Towards integrative behavioural design: understanding relationships between behavioural problems, solutions, and the design process

Behavioural design has emerged as an important means for tackling global problems connected to health, safety, well-being, and sustainability. Behavioural design builds on key insight across psychology, design, behavioural and social sciences to achieve behaviour change facilitated by interventions, with behavioural designers adopting practices across fields. While prior literature provides a wide variety of important aspects of behavioural problems, solutions, and the design process relevant to behavioural design, the literature is fragmented and typically rooted in either psychology and behaviour science, or in design. In addition, traditional behavioural science practices face challenges in accommodating the inherent complexity of societal challenges. As such, there is an emerging need for a common understanding of behavioural design and a better understanding of how to integrate behaviour science and design practices to leverage the best of both. In responding to this need, this Ph.D.-project aims to develop a deeper and more integrated understanding of behavioural design by examining the relationship between behavioural problems, solutions, and the design process. Due to the emerging state of behavioural design, especially at the start of the Ph.D.-project in 2017, the research primarily adopted a theory-building approach using a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods. To answer the overall research question, “How can be better understand the relationship between behavioural problems, solutions, and the design process?”, I conducted three studies, each responding to a related research objective. In study 1, I conducted an integrative literature review to synthesise a common understanding of the behavioural design problem-solution space and proposed the Behavioural Design Space (BDS) framework. In addition, I conducted an observation study to explore how professional behavioural designers utilised the BDS. In study 2, I conducted a systematic literature review to synthesise and contrast interfaces between behaviour science and design practices focused on decision-making and methodological practices of behavioural design and proposed the reconceptualised IM-PACT process model. In study 3, I conducted an exploratory experiment with engineering-design students to evaluate reframing effectiveness in behavioural design problem-solving. As such, the research across the three studies addresses various relevant aspects of behavioural design methodology and practice. The collectivescientific contribution includes a conceptual intertwined behavioural-solution space conveyed in the BDS framework, the reconceptualised iterative double-looped process bringing together the problemsolution and implementation space accommodating the dynamic complexity in behavioural design work conveyed in the IM-PACT process model, and a demonstration of reframing as an interconnector between spaces. By this, the collective findings substantially extend current theory, providing a deeper
and more integrative understanding of the relationships between behavioural problems, solutions, and the design process in behavioural design, with broad implications for academic and industrial behavioural designers across fields. Lastly, the findings inform relevant directions for future research focused on more effective ways of tackling social challenges through better integration of traditional behaviour science and design approaches.