I Used Behavioral Economics To Redesign Breakfast For My Kid
And get my mornings back, once and for all
There was a time during the pandemic where I faced a UX challenge. But this wasn’t at work, it was at home.
And the user was my five-year-old son, Robin.
The problem was a pretty common one, actually. Every single morning, I would come downstairs, ready to make breakfasts and lunches for my two kids, and every single morning I would ask Robin, “What do you want for breakfast today?”
But instead of of answering this supposedly simple and straightforward question, he would absolutely lose his mind. He moaned. He whined. He yelled, “I don’t know!” at the top of his lungs. I made offers to him. I told him if he wasn’t hungry it was fine to skip breakfast or just eat at school. I listed off every food in the house whether it was a breakfast, lunch, or dinner item. I even threatened him with no breakfast at all.
Usually, after much consternation, he would finally eat something, but this was an incredibly protracted and stressful morning routine for me and my wife, not to mention for my son who was beginning each day practically in tears because of a simple decision.
Then, one day, I solved the problem in less than 10 minutes.
The key was realizing the problem was a known psychological phenomenon known as Overchoice. There were simply too many options. That’s why listing solutions was no help at all. If anything, these lists and offers just made things worse!
But there’s a difference between diagnosing the problem and designing the solution. Here’s how I did it, why it worked, and how you can do the same thing at home, at work, or pretty much anywhere.
Solving Breakfast
When it comes to indecisive and stubborn kids, everyone knows the key is giving them the feeling they are in control. Giving them the option to do two things you want them to do is a common tactic among modern parents. “Do you want to put your coat on now, or put it on when we get to the playground?” Either way, the kid puts the coat on, but they feel like they made the choice, right? Well, I tried this with Robin’s breakfast, and it failed. Miserably.
This may be a hot take, but I think this “common knowledge” parenting tactic (choose the way to do what I say) is actually kind of wrong. Most kids are both smart and aware enough to see what’s happening. They may go along with it but resent you for it. They may downright refuse and force you into a power struggle. And then you end up pulling out the big guns, the last two resorts of parents who Just. Need. To get. Through. The day. Bribes and threats.
Choose the way to do what I say is actually kind of wrong.
The solution I designed solved the problem of Overchoice without presenting false binaries, “outsmarting” my child, bribing or threatening, or asserting any authority at all. It was simple, fast, free, and effective. Here’s what I did:
Robin and I sat down with a piece of paper, and we created a weekly breakfast menu, together.
It was that simple. From then on, it was like a switch was flipped. Morning were unrecognizable! Gone were the fits, tears, screams, and indecision. Instead, Robin ran up to me and said, “What’s fore breakfast today? Let’s look at the menu!” It was an egg on toast, and he ate it and he loved it.
And for me, instead of having to interrogate, bribe, threaten, and make unending offers to my son, sapping all my mental energy during my already stressful A.M. routine, all I had to do was read the menu and make what it said, and was rewarded with smiles and thanks. Good UX works both ways, and after all, I was also a stakeholder and a user in the breakfast scheme.
But why was this so effective?
Why The Menu Worked
1. Eliminating Overchoice.
There are several reasons why this was an effective solution. The first is that it eliminated overchoice. I already wrote about this in the intro, so I won’t get into too much more detail here. But if it wasn’t obvious, instead of being presented with an unlimited pallet to create any breakfast, the menu gave Robin one single option each day. Probably, it could have had two options and still worked, but having just one is even more ironclad. What could possibly be easier than selecting amongst one option?
2. Self-Determination
Second, the creation of the menu relied on Self Determination Theory, a behavioral science concept that asserts that “supporting the individual’s experience of autonomy, competence, and relatedness … fosters the most volitional and high quality forms of motivation and engagement….”
“Conditions supporting the individual’s experience of autonomy, competence, and relatedness are argued to foster the most volitional and high quality forms of motivation and engagement for activities, including enhanced performance, persistence, and creativity.”
