Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Harnessing behavioral science to uncover deeper truths
Gold
Wednesday, March 12, 2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Share the love for this talk
Harnessing behavioral science to uncover deeper truths
Speakers: Amy Bucher
Link:

Summary

Participant psychology is rich and multifaceted, with multiple truths and biases shaping their stories and coexisting simultaneously. By integrating behavioral science techniques into surveys, interviews, and other research methods, we can help participants share their truths more openly, and uncover deeper, more nuanced insights. We’ll inspire you to embrace these methods, offering guidance on when, how, and why they can transform your research.

Key Insights

  • Short-term digital metrics like daily active users are insufficient to measure true behavioral impact.

  • Nudges change choice architecture subtly but often need systemic follow-up to sustain long-term behavior.

  • Opt-out organ donation policies increase registrations but don’t necessarily result in greater living donations.

  • The COM-B model posits that behavior depends on Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation, each with subcomponents.

  • 'Little e' engagement relates to immediate nudges; 'big E' engagement involves deeper behavior change techniques that build motivation and skills.

  • Mixed methods research, combining self-report with observations and participatory design, uncovers hidden barriers and authentic behaviors.

  • Self-report data can be surprisingly accurate especially with automation or when studying phenomena like pain or vaccination uptake.

  • Logic models help stakeholders understand the time and complexity required for meaningful behavioral outcomes, promoting better buy-in.

  • Behavioral science has ethical pitfalls; some manipulative nudges and secret mood experiments raise concerns for practitioners like Amy.

  • Behavioral frameworks with a strong evidence base and flexibility, such as COM-B, better support interdisciplinary collaboration and long-term use.

Notable Quotes

"Most of my career has been in health, and it’s really important that we don’t just get people to do something once, but sustain a new behavior."

"We’re often stuck on a hamster wheel of short-term metrics like daily or monthly active users that don’t capture long-term success."

"There was a founder who said our job was to coach people to not need us anymore, which is the kind of mindset I wish was more common."

"Nudges are not a magic wand; they can help but need to fit within a larger system and behavioral pathway to truly work."

"Think of nudges like road signs or exits on a highway, while behavior change techniques are the road stretches in between sustaining momentum."

"Self-report is not the end all; people often don’t know why they behave certain ways, especially regarding automatic motivations like deeply ingrained mental models."

"We observed a safety risk on a construction site and that helped open a door to honest stories that people wouldn’t have shared otherwise."

"Surprisingly, when nudging vaccines, consumers preferred seeing every eligible vaccine listed, even controversial ones like COVID-19."

"Design for Evil by Chris Nodder is a great resource to understand how behavioral design can be misused, sometimes very subtly."

"Logic models are boring but powerful tools to align expectations that behavior change is complex and not immediate."

Ask the Rosenbot
Rebecca Gimenez
Work in Progress: Service Design at Airbnb
2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Gold
Elizabeth Sklar
Co-creating research enablement with your tech org: a case study
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Conference
Satyam Kantamneni
Do You Have an Experience Vision?
2023 • Enterprise Community
Kyria Stephens
Power to Heal: Civic Design in the Aftermath of Tragedy
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Daniela Magaña Flores
Ahead of Competition: Learn What UX Benchmarking Can Do for Your Business Today
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Sheryl Cababa
Day 2 Panel
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Bob Baxley
Leading with Design Operations Past and Present
2019 • DesignOps Community
Megan Nipe
Human-Centered Design for Engagement: Maturing from Newsletterville to Personalized, One-to-One Messaging
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
John Calhoun
Have we Reached Our Peak? Spotting the Next Mountain For DesignOps to Climb
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Nathan Curtis
Beyond the Toolkit: Spreading a System Across People & Products
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Kit Unger
Theme 1 Intro
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Bianca Jefferson
From Sprints to Systems: Operationalizing Continuous Discovery Through DesignOps
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Rachael Dietkus, LCSW
Trauma-Responsive Design: Reimagining the Future of Design Now
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Sam Proulx
Accessibility: An Opportunity to Innovate
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Jennifer Strickland
Adopting a "Design By" Method
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Erin Weigel
Failure Friday #6: 90% of Everything I Do is Either Broken or Pointless
2025 • Rosenfeld Community

More Videos

Iain McMaster

"Designers tend to work behind closed doors because the design process is messy and chaotic, and they don’t want people to see that."

Iain McMaster IHan Cheng

Design and Product: from Frenemy to Harmony

November 29, 2023

Erin May

"Stakeholders aren’t ready to write their own briefs or manage recruitment, so it ended up being a hybrid model initially."

Erin May Roberta Dombrowski Laura Oxenfeld Brooke Hinton

Distributed, Democratized, Decentralized: Finding a Research Model to Support Your Org

March 10, 2022

Deanna Washington

"Your strengths, even if perceived as weaknesses, can be your superpower."

Deanna Washington Bria Alexander Jon Fukuda Saara Kamppari-Miller Farid Sabitov

Connecting the Ops: Plenary Panel and Closing Circle

September 9, 2022

Liz Ebengo

"Knowing your positionality and having native speakers and culturally sensitive methods is vital for authentic data gathering."

Liz Ebengo

The Burden on Children: The Cost of Insufficient Post-Conflict Services and Pathways Forward

December 4, 2024

James Lang

"We often introduce friction deliberately in community building to make it safe and meaningful."

James Lang

If you can design an app, you can design a community

May 22, 2025

Saara Kamppari-Miller

"When there’s dispute over what to measure, use that as an opportunity to discuss the behavior you want to change and the value capture."

Saara Kamppari-Miller Nicole Bergstrom Shashi Jain

Key Metrics: Comparing Three Letter Acronym Metrics That Include the Word “Key”

November 13, 2024

Erin Weigel

"AI cannot substitute the research expertise achieved through multiple interviews and synthesis by humans."

Erin Weigel Petra Rajkov

Testing and Experimentation Tools

March 12, 2026

James Wieselman Schulman

"Researchers can become thought leaders by coaching and mentoring others on empathy and research."

James Wieselman Schulman

Research is a team sport: advancing the work when everyone does the research

March 11, 2026

Emily Williams

"Mentioning incentives can build trust by signaling reciprocity."

Emily Williams Nora Fiore

When UX Research and Institutional Racism Collide: A Case Study

March 12, 2021