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Designing for Behavior Change--New from O'Reilly

November 7, 2013

Sebastopol, CA—A new wave of products is helping people change their behavior and daily routines, whether it's exercising more (Jawbone Up), taking control of their finances (HelloWallet), or organizing their email (Mailbox). Designing for Behavior Change shows you how to design these types of products for users seeking to take action and achieve specific goals.

Stephen Wendel, HelloWallet's head researcher, takes you step-by-step through the process of applying behavioral economics and psychology to the practical problems of product design and development. Using a combination of lean and agile development methods, you'll learn a simple iterative approach for identifying target users and behaviors, building the product, and gauging its effectiveness. Discover how to create easy-to-use products to help people make positive changes.

  • Learn the three main strategies to help people change behavior
  • Identify your target audience and the behaviors they seek to change
  • Extract user stories and identify obstacles to behavior change
  • Develop effective interface designs that are enjoyable to use
  • Measure your product's impact and learn ways to improve it
  • Use practical examples from products like Nest, Fitbit, and Opower

For a review copy or more information please email reviews@oreilly.com. Please include your delivery address and contact information.

About the Author

Stephen Wendel is a behavioral social scientist who serves as the Principal Scientist at HelloWallet, an independent financial guidance company. He conducts original research on financial behavior and coordinates the research efforts of HelloWallet's advisory board of leading behavioral economists and psychologists.

At HelloWallet, he's helped build an engaging product that helps users take control over their finances. The impetus for this book comes from the challenges he and the rest of the HelloWallet team faced along the way, as they learned to apply the behavioral literature to consumer products and consulted with companies similarly searching for effective ways to enable behavior change.

Prior to joining HelloWallet, Dr. Wendel co-founded two IT companies, and conducted research on the dynamics of political behavior. He's the co-founder of Action Design DC, a Meetup of over 800 practitioners and researchers applying behavioral science to their products, and serves as a mentor at 500 Startups and 1776 DC. He and his wife live in the DC area, with a small kid who loves to sing.

View Stephen Wendel's full profile page.

Additional Resources

For more information about the book, including table of contents, author bios, and cover graphic, see: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920030201.do

About O’Reilly

O’Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O’Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying “faint signals” from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism.

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