-Self-Determination-Theory
How did menu creation do this? The key is that we created the menu together. I didn’t write up a menu and present it to him, I took the time to sit and really let him decide what breakfast items he wanted to eat during his week. Letting him create the menu himself (with my help) fostered his sense of autonomy and competence. I trusted him to decide what to eat over the week. And because he was doing it together with his dad, it also helped build relatedness to someone important to him: me.
3. Choice Architecture
The creation of the menu was also a form of Choice Architecture. This is a deceptively simple concept in BE.
Choice architecture refers to the way choices are presented to individuals, influencing their decision-making. In this case, by structuring breakfast options as a menu over the course of a week, I influenced his perception of choice and made it easier for him to make a decision. I did this by borrowing an existing framework that he already understood from from other parts of his life. It helped that the menu looked and behaved similar to the one he used at school every week for lunch.
4. Default Bias
The menu also triggered something called Default Bias. In B.E., Default Bias is the tendency for individuals to stick with the default option. For instance, if someone must specifically ask for a vegetarian option when the default is a beef burger, they will probably stick with the beef burger even if they prefer the falafel wrap for health, environmental, or even flavor reasons. But if the default were the vegetarian option and the diner had to specifically ask for the burger, a lot more falafel wold get consumed at lunch time. You can probably think of many ways this effects you in your own life.
When push comes to shove, I didn’t actually limit Robin’s breakfast choice at all. If he told me he wanted cinnamon toast instead of eggs, that would have been totally fine! What was really happening was the creation of a new default. In fact, before we made the menu, there was no default.
Once we had that, Robin didn’t have to put much effort into deciding what to have for breakfast each day, reducing decision-making stress.
5. Ownership Effect and Choice Supportive Bias
Two other very powerful cognitive biases that helped solve breakfast for Robin were Ownership Effect and Choice Supportive Bias. Ownership Effect is a psychological concept that states that people will value things more highly simple because they own them, whether they chose them or not. You might have heard of a similar effect known as Endowment Effect that makes people less likely to sell stock after purchasing it, even if it’s losing value. In this case, Robin made the menu with me and thereafter owned it. He had some pride in creating and owning this menu, so he valued it. Choice Supportive Bias is a little different.
“Choice-supportive bias (or post-purchase rationalisation) is our tendency to defend our own decisions or later perceive our choices as better than they are. Simply because we made them.”
Robin chose what breakfast items were on the menu in advance. He made those decisions himself, and therefore he felt strongly going forward that the choices were good ones, and had no desire to deviate from the menu that he himself made.
Design Lessons From Breakfast, Or: Ditching The Kitchen Sink
This is all well and good, but what can we learn from this, other than how to make a five-year-old eat breakfast? Well, do you contribute to the design of a product or process at work? Or do you need to influence the behavior of users or teammates to achieve goals? I’m willing to bet you do.
One issue I’ve had with products I’ve worked on is a kitchen sink phenomenon. This is when product (such as an app) can do many things, and so the interface presents all possible options to the user and lets them choose how they want to use the product. Normally this is not the idea of a designer, but rather a well-meaning domain expert. Why offer two different ways to exercise in your fitness app when you can offer 50?
By now, I think the answer to this question should be obvious. A user presented with too many choices is liable to opt for none of them. Have you ever scrolled through Netflix endlessly looking at all your options and eventually decided maybe it’s too late to watch something after all? No, of course not. You’d never do something like that.
What you, a thoughtful choice architect, need to do is figure out what are the most important actions for users to take, and then use every tool in your toolbox to get them to take those actions. In my case, it was “quickly decide upon and eat breakfast.” Your challenge is likely different in all the particulars, but similar at its core. Are you presenting a good default option? Designing an engaging choice architecture? Are you helping your users effectively self-determine? Activating their sense of ownership to get them to stick to a path?
If your users (or your family!) are having trouble getting started or following through, maybe all you need to do is ditch the kitchen sink.
These techniques and concepts are powerful, but there are probably many more that I forgot to mention here. If you can think of any cognitive biases or B.E. effects I might have missed, let me know in the comments!
Sam Liberty is a gamification expert and former Lead Game Designer at Sidekick Health. He teaches Game Design at Northeastern University.
