5 Reason Facebook Behavior Change Apps Aren’t Working

1. Overemphasizing Motivation

According to the Fogg Behavior Model, three elements must converge at the same moment for a behavior change to occur: Motivation, Ability and Trigger. Dr. Fogg has pointed out that a common mistake is to overemphasize motivation, with little regard to the user’s ability to perform the ability, or arranging triggers for the desired behavior. I found this to be commonly true in the behavior change Facebook apps  as well.

2. Ignoring Ability

If you’ve provided someone with incredible motivation to do something, but they can’t figure out HOW to do it, you’re essentially throwing them against a brick wall of disappointment and frustration. Behavior Change apps typically take on very difficult behaviors without adequately helping the user become ABLE to perform the desired outcome easily. Solutions include providing instruction through the app, guiding users to keep researching strategies outside the app, or developing apps targeting very focused behavior changes where ability can be more readily fostered.

3. Ignoring Triggers

If you are strongly motivated to do something, and have the ability to do it, you can still find weeks and months slip by without actually doing it. According to the Fogg Behavior Model, you also need effective triggers that remind you to do the behavior when you CAN actually do it. Facebook apps actually do frequently use triggers, just not effective ones for challenging behavior changes. They may send email reminders or take advantage of communication channels within Facebook itself (app news, counters, messages, stream posts). However these triggers rarely happen at a time when the user can actually DO the new behavior. To really be successful, apps need to help users set up triggers at the right time. For example, users might configure apps to send Facebook text messages during a user’s lunch break reminding them to eat something fresh. Or an app might offer a motivational printout to post on the mirror reminding the user to exercise first thing in the morning.

4. Ignoring Facebook  Design Patterns

Facebook (and Social networks  in general) are unique design environments and they’re changing all the time. It’s very hard to predict what interactive design strategies will work without trying them out. Too many apps strike out on their own with brand new interaction patterns, or patterns that work in other environments, like traditional websites or software. They are then surprised and disappointed that their app does not engage users. It’s very important to begin by modeling (if not outright imitating) existing Facebook interaction models, and then systematically testing new directions.

5. Ignoring Facebook Viral Best Practices

Apps that have seen rapid viral growth are aggressively using viral design patterns, creating a tight viral loop that all users enter as soon as they engage the app. Casually leveraging viral channels will achieve very limited growth no matter how powerful the behavior change features are. It’s necessary to study the best strategies, track metrics and continuously hone the efficiency of the viral loop for an app to grow large through virality.

from goaltribe.com

-thanks m.

what you find changes who you are

The internet has changed how we interact with each other with services and with products. It has changed our expectations of how things work, and let us work and it has changed how we consume and create.

-Dr. Jay Parkinson  (/future well)  talks about this in a resent blogpost:

…. It’s like TV but I’m the producer, the writer, and the director. I can connect to a ton of people. They can respond to me. We can engage in conversation with strangers. It’s a fascinating new world.

And I’m still sitting on my butt doing all of this, except when I’m out in the neighborhood trying to find the best way to walk from Park Slope to Williamsburg on my iPhone. Or maybe announcing to my Foursquare friends that I’m at the gym.

“We still have our everyday behaviors, eat food, go to work, drive or walk home, stare at glowing rectangles, and sleep. For the most part, most of us have a few behaviors that aren’t that great for us:

Some of us smoke. Others of us eat twice as much as we should and gain too much weight. Some of us need to be more active. Some of us just need to look at the positive things in life instead of obsessing over the negatives.

In the end, this all boils down to a few everyday decisions that we each need to change. And these small decisions that make such a huge difference will only change by making up our minds to change and then having the courage and discipline to stick with new behaviors that are better for us. A web app may serve as a crutch at this stage…but maybe not. What are the motivations to change? Strangers via social networks? Or our children who want us to be around when they have children? Or our desire to simply pursue everyday happiness on our own?

