The Behavioural Dilemma: Balancing Creativity, Science, and Human-Centred Solutions
Design has evolved far beyond aesthetics, it is now a powerful tool for shaping human behaviour, decisions, and experiences. In today's fast-paced world, designers are tasked with understanding not only what people need but also how they naturally interact with spaces, products, and systems. By blending design thinking, behavioural science, and empathy driven insights, the focus shifts to creating solutions that align with human actions and emotions.
Whether designing a social space like a restaurant or optimising user experiences in digital interfaces, Designing for Human Behaviour provides a framework for understanding patterns, anticipating needs, and influencing positive outcomes. This approach ensures that design serves a deeper purpose: to enhance functionality, foster connection, and improve how we live, work, and interact.
The best designs consider, on a very deep level, their users or occupants. User-Centric Design, Design Thinking, etc. The approach is not new and rightly so. It's pretty logical. The world is, however, moving ever faster and faster. The issue with true immersion is that, in truth, few projects allow it. One is seldom able to actually collect all the data around a problem, as by the time a designer is brought to the table, dates are set, budgets have been allocated, and obligations must be met.
Most specialist commercial designers neither have time nor budget as their friend. Our agency is no different, and with the realities of daily pressures and our desire to stay true to our philosophy of designing the best possible social spaces for the best possible human experiences and engagement, we had to explore ways to get to better answers much faster. We therefore asked ourselves a simple but fundamental question: What if we thought about a space as being occupied by humans with automated behaviours and patterns? What if we could hack the process, understand exactly how humans will be moving and interacting in very specific environments, and therefore automate certain parts, arriving perhaps at explicit guidelines and specific patterns of design? The rest of our time could then be spent developing and prototyping the layers of unique visual tangibles to frame the solution and make it relatable. Would this be possible?
To understand this proposal better, let’s go back a few steps. Below is a short summary of how we framed our approach. Your thoughts would be welcomed.
What is Design Thinking?
Design Thinking is a method through which designers solve problems through immersion. Designers start with empathy. Through interviews and observations, they try to “fall in love with the problem”: Why do people do what they do, and where could we find opportunities for improvement?
What is Behavioural Design?
(also called Behavioural Change Design)
Behavioural Design is the combination of Design Thinking with the science of influence. Behavioural Design combines psychology and behavioural science to understand why people make the choices that they make and what other information they need to make healthier choices. In short, Behavioural Design helps people make better decisions.
What is Designing for Human Behaviour?
Design for Human Behaviour is, in short, the packaging of Design Thinking and Behavioural Design findings with respect to the actions that people repeatedly and predictively perform in very specific environments and finding patterns of design for pre-set factors of positive influence.
Our focus is specifically on design within social spaces, i.e., what people do in the company of people. Think of any hospitality space like a restaurant or a bar, for example. Designing for this predictive human behaviour helps us as designers make better-qualified design decisions much faster. Sure, textures, materials, colour palettes, furniture, and lighting, etc., are all very important, but if they are not all done subject to and in support of the best possible human experiences and engagement, then their application is fickle and reasonably pointless.
More about this in our article where we explore Our predictable irrational behaviours.
Information Reference Index:
Understanding Design Thinking
Behavioural Design Principles
Designing for Human Behaviour
The Role of Psychology in Design
Influence of Environment on Human Decision-Making
Why We Do What We Do: Designing for Human Behaviour
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