behaviorcentered

Behavior Centered Design (BCD) is an approach to creating interventions that aim to change human behavior by integrating behavioral science with design. It focuses on understanding how people act within specific contexts and shaping environmental, social, and communicative elements to make desired behaviors easier, more attractive, and more socially reinforced.

Core principles of BCD include starting from concrete behaviors and local context, assembling interdisciplinary teams, and using iterative prototyping and real-world testing. The method combines psychological insights with creative design and field experimentation to move beyond information provision toward altering the environment, routines, norms, and incentives that drive behavior.

The typical workflow involves mapping the target behavior and its context, generating design concepts that leverage cues, prompts, feedback, incentives, and social influence, building inexpensive prototypes, testing with users, and refining before scale-up. Evaluation often employs mixed methods, including qualitative feedback and experimental or quasi-experimental designs to estimate impact and guide improvements.

Applications of Behavior Centered Design span public health, sanitation and hygiene (for example, handwashing and safe water practices), nutrition, energy and water conservation, transportation safety, and education campaigns. While widely used in low- and middle-income settings to address development challenges, BCD is also applied in corporate and nonprofit sectors to improve product use, service uptake, and behavior change outcomes.

Critiques note that success depends on accurate context understanding, cultural sensitivity, and adequate resources, and that complex behaviors may require long-term, multi-faceted strategies. Proponents argue that, when paired with rigorous evaluation, BCD can yield scalable and cost-effective interventions.

See also: behavior change, design thinking, behavioral science, COM-B model, nudging.