Changing Habits: Interview with Dr. Amy Bucher, a Behavior Change Designer

Nir’s note: I recently caught up with Dr. Amy Bucher, the author of Engaged, a compelling guidebook on designing products and services that change people’s lives. She talks about behavioral design, the science of crafting products and services in such a way as to shape or influence human behavior. Here is our conversation.

Feel free to check out my other articles about habits, motivation and self-control.

Nir Eyal: Why did you write your book?

Amy Bucher: My profession of behavior change designer is still very new. We haven’t quite coalesced yet as a professional community, and there’s not a particularly well-defined path to entering the field. I was having more and more people reach out to me wanting to know how they could get involved in behavior change design. I’d do phone calls or coffees but the demand was outpacing my capacity, and I was also left feeling frustrated that there was no resource I could put in people’s hands to help them. That was the first big reason I wanted to write Engaged. It’s a love song to what I do and an invitation to others to join me.

The second big reason is that I love to read and write, and always wanted to write a book. I can remember writing in my diary as a little girl, “I will be…