When we think about behavioral design, we usually picture small, simple nudges such as changing a default setting on a screen. In academic research, these isolated changes are popular. But in the real world, many other decisions must be made before and after a single nudge is chosen. For instance, teams have to decide for whom and how a specific nudge should be applied. This gap is why I wrote a case-based paper with Philip Cash, published in the journal Designing.
We studied a design team at Samsung Electronics over a 16-week project. Their goal was to help users make better decisions within a smart home system.
We found that the team worked across three different levels of abstraction.
High-level (vision/goals): Focusing on long-term user goals rather than short-term company metrics.
Mid-level (behavioural/technical systems): Organizing how different products connect. For example, instead of looking at home appliances as separate machines, the team grouped products into bundles to help users achieve one main goal like cleaner air at home.
Low-level (Interventions/artefacts): Managing specific design features and psychological details in the interface
Our study also shows that team members must collaborate closely in a non-linear way. Designers (the red line in our framework) often work from the bottom up to change big goals based on design artefacts, while managers (the grey line) work from the top down to keep intervention details aligned with the vision.
The most important part of this process is mid-level coordination, which acts as the critical bridge connecting the big strategy with specific interface details.
While most nudge research simplifies the problem by focusing on either the high level or the low level, behavioural design projects in the wild must navigates all three levels simultaneously. The connection between these layers are consequential for managing process complexity.
If we want behavioral economics to be truly useful, we must change how we design. We cannot treat behavioral design as just a list of separate, simple steps. By focusing on systemic coordination instead of isolated nudges, we can help design teams handle complex projects and create real, long-term value.
Behavioural design has emerged as an important means of shaping behaviour change. Realising such change often necessitates complex combinations of multiple behaviour change interventions and multiple design artefacts. Yet, it is unclear how current practices should be adapted for such contexts. Hence, we ask: How can complexity be addressed in a behavioural design process? Through an in-depth case study, we develop several propositional insights. We theorise Complex Behavioural Design (CBD) in systemic terms and differentiate this from typical behavioural design processes by: (i) the progression of design at multiple abstraction levels requiring different design capabilities (high dealing with vision and goals; mid dealing with the behavioural/technical system; and low dealing with interventions and artefacts), (ii) the presence of both top-down and bottom-up reciprocal interactions across levels, and (iii) the need for mid-level design coordination. These significantly extend current discussions in behavioural design and point to propositional directions for future research.
“Designer 2 expressed how shifting perspectives changed his view of design itself: ‘I used to have times when design itself was my goal. But as I worked through this project, I realized that design shouldn’t be the goal. Design is a methodology for doing something’, and further that this needed to include logic from other aspects of the project: ‘you have to consider the market… since the management has a view close to the market, it will be very helpful when communicating with them’.” (pg. 10)
Many design practitioners aim to enhance the beauty of an existing product or develop novel products and services. However, market does not always pay off their effort. Carefully designed products often fail to attract consumers. What should designers do to enhance sales?
One solution is to borrow insights from behavioral economics. Studies show that behavioral economics can increase the adoption rate of newly designed products because it overcomes consumer resistance.
I was once invited by Palermo University in Argentina to share findings about the commercial impact of behavioral economics in the context of design. I shared my experimental findings about three Korean companies.
(1) Samsung’s printer would sell more if its ugly version is placed next to it because joint evaluation helps consumers consider aesthetics importantly,
(2) LG’s Styler would sell more if the clock in the store presents time in analog not in digital because doing so encourages consumers to think abstractly and creatively to appreciate the value of something new, and
(3) SK Telecom’s AI speaker would be used more often if it has a human feature and viewed as a foreigner or child because people become more tolerant about the mistakes of the AI speaker.
Piknic, a unique building in Seoul, hosted an exhibition of a British designer Jasper Morrison. The title of the exhibition was THINGNESS.
