At this week’s Habit Summit in San Francisco, I talked about the role of engagement in creating new habits. I called my talk “Highway to the Habit Zone” not just to reference Kenny Loggins, but to emphasize that if you don’t engage people in an experience, they won’t experience enough repeated exposure to the cue-response-reward cycle to truly develop a habit. Continue reading Engagement Powers the Habit Cycle
Tag Archives: engagement
The Behavioral Economics of Airline Loyalty Programs
As a frequent flyer, I know how easy it can be to get caught up in a loyalty program. You could blame it on the occasional first class upgrades, the free checked baggage, or the special elite hotline many airlines offer their most valued members . . . or you could chalk it up to a brilliant application of behavioral economics and psychology.
Continue reading The Behavioral Economics of Airline Loyalty Programs
Engagement Is Everything. (That’s My Excuse.)
Former US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop famously said that “drugs don’t work in patients who don’t take them.” (C. Everett Koop also bears the distinction of being someone I confused with Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken regularly throughout the 1980s.) Likewise, it doesn’t really matter how great an experience is if you can’t get someone to engage with it in the first place. Continue reading Engagement Is Everything. (That’s My Excuse.)
When Words Disrupt Relationships: Library Jargon and the Collegiate Patron
Last week I had the opportunity to speak at the EBSCO User Group, which was such a treat. In addition to the fact that I like to nerd out with people about motivational design, I was pleased to get to hear a few other talks that sparked new ideas for me. One was from Debra Kolah of Rice University’s Fondren Library, whose efforts to redesign the library website with user insights have resulted in a clean, easy-to-navigate resource hub. Kolah (Twitter here) reports jargon was a problem. Continue reading When Words Disrupt Relationships: Library Jargon and the Collegiate Patron
Addicted to . . . Web?
Engagement is a huge concern for anyone who creates a web product, whether it’s a content-based site like this one or a more interactive experience like the online health coaching I used to work on. It’s analogous to what former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said about medication adherence: “Drugs don’t work in patients who don’t take them.” Websites don’t work if nobody uses them. So designers implement elements of behavior change science to make their products sticky, bring users back, and prompt desired behaviors. At least one author thinks they’ve gone too far and created an addicting experience that might benefit from regulation. Continue reading Addicted to . . . Web?