Technology may be one component of change. And social networking and the internet are being treated as the panaceas of our time. But in reality, it’s still good old-fashioned human willpower to truly change our simple everyday behaviors for the better.”

Still, the information you find change what you think, which in turn affects the choices we make. (meaning from attitude to behavior.) -So.. a couple of crutches can help you walk in the beginning, until its changed the way you think.

hopes and goals

I am hoping that when we note experiences/collect personal data, -and then look at it over time, we’ll be able to make better, more informed decisions for our wellbeing based on the patterns of information of  what relates to, -or even causes, particular good or bad experiences during our everyday flow..

-from data to information to knowledge. -to wisdom..

img. from the previously posted IBM video /internet of things.

the power of words

Aimee Mullins:

reading from the thesaurus: ”Disabled,” adjective: “crippled, helpless, useless, wrecked, stalled, maimed, wounded, mangled, lame, mutilated,rundown, worn-out, weakened, impotent, castrated, paralyzed, handicapped, senile, decrepit, laid-up, done-up, done-for, done-in cracked-up, counted-out; see also hurt, useless and weak. Antonyms, healthy, strong, capable.” I was reading this list out loud to a friend and at first was laughing, it was so ludicrous, but I just I’d just gotten past mangled, and my voice broke, and I had to stop and collect myselffrom the emotional shock and impact that the assault from these words unleashed.”

…”Implicit in this phrase of overcoming adversity, is the idea that success, or happiness, is about emerging on the other side of a challenging experience unscathed or unmarked by the experience, as if my successes in life have come about from an ability to sidestep or circumnavigate the presumed pitfalls of a life with prosthetics, or what other people perceive as my disability. But, in fact, we are changed. We are marked, of course, by a challenge, whether physically, emotionally or both. And I am going to suggest that this is a good thing. Adversity isn’t an obstacle that we need to get around in order to resume living our life. It’s part of our life. And I tend to think of it like my shadow. Sometimes I see a lot of it, sometimes there’s very little, but it’s always with me. And, certainly, I’m not trying to diminish the impact, the weight, of a person’s struggle.

There is adversity and challenge in life, and it’s all very real and relative to every single person, but the question isn’t whether or not you’re going to meet adversity, but how you’re going to meet it. So, our responsibility is not simply shielding those we care for from adversity, but preparing them to meet it well.”

“Perhaps the existing model of only looking at what is broken in you and how do we fix it, serves to be more disabling to the individual than the pathology itself.

By not treating the wholeness of a person, by not acknowledging their potency, we are creating another ill on top of whatever natural struggle they might have. We are effectively grading someone’s worth to our community. So we need to see through the pathology and into the range of human capability. And, most importantly, there’s a partnership between those perceived deficienciesand our greatest creative ability. So it’s not about devaluing, or negating, these more trying times as something we want to avoid or sweep under the rug, but instead to find those opportunities wrapped in the adversity.”

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-And  it is a simple as that. Replace the belief that you are worth something with the impression that you have nothing to offer anyone, that you are without value to the people you work with or to your friends and you have a very hard time getting back to work. Even if you are clinically healthy. Labeling someone as sick enforces you to some degree to be living the tag.

service design taxonomy

copy/paste from the very clever designforservice.wordpress.com

“Authors Chris Voss, Aleda Roth and Richard Chase introduce the idea of services as destinations and place them at the apex of a hierarchy of experiential service offerings. They analyze 28 case studies for examples of experience and identify four types of businesses along the spectrum, ranging from those that use experience as an enhancement for an existing service to those that embrace experience as a core offering.

They propose that the depth of experience must be supported by a corresponding level of integration within an organization, with the operational demands rising as a function of the complexity of the experience offered. Higher levels of experience offer greater financial returns, assuming the organizational infrastructure to maintain them. The authors also explore the role of the chief experience officer (CXO) and the organizational risks and rewards associated with a centralized authority.