For the hundredth anniversary of the Bauhaus, piknic presents an exhibition offering a general introduction to the world of British designer and modernist interior Jasper Morrison, who has created a sensation with his “Super Normal” philosophy. Born in London in 1959 and studied Design at Kingston Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art in London, with a one-year scholarship to the HDK design school in Berlin in 1984. Morrison is considered one of the most important designers of our era, holding supreme status in his field since establishing his studio in 1986 at the age of 27 and working with such distinguished companies such as Vitra, Littala, Muji, and Samsung. Focusing in everything from small daily essentials like knives and forks to the public transportation systems of cities, he places no limits on the areas where he works. As they share in the design journey of someone who has created a wide variety of objects related to human life, we hope all our visitors will find their answer to the question of what constitutes a “Good Thing” – and what makes a “Good Life.”
I participated in a guided tour led by a female “docent.” Although I did neither plan for it nor pay for it, she shared with us interesting story about each work. Listening to why and how each work has been completed enriched the whole tour experience.
He has made a wide variety of products including chair, lighting, kitchen utensil, and home care products. My favorite was the cork side table. Although the docent highlighted the functional feature of the cork which naturally repels termites, I was simply fascinated by how it looks. It reminded me of a wine cork.
This article focuses on somatic experience–not just the process of thinking bodily but how the body informs the logic of thinking about art. We examine the links between embodiment, movement, and multisensory experience insofar as they help to elucidate the contours of art appreciation in a museum. We argue that embodiment can be identified at two levels: the phenomenological and the cognitive unconscious. At the first level, individuals are conscious of their feelings and actions while, at the second level, sensorimotor and other bodily oriented inference mechanisms inform their processes of abstract thought and reasoning. We analyze the consumption stories of 30 museum goers in order to understand how people move through museum spaces and feel, touch, hear, smell, and taste art. Further, through an analysis of metaphors and the use of conceptual blending, we tap into the participants’ unconscious minds, gleaning important embodiment processes that shape their reasoning.
Although smartphone market is slowing down, smartphone manufacturers constantly open their stores. While I was staying in Shenzhen, China, I paid a visit to a nearby shopping mall called Yitian Holiday plaza (9028 Shennan Road, Nanshan District 南山区深南路9028号益田假日广场). As most other shopping malls do, it has a wide variety of shops and restaurants. I visited the same shopping mall 3 years ago.
In the middle of the shopping mall, I noticed that the Samsung store closed in 2013 and the Huawei store opened in 2016 at the same place. This indicates that the Chinese mobile phone manufacturer paid significant resources to massive marketing. According to the Telecom Lead report released in January 2016,
“Melissa Chau, senior research manager with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, said; “While there is a lot of uncertainty around the economic slowdown in China, Huawei is one of the few brands from China that has successfully diversified worldwide, with almost half of its shipments going outside of China. Huawei is poised to be in a good position to hold onto a strong number 3 over the next year.” Huawei became the fourth mobile phone vendor in history to ship over 100 million smartphones in a year.
The article presents research focusing on the development of design thinking in business context. It utilizes balancing intuitive and analytical thinking to determine the exploitation of design thinking in organizations. It explores the decision making processes of two electronic corporations including Apple Inc., and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. to offer practical implications to executives who are interested in implementing design thinking in their organizations.
… Samsung is a good example of a “technology push” firm. Samsung has been a late mover in the electronics market. Responding to unparalleled business challenges, the company first expanded its design team from 200 designers in the late 1990s to 1000 designers in 2012. Samsung has made noticeable debuts in winning several international design awards. However, the company’s intuitive and analytic teams needed to work closely before they were able to deeply understand and appreciate each other’s way of working. The forced collaboration produced challenging decision-making conflicts—the types of conflicts that are difficult to resolve without a moderator. Instead, decisions were made exclusively by the intuitive team or exclusively by the analytic team. This issue explains why Samsung has performed well in design awards, but has not yet introduced an iconic product like the iPhone…
… Apple approaches design thinking differently from Samsung. Its design team does not communicate with its manufacturing team. Instead, an independent team (consisting of Steve Jobs and his supporters) made most of the firm’s business decisions. In the process, Jobs limited the decision-making power of the analytic teams in order for them to be comparable with the power of the intuitive team. Note that although Steve Jobs was often criticized for his assertive decisions, he did free the intuitive team from the analytic team. As a result, Apple products are welcomed by a massive number of consumers—even though their individual features do not necessarily outperform the products manufactured by their competitors …
