research into what it takes to implement effective habitual change systems/procedures. According to the FSN Network, there are five questions that need to be answered when creating a DBC (Designing for Behavioral Change) Framework:

 

1. What is the specific, feasible and effective behavior to promote (based on the problem)?

2. Who are the priority groups and influencing groups?

3. What are the most important determinants affecting this behavior with this group? (ie: access, perceived severity of action, social norms, etc)

4. Which bridges to activity need to be promoted?

5. Which activities will be implemented to address the bridge to activities?

 

Recognizing that all habits and their respective triggers are diverse in nature, I’ve constructed different tables for the ones I’lol choose to tackle. Especially given this diversity, I want to work on dissimilar habits to help a wider array of people struggling with different problems.

 

I’ve attached an image of these tables below:

 

Additionally, in designing for behavioral change, author Stephen Wendell suggests that negative reinforcement is an ineffective method for breaking habits, and proposes to remind users of the positive outcomes that will come with changing their behavior rather than scolding them or reminding them of consequences. 

 

This brings to light an important psychological notion: diction is critical for encouraging individuals to maintain momentum and stay consistent in their efforts. That is, good intentions do nothing for motivating people, and it’s not just what you say but how you say it. With this in mind, Wendell writes that modern psychology vocabulary does a disjustice for those attempting to better themselves, with phrases like “breaking a habit” suggesting that quitting cold turkey is an effective solution for battling one’s habits. Instead, he says that a better terminology would be “untangling a habit,” which further suggests that I should be designing for long term change, consisting of incremental steps (that are quantifiable as per the above textual reference) 

 

In parallel to my research, I also wanted to start delving into the creation process, if only to explore the realm of possibilities that exist in designing a chatbot. So far what I’ve discovered is that button within a card block (a single message that can have interactive elements embedded within it) can only have three buttons, which means that if I were to ask users to designate which habit they’d like to break, there would be a three habit restriction. As an alternative, I could create a multi-card format which could feature images that if used cleverly might further persuade users to untangle their bad habits.

 

While I’m still trying to figure out how to link blocks so that hitting a button results in a new set of blocks with their own interactions, my next steps are to map out a tree diagram of each interaction based on the habit and subsequent dialogue of reinforcement and interactions.