[Designing for Behavior Change] by [[Stephen Wendel]]

Stephen Wendel has developed an excellent and specific, detailed plan for designing products that will help people change their lives for the better. He identifies the target behavior, the new behavior and what is needed to make that happen. What sets this book apart is that he also examines obstacles to behavior change and develops methods to work around those obstacles. He also determines where to place that product to trigger its use. We of course see these items everywhere around us, e.g. runners wearing devices to measure physiological performance and thereby providing immediate, reinforcing feedback. Many of us have different apps on our tablets/laptops to trigger relaxation, better organization, and other behaviors. Wendel's plan is up-to-date or ahead of its time, personalized, and again, specific and detailed. Recommended for anyone looking for new ways to change their own or others' behavior. Wendel combines research knowledge with the latest technology for a whole product.

I received free copy of this book from the publisher.m ( )

I received an electronic version of this book for free on LibraryThing in exchange for an honest review.

While this book focused on the how and why of processes to design products that can help behavior change, I also found it helpful to better understand behavior change in myself. I now better understand why some things that seemed logical did not work and now I have new principles to try in order to better achieve success.

This is a book that I would have enjoyed as a textbook in college. I think it would complement a class on User Interface Design as well as any Human Resource class.

This book was written in a format that felt more like a dialog instead of a dry collection of data on a topic. For me, this made it easier to read and understand. I really appreciated the “On a Napkin” summary section at the ends of the chapters. I felt the style in which they were written made them more helpful than many other types of summaries I have read in textbooks. I was excited to see the appendix that had “Resources to Learn More” which gave a little information about each resource, such as the topic specifics and why it might be helpful.

I read this book on a Kindle Paperwhite. I liked how the footnote links would just show the data for that footnote on top of the page I was reading instead of taking me to another page that I had to back out of (unless I clicked on the option to go to the footnote page). However, there was one format feature that did not work well on my Paperwhite. There was a chart where different colors indicated different meanings. However, in black and white, there was no difference in shades, so I was unable to figure out what was what on the chart. The only other format oddity that stuck out to me was that the “y” at the end of “Appendix C. Bibliography” was on the second line by itself instead of pulling the whole word down with it to the next line.

This is definitely a book I want to keep around for future reading and reference, though I would prefer to have a physical copy, as that is more helpful to me for this type of book. I think that there is material in this book that could be useful to anyone studying behavior change. ( )

The book is very comprehensive in scope, describing the whole process from collecting ideas, through developing and sifting through them, implementing and evaluating results. It’s a well organized approach and easy to follow. Where it’s lacking is in examples - they’re few and usually very shallow, making it difficult to understand how a particular step should be performed. There’s an end to end example provided at the end of the book, but even that one is very shallow and thus uninformative. I wish it rather followed a case study along the whole way.

There are plenty of references to studies, tools and literature which can certainly deepen one’s knowledge and help in mastering the process, and I guess the intention of the author was to have readers reach for those when further explanations are necessary.

Putting in more examples would certainly make the book thicker, but there’s also stuff that wasn't needed there in the first like - like references to waterfall methodologies, which the author seems to be uncomfortable with himself. These can easily be skipped, sticking to leaner methods.

On the technical side, the book sometimes refers to colors on charts - useless if read on a Kindle. The charts are also often too small for the typical Kindle screen, and the book could certainly use more charts in total to visualize larger and smaller steps. Finally, occasionally typos stand out in text, where a more thorough proofreading process would help. ( )

First, I need to begin by saying that this book was totally not what I was expecting – I broke the first rule I try to teach my students which is to make sure one understands the author’s message before moving on. I initially believed this book was something I would find helpful, for the classroom, when dealing with behaviors that interfere with student achievement and socialization. The author makes it very clear in the Preface that this is absolutely not what this book is about. All that being said, I found the book, especially Part I: Understanding the Mind and Behavior Change, to be utterly fascinating. While most of it does not fit my professional needs or pleasure-reading interests, I did find Designing for Behavior Change to be an interesting, informative, and thought provoking read. ( )