(2013-12-05) Changers Interview3 Benson

Changers Interview #3 Buster Benson – Changers Interviews. With some time now to reflect on Budge — what’s something in that product you saw working — as in, really working — to change behaviour? Answer: That’s easy: nothing. I only learned about things that didn’t work. It was a framework built to help people find what worked for them, but it never gained enough raw material to learn the answer to its origin question.

Rather than trying to find the answer to behavior change, it was a petri dish of behavior change strategies. Any one of the strategies only worked for a small percentage of users (< 10%) but the logic went that if it could find 10 (or 100, or 1,000,000) different strategies maybe there would be a higher chance (approaching 100%) that at least one of them would work. But it never got there

I thought for a while that being friendly to failure (and in turn being encouraging of a restart without guilt) would increase long term retention and help people stay on track. But it really just increased drop off because there were no negative psychological consequences. Fear of failure, fear of shame, fear of not belonging etc actually are strong motivators, are much easier to tap into,

Health Month and Budge were an attempt to solve the question, “How do we change ourselves?” using data and feedback loops.

I’m convinced that there is something to learn about ourselves by looking at the data that we create simply by being ourselves.

Whose opinions do you respect in the behaviour change space? Yours, Tony Stubblebine’s, Leo Baubata’s. But only when off the record over a drink (half-joking). Also, most quantified selfers and anyone who’s honestly trying to figure out what works and doesn’t work. We’re all beginners at this stage. Anyone who claims to be an expert in behavior change is highly suspect to me.