Behaviour Change - Procrastination
Using the taxonomy of behaviour change techniques (BCTs) design a digital system that encourages behaviour change.
Timeline
Jan 2021
(6 weeks)
Team
Ana Garcia Villanueva (Researcher, model making) Eda Erdal (Animator), Ula Rodakowska (researcher, data visualisation)
Role
UX research, model making, UI, graphic design
Problem
How can we bridge the gap between knowledge generated by scientists and the product developed by the designers?
There has been evidence showing the failure in many digital products with promoting behaviour change because of the narrow awareness on BCT's.
Final Outcome
BCT Catalogue
The catalogue is aimed to provide a guide for designers that want to design for bebaviour change. It presents a set of design patterns developed using the taxonomy of behaviour change techniques addressing the topic of procrastination
Key Insights
The project uses BCTs to look at procrastination from different perspectives. Procrastination is seen as an antithesis of productivity, which has been linked to several negative associations, but it protects us from mental burnout. So we want to bring out the awareness to the designers that they can look at the problem from different perspectives if they want to design for behaviour change.
The Impact
We have successfully incorporated BCTs in our design works, using a set of metaphors and BCTs to reframe procrastination from a Macro perspective.
Everyone has procrastination in different level, so instead of condemning it, it reattributes its role as something useful and needed.
Research Methods
Literature Review
We start this project by understanding what behavioural design is and how BCTs work. We used “Literature review” to delve deeper into this topic.
Behaviour is part of the system; there are many different behaviours and many different people in the network; how do things (behaviour, though, emotions, environmental) relate to each other? Whose behaviour are we trying to change?
Secondary research from literature review
Brainstorming
Behaviour Change During Covid-19
Under the current situation of the pandemic, our behaviour has changed to adjust to the new ways of work and life. People started to spend more time on the screen, spending all day in front of the screen to work, entertain, and socialise.
Mindmap of behaviour change during Covid
Interview
We started interviewing people around the topic of screen usage. We interviewd 21 people, 16 of them saying they feel tired and exhausted, however, it is impossible to reduce screen use during the pandemic. So, we break down the use of screen time into work, leisure, social and procrastinate.
Interview questions and result
Key findings
Reducing procrastination time can improve their time spent on screen but reducing the use of screen is impossible, also, not all the screen time use are bad for us.
Refining the topic
Procrastination
Procrastination is the act of delaying or postponing a task or set of tasks. For some populations like students (85-95% of whom report procrastination) (Andreae et al., 2019). The reasons for student's procrastination can be summarized into these four categories (Clark, 2020).
Procrastination diagram
Empathy Map
We create an empathy map to investigate people's feelings, thoughts, actions, and procrastination triggers. Before the interview, we thought that procrastination would create a negative feeling. However, people have mixed feelings of happiness, relaxation, anxious and guilty. Furthermore, emotions are mainly the trigger to procrastinate.
Empathy map and data visualisation
Market Research
We used artefact analysis as the research method. We realised that most products don’t have the emotional connection that encourages people to change behaviour; they limit people’s choices and let people focus on specific tasks by either taking away the control or taking away distraction.
Market Research
Ideation
Persona
We created our persona – Andrea based on our research and interview result, it is helpful to our ideation process
Persona based on our research
Reframing Procrastination
Reframing procrastination with different metaphors
Sketching
Based on the previous metaphor, we picked out 4 ideas and sketch out our thoughts and its functions, they are Toster, Slot Machine, Esc Button.
Sketching the ideas out
System Mappings
User Journey & Mapping BCTs
Working on a user journey required us to think deeper into the interaction and decision of each step. It also helps us get a clear picture of where BCT interact in the functions, and it definitely not a linear process
User journey and mapping BCTs to the interactions
Empathy Map
Since the interactive flow helps us define BCTs, we want to know more about the user’s emotion when using our design, so we created an empathy map with different touchpoints (from anticipating to reflecting), noting down different possibilities.
Using Empathy to understand the journey in a holistic way
Design Pattern – Design with Intent
We went through the Lockton’s pdf with 101 patterns and see if our objects match any of them. This is useful for us as we finally got the idea that the design patterns are a set of frameworks that can be adapted by designers in many different situations.
Using the design patterns defines the functions of our devices
Coming Up with Our Own Design Patterns
Coming up with our own design patterns is not easy because we don’t know where to start. We started off by finding the common features in our design, which are the Colography (use of colour), Funtraction (the playfulness of the interaction) and Obviouscity (the perceived affordance of the design).
Example of some desgin patterns
3d Models
We used sketches and storyboard to communicate and work as a team with one of our group members working remotely
3d models made by Eda
Feedback and Reflection
This project was challenging for us; we were very lost initially (like Sanders and Stappers’ fuzzy front end) and wanted to give up. However, as we work more and more, we can apply BCT to our design process and embed it in our daily lives. Throughout the project, I have learnt how to deal with time management and work as a group for a long period of time. Overall, I am glad to have such a great team that worked well together and constantly supporting each other.
We got some great feedback from our partner, they particularly enjoyed the concepts of using metaphors and the animations, they are considering putting our project on their website.