But what makes this a must-read paper is the basic taxonomy identifying four components of service operation:

• Stageware – Bricks and mortar. The facilities layout, process technology and flows.
• Orgware – Management systems to organize and train people for experience and create an environment and culture for engaging customers.
• Customerware – Specific touchpoints where customers interact with the delivery system service.
• Linkware – Integration systems. The communication mechanisms that filter information across the enterprise and down to all levels.

–Ten percent is the platform, but the rest is people.

David Armano

I stumbled upon this, trying to find shoulders to stand upon. I find that some people and services are way ahead in the 3. category when it comes to service interaction. //Due to the massive craze for smart phones that enable a ubiquitous way of using the web when interacting in physical space.

Ground Crew has a nice example of connecting the two here:

how many touch points can you fit in a phone?

Workshop 2

Considering the sample touch points that might be found in a typical service.

(From idea cards developed by the AT-ONE project by Simon Clatworthy at AHO, /produced for the Nordic Service Design conference held at AHO nov.2009.)

Media

• radio
• newspaper
• television
• community (youtube/facebook/twitter)
• blog
• viral
• sponsorship
• event

Graphics

• logo
• business card
• advertising
• brochure
• signage
• packaging
• website

Servicescape

• queue
• employees
• point of sale
• wayfinding
• interior fittings
• call-centre
• building

Communications

• phone
• mobile phone
• smartphone
• e-mail
• sms
• letter
• friends
• family

Ephemera

• credit/debit card
• contract
• instructions
• bill/invoice
• self-service
• log-in
• receipt
• app/widget
• welcome package
• give-away

Other

• service as a product
• myths

Considering that the way you use the web and the way you use your phone are more than ever blurred together, this opens up for numerous combinations of touch-points that you always carry with you. (you’ll even return home to get it if you happen to forget it one day.) This makes it important to note that the web is not a touchpoint, but many. Fixed touchpoints simply do not exist in the same way anymore a they are in the hands of the people who use them (wether they complain on twitter or make fan-videos on YouTube)

Longevity & Happiness =60% overlap

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4282088n%253fsource=search_video

A longer and healthier life and why the mind and happiness is important.

“Unhappiness can take as much as 7 years of your life. -Thats as much as smoking!”

“Where people live the longest + where people are the happiest: and there is about 60% overlap. -The same things that let people be a healthy aged 90 also let them be so in a happy way.”

# blue zones

Esther Dyson

-on the new emerging market for health.

further more from the blue zone

“Scientists have shown that social connections are vital to a healthy life. Recent studies suggest that belonging to a group of people who have similar beliefs, lifestyle choices, economic status, or religious practices may lead to deeper understanding, longer-lasting friendships, and a longer, healthier life.“

If you think about your friends, you will find you tend to support each others beliefs and lifestyles. In many cases you may have similar economic status. There’s a reason why you gravitate to certain kinds of people! This idea of “the right inner circle” has little to do with how friendships form, it merely points out that people who share these traits tend to form friendships that last, while also pointing out the ugly fact that bad habits do tend to rub off.

For residents of the Blue Zones, being surrounded by the right inner circle comes naturally.
Seventh Day Adventists, encouraged by their religious practice and observation of the Sabbath, have big, bustling social networks. The Nuoro highland Sardinians we studied are geographically – but not culturally – isolated. Many share the same professional, personal and religious practices. Most evenings, they share a few glasses of wine at the local bar, and once a year the town contributes to the annual grape harvest. CentenarianOkinawans have regular moais; it’s sort of like the bar in Cheers, where everybody knows your name. Groups of Okinawans, who rarely move from their community, have lifelong, regular moais in the evenings to share sake and conversation.

By Kathryn Savage from Blue Zone

Now, belonging to a group of people who have similar beliefs, lifestyle choices, economic status, or religious practices can be a bit hard when you live in a impersonal environment or are new in a place, which is why I think health relations can work really well in a OSN* context. Even though many will say they have their real friends in the real world and the weak ties on lets say facebook.

(*online social network)