Designing for User Behavior
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Effective interaction design doesn’t just anticipate standard user behavior, but also shapes it.
Use Human Behavior to Your Advantage “We are, all of us, creatures of habit, and when the seeming necessity for schooling ourselves in new ways ceases to exist, we fall naturally and easily into the manner and customs which long usage has implanted ineradicably within us.” ~Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Beasts of Tarzan Studies have verified that we spend more than 40% of our time engaged in habitual action. Our brains seem to prefer being on auto-pilot, as the mechanisms for creating habits are so deeply ingrained. By knowing the finer points of habit development, you can design interactions that: • Create helpful habits – Know how to entice your users to form the habits you want. • Don’t harm existing habits when redesigning – If your users already formed habits with your product, don’t destroy them because of a few careless tweaks.
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