How to Craft Your Behavior Change Framework

What is required to change how households and companies view separate waste fundamentally? What principles of behavioral planning apply to the new collection services for recyclables or organic materials?

The use of behavioral design is widely used in businesses to enhance the experience of customers. Targeted interventions have proved efficient and straightforward, resulting in remarkable outcomes. What if I had to oversee the transformation of behavior from scratch as part of creating public services on a municipal level?

In this post, I’ll discuss my experiences of implementing change in behavior in Delterra’s Rethinking Recycling program in an average-sized Argentinian city. Here, we aim to assist the community in transforming its waste and recycling system to benefit the environment and its citizens. I’ll highlight four lessons I have learned from my journey in general “how to” format if it helps others in this process.

When I began this task, the disappointing reality I faced was that I needed a flexible framework to serve my goals. Because these fields continue to change, their methods and techniques are often naive and naive. When designing behavior to support new public services emerging at the municipal level, these issues, constraints, and debates inevitably surfaced during the design process. Numerous times. To be efficient when it comes to designing the behavior associated with public services, most techniques used for private-sector use have to be carefully adjusted. This is partly due to the difficulty and uncertainty of shifting economic environments; however, it is mainly caused by fundamental differences within the decision-making process and the culture. Be aware of these differences and risk being in danger.

Step 1: Accept That Nudges Won’t Cut It

At first, I realized I needed to get beyond nudging and begin designing whole systems that would flourish in complex settings where the political landscape constantly changes. I had to develop innovative and well-planned journeys that make residents recyclers. Also, I had to create a compelling value proposition to ensure citizens have a satisfying experience.

Step 2: Don’t Rely Too Much on Data

In addition, I wanted to rely only a little on previous information that was usually not sufficient for municipal levels and which could not accurately predict how the current situation would play out in changing and uncertain scenarios. What’s true today is also true just for this particular day. If I had to alter the rules completely, data from the past helped me to an extent, but after that, I was left to navigate by myself.

3. Prioritize Long-Term Performance over Short-Term Indicators

Thirdly, there are more effective ways to determine the actual effectiveness of intervention than assessing short-term success. Sometimes, tactical successes resulted in strategic failings. In the present, I struggle to develop strategies and methods to keep track of the development of routes as the results change over time and the system dynamics behave in unanticipated ways. The oversimplified definitions of success have hindered me from predicting more significant, systemic outcomes.

Step 4: Engage, Engage, Engage

A fourth point I’ve gleaned is that engaging citizens isis central to developing ways to improve the public’s life. It begins with their personal experience and their empathy. This approach requires a particular set of competencies. Human-centered behavior design is about adapting and changing how people behave, their infrastructures, and other pertinent resources to improve their user experience and, ultimately, the long-term health of the entire community. With this in mind, I had to think about the many deeply embedded personal experiences and requirements that influenced people’s choices and choices in their homes. By itself, I realized that a behavior design could not deal with the deeply embedded cultural aspects.

Only after I stepped outside of the standardized models and formulations could I begin to step into an entirely new way of thinking, effectively connect with the people and communities I was helping, and help them change their attitudes towards the collection and management of waste.