Note: This comes from a five month old draft. Unfortunately, the situation has gotten worse rather than better, although we now have a roadmap to vaccination. Yay to that!
I don’t think I would ever have claimed otherwise, but it’s nonetheless humbling to be presented with the evidence. Individual behavior change tactics are not enough. As the coronavirus pandemic rages in the US, we continue to struggle to get individuals to comply with mask wearing and social distancing. And there is no amount of individually-focused interventions that will fix it. We are seeing a huge failure of the system and a real-time case study for why systems thinking (and cross-functional collaboration) are necessary for true cultural-level behavior change. Continue reading Behavior Change in the Time of Coronavirus: Why We Need Systems Thinking →
Nothing right now feels “normal.” Speaking for myself, six seven months into Covid-19 it remains disorienting that my typical hobbies, routines, and routes remain inaccessible to me. This is the longest I’ve gone in my working life without boarding an airplane (and related to that, probably also eating a delicious Biscoff cookie. Yes, I know you can get them at home but they taste best at 30,000 feet). Very early in the pandemic I realized I was going to have to be thoughtful about shaping my experiences if I wanted to make it through in good mental and emotional condition. Continue reading How to Use Self-Discovery to Navigate These Pandemical Times →
One thing coronavirus has exposed more broadly is the importance of (good) ethics in tech and design. There have been people raising the alarm about potential missteps and ways to guard against them for years. Some of the more thoughtful books about ethics with algorithms and tech design were published in the last few years by Cathy O’Neil, Sara Wachter-Boettcher, and Virginia Eubanks. Books don’t get written overnight; each one represents years of thinking, writing, and research on the part of the author, and none of it done in a dark cave. Yet the ethical dilemmas raised by these authors seemed to be more of an industry concern (and a niche one at that) and not something that the general public paid attention to. Continue reading How Psychology Helped Me Recognize Toxic Tech →
A key part of our process in a behavior change design project is to do a literature review. We comb the published peer-reviewed literature to find research that will help us understand the current project. For example, on a recent project where we wanted to design a wellness app for people on Medicaid and Medicare health plans, we looked at research on how social determinants of health (SDoH) affect access to wellness services and care and outcomes associated with community-based health and wellness models. The information we learn from the literature review helps us shape our own research by understanding what, if anything, we might be able to apply from the previous work, the types of questions we might want to ask, and the types of solutions that have worked on similar problems. Continue reading Every Project Needs Its Own Research →
As I write this, it’s been almost seven weeks since I’ve been to my office. My town has been under stay-at-home orders for about a week less than that. Like so many people, I’m suddenly co-working from my home with family members, having put anxiously awaited plans on hold, worried about the state of the world, and unsure of what comes next. Continue reading A Brief Pandemic Reflection →
Last week I was the inaugural guest on Sustainable UX‘s live podcast series, run by my friend and colleague James Christie. Initially the discussion was intended to be a bit of a book promo with discussion about how Engaged applies to sustainability behaviors. But in between scheduling and the event date, a global pandemic broke out, and well, let’s just say I’ve found it makes it hard for me to focus on much else. So we decided to talk about it. Continue reading What Behavior Change for Sustainability and Pandemic Survival Have In Common →
Psychology for Health and Happiness
Note: This comes from a five month old draft. Unfortunately, the situation has gotten worse rather than better, although we now have a roadmap to vaccination. Yay to that!
