Designing salient and supportive systems for proximal behaviors.

Designers should create salient reminders and support mechanisms to help users stick to near-term plans by reducing participation costs and increasing belief in the ease of tasks.

About this paper

The author conducted two studies to understand how temporal distance affects planned behavior, finding that attitudes become more important for distant events while perceived behavior control influences intentions regardless of timing.

These findings advance the Theory of Planned Behavior and provide strategies for designers and event organizers to motivate behaviors over different timeframes.

Here are some methods used in this study:

Theory Of Planned Behavior Construal Level Theory

Which part of the paper did the design guideline come from?

“We hypothesized that people tend to have a higher intention to perform the behavior in the far future compared to near future (H5). Results of the paired-samples t-test show that the mean of willingness to attend the yoga class differs a month before the event (M=.80, SD=.41) and a few days before the event (M=.60, SD=.49) at the .01 level of significance (t=2.70, df=29, p<.01, 95% CI, for a mean difference .05 to .35, r=.62). We should point out that in the end, only 6 participants actually (...)” (‘Change in Intention Over Time’ section)

Suh, M. (Mia), & Hsieh, G. (2016). Designing for Future Behaviors. Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Inspiration and scope

In this paper, authors focused on characteristics of people aiming to join near-term activities to understand and encourage proximal behaviors or sticking to near-term plans.

You aim to design health-related products for people worried about their health. Both contexts need to understand what motivates actions. The paper's strategies for near-term activities can adapt to your context by identifying short-term health milestones or rewards to engage users in healthier behaviors.

Also, there is a critical need to educate users about the benefits of actions or products. Techniques from the paper to communicate near-term participation benefits can apply to your context by creating content showing how health products enhance well-being.

By leveraging similarities, design a system that raises awareness and motivates users to adopt healthier habits with timely, personalized notifications suggesting simple steps. This reduces barriers to adopting health products and highlights ease of integrating them, leading to improved health.

Your input

  • What: health regarding products
  • Who: people who worry about their health
  • Design stage: Evaluation

Methods for you

Consider the following method(s) used in this paper for your design work:

Within-Subjects Field Experiment

Conducting a within-subjects field experiment can help determine changes in participants' behavior over time. Designers should ensure that the study environment and conditions remain consistent to capture genuine behavior changes accurately.

Logistic Regression Analysis

Using logistic regression analysis helps in understanding the predictive power of different variables on intention. When applying this methodology, designers should ensure that the collected data is reliable and appropriately scaled for accurate model predictions.

Metrics for you

Consider the following metric(s) used in this paper to evaluate your design work:

Behavioral Intention

Behavioral intention quantifies the effort individuals plan to exert towards performing a health-related action, helping predict how likely they are to engage in it. Designers should note that intention can vary over time, so measuring it at different stages can provide comprehensive insights.

Perceived Behavioral Control

Perceived behavioral control assesses the ease or difficulty of performing a health-related action, offering insights into potential barriers. Designers should address factors that enhance users' sense of control to improve engagement with health products.

[Table 7] From this figure, you can evaluate people's willingness to perform behaviors, helping you assess the likelihood of user adoption for your health product.