Desire Code: Designing services people want

We make hundreds of decisions daily. There’re the obvious ones like what to wear, what to eat, whether to send that email and how to structure that report... but there’s hundreds more that are so tiny we barely notice we made a decision at all. With some decisions we need to gather information first, like where to go on holiday, which car to buy and which mobile phone provider to use... and then there’s the truly life-changing decisions we make that we absolutely want to get right; such as where to live, which college to apply to, which career to pursue, and whether or not to have children. All of these require us to look into imaginary futures and compare the implications of our decisions, and, it turns out we’re pretty poor at it. Humans are not machines, and we’re incapable of predicting and processing all the possible outcomes from every course of action. The process of consciously choosing one thing over another uses mental effort. To reduce the load on ourselves and free up cognitive capacity, we rely instead on the remarkable and fast system of subconscious mental shortcuts to steer us through the uncertainty. Behavioural economics is the study of those hidden forces that influence human behaviour, motivation and decision making. The principles of behavioural economics can be used in the design of services and products to make them more impactful and appealing to customers. Desire Code breaks down these principles into five themes, each with real world examples and practical suggestions so readers can apply them to their work. Any way of tipping the balance to make services more successful, efficient and a better experience for customers is an advantage worth exploring.