Overview: The purpose of the page is to educate those not familiar with behavioral science with concepts and terminology related to it. It is important to understand because behavioral science studies why people make decisions, stay engaged, and maintain habits. Behavioral science will help on two ends of the SnapHabit app.

1. Behavioral science knowledge will allow for SnapHabit to create an app that is actually engaging and people continue to use.
2. Behavioral science will allow the user to actually complete habits consistently when effectively applied.

There is a TON of information about behavioral science, and we're learning quickly that we need to collect the informaition, but we need to consolidate it into relevant information. This is where we do it.

The following sections will be covered:

• Behavioral Science: definitions and terms relating to decision making
• Behavioral Science: definitions and terms relating to habit formation and creation
• Research on enagement/retention
• Conceptualizing how the Snaphabit product will look for enagement/retention
  • Forms of habit sharing
• Concetualizing how the Snaphabit product will act for habit fullfillment/success
  • Personalization

BS: Decision making terminology

BS Principles

BS: Habit formation and terminology

Additional tactics for smart habits:

• Habit Pairing (Temptation bundling): leverages the trigger by pigbacking on an established habit and using that as a trigger

  • Importance: we act on autopilot, this allows to pair new, desirable habits to existing, preconditioned habits
  • Examples
    • Exercise while watching an episode of your favorite tv show
  • SnapHabit ideas:
    • Prompt users to pick something that they can do this with, get visual and specific with it

• Habit Stacking: special form of implementation intention; you pair habit with current habit instead of location or time

  • Importance: brain builds strong network of neurons to support current behaviors
  • Examples
    • After I pour my cup of coffee each morning, I will meditate for one minute.
    • After I take off my work shoes, I will immediately change into my workout clothes.
    • After I sit down to dinner, I will say one thing I’m grateful for that happened today.
  • SnapHabit ideas:
    • Prompt users to habit stack when selecting personalized trigger time and place
    • Copy could read like madlibs "after I ___, I will ____"
    • High potential to add to routines because habit stacking is essentially routine building broken down

• Habit Sequencing: hierarchical interaction between habit and goal-oriented processes → "Through exposure to states, actions and rewards, the agent rapidly constructs a model of the world and can choose an appropriate action based on quite abstract changes in environmental and evaluative demands." Basically, chooses

  

  • Importance: goal-oriented actions prove more efficient in changing environments compared to habits in stable envrionments
  • SnapHabit Ideas:
    • Name goal (Point B), name we're you're at (Point A), build habits to get from Point A to Point B, always rooted in goal → this would get at the structuring of habits and what are role in prompting/curating this is