Foggy Experiments in Behaviour Design. Experiments using BJ Fogg's principles to modify one's environment and see changes in behavior.

1. CHANGE YOUR ENVIRONMENT
CHANGE YOUR BEHAVIOUR
FOGGY EXPERIMENTS IN BEHAVIOUR DESIGN
by @ashpodel
Inspired by BJ Fogg’s behavior design principles

2. Behavior happens when
trigger, motivation and ability converge at the
same time.
HIGH ABILITY HIGH MOTIVATION
That is, if something is easy to do and you want to do it, every
time it is triggered, you will do it.
TRIGGER WORKS
LOW ABILITY LOW MOTIVATION
But, if something is hard to do and worse, you don’t want to
do it, no matter how often it is triggered, it won’t happen.
TRIGGER FAILS
See BJ Fogg’s behavior model. http://behaviourmodel.org

3. Your environment is a rich ground
for facilitating behavior change by:
modifying your ability to do things
providing artifacts that trigger behavior, and
managing your motivation levels.

4. 3 PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS

5. 1. The Two Toothbrushes
Creating a trigger to brush teeth at night
To remind myself to brush my teeth
before sleeping, I put an extra
toothbrush by my bedside.

6. Did It Work?
Not exactly. It worked for the first two
days, and then I ignored it.
And so, instead of brushing my teeth, I
made it even simpler. I decided to just
use mouthwash.
Learning
If a trigger is not working because of
low motivation, make the behavior even
easier to do.

7. 2. Hiding Notification Counts
Reducing ability to peek at unread email
These icons show I moved the icons
unread email counts. below the visible
area, so that I had to
scroll to get to them.
To prevent myself from looking at email every
few minutes, I moved the email icons on my
phone so that I would have to scroll to see them.

8. Did It Work?
Nope. Scrolling wasn’t enough of a
disability.
And so, I’ve turned off push email. This
is actually a bit scary, but I’m going to
try it for a week.
Learning
When impairing ability, small changes
work less well, you might have to make
a drastic move.

9. 3. The ‘Work’ Zone
Keeping my motivation to work high
Since I was Now, I’ve
away for the converted it
summer, I had back to a
changed my work space
workspace to to stay ‘in
be a storage the zone’
space, but I when
didn’t switch it working.
back.
To keep my motivation levels to keep working high, this physical
space marks the territory that represents this work zone.

10. Did It Work?
So far. I have found myself
concentrating for longer periods of time.
Work related stuff is always on the table
and fewer people stop by to chat and
distract.
But, I don’t know why it is working. It
could be the space, the people or
something else.
Learning
Change one thing when running an
experiment.

11. To summarize,
If a trigger isn’t working, make the
behavior easier to do.
When reducing ability, make it really
hard.
Experiment and iterate. But change
something you can learn from.
What’s next:
See if these behaviors are sustained,
that is, if they are ‘path behaviors’.
(See http://www.behaviorgrid.org)
Follow me on @ashpodel as I explore BJ Fogg’s behavior design principles.