Design for Action 2014: Where Behavioral Econ meets UX

“Behavioral Econ meets UX” – Photos of speaker Kristen Berman in “Hacking Human Nature for Good: Practical lessons in
applying social science to product development” (View on Flickr)

I got to attend the first ever Design for Action conference in Washington, DC (well, Rosslyn, VA, but just a metro stop away) yesterday, and even took a partial day off to do it. Why? Because this is the tip of social innovation in health and health care.

Take a look at the sponsor list – these are the brands in 2014 that are using the behavioral science health care mostly doesn’t use to improve health and living. One day health care will be in this room in a bigger way, until then, there’s always the social innovators 🙂 (Disclosure, I am volunteering to be on the Board of Action Design Network, a 501c3 organization) .

Design for Action was the first conference created by the Action Design Network, that also created one of the most successful meetup groups in Washington, DC, ActionDesignDC, that have now launched organizations in Boston, New York, and San Francisco. However, as with the conference, Washington, DC, the United States’ most social city, was first.

I unfortunately couldn’t stay for the entire event, even though I’ll admit I was captivated by Kristen Berman’s (@bermster) experience and examples around simple approaches to modulating behavior change. We work to incorporate these principles at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Total Health (@KPTotalHealth) – little details go a long way, and this is a community that’s open to giving feedback because they want everyone else to be successful. And success is the same awesome goal – a healthy, productive life.

One other cool thing I learned about was The Noun Project, which has a lot of things I love, like graphics and creative commons licenses. I plan to use some of this work very soon. Thanks to speaker Chris Rison from Adaptive Path for showing us the light.

Great Job Steve Wendel (@sawendel) and the Action Design Network (@designforaction) team. Putting on your first conference is no easy feat – you did it successfully – applied behavioral scientists tend to do this…

Ted Eytan, MD