Digital experiences are opening up new ways for people to reach their goals and change their behaviour. But they need to keep users engaged for new habits to stick - and be carefully designed to ensure they’re making a positive impact. ustwo and Dezeen co-hosted a panel for London Design Festival 2024 to look at what’s new and next in this area, from what makes an effective digital coaching experience to the role of AI.
Panellists
- Adrien Gomar, Head of Design, L'Oréal
- Suhair Khan, Founder & Director, open-ended
- Greig Robinson, Head of Design, ustwo
- MODERATOR: Benedict Hobson, Co-CEO, Dezeen
Key Takeaways
1. Digital coaching products and experiences need to be doable, tunable and renewable to create sustainable behaviour change.
Doable: Meet the user where they are. For instance, The Body Coach begins with different fitness plans based around the user’s experience level. Outline incremental steps so it’s not overwhelming from the start.
Tunable: Create an experience that feels hyper-personalised and relevant to the individual. This is where AI-powered experiences can take digital coaching to the next level.
Renewable: Give people a reason to come back with fresh and relevant content. Our work with La Roche Posay, acne skincare app Spotscan+ Coach, serves up fresh written, audio or visual content from its large multi-media library every day.
2. Digital products can augment the effectiveness of physical habits and products.
A physical consumer product, for instance, a face moisturiser, might be proven effective, but if a person doesn’t continue to use it in the way it’s intended to be used, they won’t actually see the benefits, said Adrien Gomar. Digital coaching products that encourage people to stick to habits help products work the way they should.
Likewise, this interaction between digital experiences and users’ habits in the real world can have a major impact in areas like health. For example, a digital product that helps a user with diabetes stick to their insulin regimen will make a positive change on people’s wellness and healthcare systems.
3. Build ethics into your product design.
Ask whether the product is going to have a meaningful impact on someone’s life and their behaviour from the very beginning of the design process, especially in sectors like health. Think about what could go wrong with the product early on to prevent harmful outcomes.
Cross-disciplinary engagement is key to creating values-based digital products, said Suhair Khan. Bring in lots of stakeholders from different areas beyond technology and design, like medicine or philosophy, and look at ethical frameworks in more established sectors like journalism or law.
4. Strike the right tone.
When brands are designing digital experiences around their products, they should think about how a friend might introduce or recommend a product: suggest it, share knowledge around it, chat about the benefits and give tips.
Designers also need to make sure they’re creating products that encourage, not coerce.
5. AI can play a key role in designing better digital experiences for behaviour change.
Tracking is a fundamental part of behaviour change, and AI can help make it easier. For example, ustwo’s AI proof of concept Sproutiful uses AI to analyse images of what people are eating so they don’t have to manually log their meals.
AI also makes it easier to build digital experiences. “I think this is where AI is going to play a really exciting role in behaviour change, because it’s going to make some aspects of product design more readily available,” Greig Robinson said.
Final Wrap-up
Engagement is an important part of designing for behaviour change - but it’s a tool when developing products, not the goal or ultimate metric for success. Engagement alone won’t drive behaviour change. Ultimately, you need to tap into people’s internal motivations for them to develop long-term habits, guiding users on their own personal journeys - and design for positive outcomes.
“As the design community, we need to take responsibility and make sure that the services and products that we’re creating are going to have a meaningful impact on an individual.”
For the full conversation, watch the video above or head to ustwo’s YouTube channel.
At ustwo, we’re embracing the potential of digital experiences to create a positive impact on users' habits and lives.
Want to chat more about digital coaching and designing for behaviour change? Reach out to us at hello@ustwo.com.