About the Group
The Brains, Behavior & Design Group is dedicated to exploring how insights from the fields of cognitive psychology and behavioral economics can be used to design better products, services, experiences, and business strategies.
The group is composed of interaction designers, design researchers and design strategists who each came to the field with a range of backgrounds (HCI, advertising, education, finance). We intersect in our two core beliefs that:
- The better we understand people the better we can design for them.
- This understanding gains value when it's transformed into actionable insights.
Brains, Behavior & Design started with the toolkit...
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The Brains, Behavior & Design toolkit began our foray into bringing behavioral economics out of the lab and into the design practice. The value of behavioral economic research was clear to us - designing for people means designing for the quirks of their brain, the challenge was how to bring this knowledge into field that is rich in methodology but short on time. We created the BB&D toolkit to help designers quickly understand and apply research on people's irrational decision making. This project was undertaken by six Master's of Design candidates as part of our year-long capstone project in 2009-2010, at the IIT Institute of Design. |
...and has extended to ongoing educational workshops and speaking engagements
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The tools have shown their greatest impact when introduced
through hands-on engagements and workshops. This has motivated us to
create workshops that introduce the research, and provide methods of
applying that knowledge to designers' current practice. As with all
our endeavors, it's our goal to make knowledge about human behavior
and decision making more accessible and actionable. If we achieve this,
we believe that understanding of cognitive psychology and behavioral
economics will be a core component of the design practice. We're currently expanding our toolkit. We're also involved in a range of events for design and business professionals throughout the United States. |
We continue to be grateful for all the help
This is a project that gets richer with continued input and feedback from the community. The toolkit has already benefited from the advice and guidance of Ruth Schmidt, Jeremy Alexis, Andrew Buhayer, and Erik Van Crimmin - and we look forward to hearing your thoughts, ideas, and feedback as well!
BB&D Toolkit Authors
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