Alarm clocks, odometers, and heart rate monitors; these all present some form of information with the intent of driving better decisions. Wake up, drive safely, take better care of yourself.

The objective of these feedback loops are to provoke reactions upon our actions in hopes of changing our behavior. That’s all really great, I NEED to move more. But when you’re staring down the barrel of every device you have demanding you to change your natural behavior, it starts to become easier to ignore them than to change.

So in a day full of all this information competing for our attention, how do we know what to pay attention to, let alone really give a shit about?

SECTION I — EVERY DAY INFORMATION AND HOW IT’S DISPLAYED.

Think of some current types of information encountered during the average day. Time, schedule, transportation, purchases, physical health.

This information could be displayed to us is through appliances; alarm clocks, coffee makers, our phone. Through the display on the turn-style as we swipe our transit passes. Alerts sent to our phone from our financial service. Then the biggest one right now; from a bevy of fitness devices.

So does any of this information affect behavior? Well of course it does. If you get a low balance alert, you check you account. If you’ve been sitting for far too long and your wrist buzzes, you get up… maybe.. I’m not judging.

Does all of this CHANGE your behavior? Do you care enough about the information that it actually changes what you do? If yes, you’re great. Stop reading. But if no, why do you think that is?

SECTION II — THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INFORMATION + INTENTION + BEHAVIOR = SHIT GIVERY.

We’ve covered the ‘what’ types of information and ‘how’ it’s displayed. Now let’s talk about… not why… I don’t care why you’re getting balance notifications or need to run faster. Instead let’s talk about when.

The role of time, the ‘when’ you get your notifications can have a great impact on how you personally receive them and reflect on your beha.

Let’s say you run a 5k every Monday, Wednesday and Friday… good for you, I kinda hate you. Every time you log into your running app it tells you how you rank against friends, strangers, even your past self. There’s a ton of information there. Now lets say you stop running. You just stop. Does your app message you on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday asking where you were?

What if rather than waiting for a log in to remind you of the last time you ran, the app acknowledged that you had a behavior pattern, and message appropriately when that pattern was broken? This small feedback loop would transform the device from one that simply displays data, to one that shows empathy for you. aww… it cares.

So that’s great for private loops: action, display, reaction. But what about public loops, what role do humans play? The obvious answer is accountability. But is that mitigating and reacting or is that real behavior change?

Ok, you’re still an avid runner, I still hate you, and you’ve still just recently stopped running. Now what if the app, rather than sending a notification to you, sends it to the person you have the most communication with and are connected to within the app. This notification could alert that friend that you’ve dropped the ball and need encouragement ASAP. Your friend texts you, you feel like a lazy asshole so you go for a run.

In that scenario, the loop branches out to create a more meaningful display. Your app cares about you, you care about your friend, you react based on feelings.