5 Differences Between UX and Behavioural Insights
Disclaimer: Before UX designers cry foul, I’d like to clarify that while my background is in psychology and behavioural science, I have been trained in the Stanford d.school Design Thinking method, helped to design decision support systems with human factors engineers in my previous job, and worked with UX designers in my techforgood volunteer work at better.sg. I may not be a UX designer in the sense that is known today, but you may be assured that I am familiar enough to comment on the subject matter. Nonetheless, please feel free to give me your feedback on anything you disagree with. 🙂
More than once I’ve been asked about the difference between behavioural insights (BI) and user experience (UX), as UX design becomes increasingly important in the world of product development, yet there is a whole other world of BI that has been popularised by the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) from the UK, aka the Nudge Unit. But before comparing the differences between BI and UX, I would like to first start by sharing what they have in common.
It is no secret that UX borrows a lot of its research methods from the social sciences, hence the process in which UX design is conducted is very similar to BI. While Design Thinking forms the backbone of UX design, there are so many different variations of the framework that it is almost impossible to keep track.
BI follows a similar process, and the Behavioural Insights Team just released their very own framework, TESTS, which stands for Target, Explore, Solution, Trial, Scale. You would notice that this is very similar to the Design Thinking process of Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test. In fact, the framework used at my workplace is UNITE, which stands for UNderstand, Ideate, Test, Expand. As you can see, these different frameworks are pretty much the same, just that the verbs used are synonyms of each other.
But regardless of framework, the three fundamental stages of Understand, Design, and Test can always be found in any version. Most practitioners will tell you that these stages are not a linear process but an iterative one, but for simplicity sake, I will be explaining the differences between BI and UX using these stages sequentially.
1. BI aims to encourage a desired behaviour; UX aims to improve product usability or user experience.
First of all, the problems that BI and UX are trying to solve are different. BI is focused on trying to encourage a behaviour that is considered to be desirable, for example getting people to recycle better, hence the term “nudge”. UX on the other hand looks at improving the usability of a product or the experience of a service, so that the user experience becomes more pleasant. User experience can be in the form of physical products, digital products, or services, but with so much of consumer interaction going through digital platforms these days, much of UX has shifted to working on the user interface of websites and mobile apps.
Arguably, user experience is the result of user behaviour, so BI would still be applicable in the context of UX. However, the converse may not be true, as UX has less interest in influencing behaviours in general, unless the behaviour involves the interaction with a product that the designers are trying to get users to do more. This difference in objectives between BI and UX forms the basis of the other differences that I will subsequently discuss about.
2. BI targets behavioural barriers; UX targets pain points.
A frequent point of contention between BI and UX practitioners is the language we use. BI practitioners will ask what is the behavioural barrier that we’re trying to overcome, while UX practitioners will ask what is the pain point in the user’s journey. Having understood that BI and UX have different objectives, the difference in language actually makes a lot more sense.
Since BI is trying to encourage a certain behaviour, the inability to perform that behaviour would be considered a barrier, hence a behavioural barrier. But in the case of UX, if a user is having trouble with a product which results in an unpleasant experience, that becomes a pain point in the user’s experience. So while both BI and UX are seemingly trying to solve the same problem, the difference in language actually conveys the objective that each discipline is trying to achieve.
3. BI understands the target audience using theories; UX understands its end user using empathy.
One of the common things that both BI and UX practitioners will say is to not jump straight into designing a solution — it is important to start by understanding more about the problem, which includes getting to know the target audience, or what UX designers call the end user. Again, the language might be different, but the idea of making sure that we get to the root of the problem in order to design a more targeted solution is the same.
However, the way this understanding is done is slightly different for each discipline. While the usual quantitative and qualitative research will be conducted to gather more data and information, BI makes sense of this information through theoretical frameworks such as the COM-B model, which takes into account the heuristics and biases of people that have been uncovered through decades of psychology research. UX on the other hand uses tools such as empathy maps and user personas to step into the shoes of the users, in order to gain a better understanding the needs and preferences of the user.
4. BI designs interventions; UX designs prototypes.
After having a better understanding of the problem and the target audience/end user, we are now ready to start designing the solution. In BI, the solution can be any intervention that targets the behaviour of interest, whereas in UX, the solution is mostly in the form of a prototype. This again makes perfect sense when we think about the different objectives that BI and UX have — BI is trying to change behaviours through interventions, while UX is trying to improve the usability of a product through prototypes.
This is the part where UX designers are probably more qualified to be called designers, as they still require the artistic flair to build prototypes using tools such as Figma, which may actually be foreign to BI practitioners. The type of designing that BI focuses on is often more conceptual, where the intervention could be as complex as designing a training programme, or as simple as making linguistic adjustments in a letter. Whatever it is, these interventions are typically guided by frameworks such as EAST and MINDSPACE, which are a compilation of psychological hacks that attempt to make people more persuadable.
5. BI tests the interventions through controlled trials; UX tests the prototype through usability testing.
While it may seem like the most ideal solution has already been designed based on the information gathered through the understanding stage, one can never be too sure until the solution has been tested and proven. Both BI and UX advocate the testing of interventions/prototypes before actually implementing them, but the way each of their testing is done is very different.
As BI is traditionally grounded in scientific research, the gold standard of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) is often encouraged to determine whether an intervention is effective or not, or minimally using a controlled trial. And to analyse the results of controlled trials, BI practitioners are required to be proficient with statistical analyses. UX designers may not be as familiar with these techniques, especially for those who have not been trained in quantitative research methods. UX would typically rely on usability testing to find out what their users thinks of the prototype, which tends to be more qualitative in nature.
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Obviously, the differences that I described above are not absolute, and there are definitely practitioners who are cross-trained in both BI and UX. I am also not trying to argue which discipline is more superior, as we can clearly see that they both have their own merits. The point I’m trying to make is that BI and UX are different because of the separate objectives they seek to fulfil.
My advice is, if we’ve only been exposed to one discipline, it would pay to be a little more curious about others. Even if we’re not going to be proficient in all of them, we will at least have a better awareness of other existing techniques, and it will also allow us to speak the language of other disciplines. This will hopefully help us to become more versatile and adaptable as practitioners.
Originally published at: https://learncuriously.wordpress.com/2022/12/03/behavioural-insights-vs-ux
