The rise of Civic Behavior Change apps
Since the shock of last month’s election results, lots of engineers and designers in the Valley have been trying to figure out how they might use their ‘maker’ power to push back against the incoming administration.
And there is a definite trend in what is being built: it’s all about borrowing from health and wellness apps, and bringing the prominent behavior change interactions into the civic space.
There is My Civic Workout, to give short lessons and actions about what you can do to assert your civic power.
#FIGHTTRUMP supplies regular alerts about what small actions you can do to promote a liberal political agenda.
What Do I Do About Trump has a tool for users to make personal action plans to get more involved in community support, civic action, and political work. It also suggests creating local cohorts, and making public commitments to following through on new civic actions.
Five Minute Resistance has a daily action for you to take, to undermine the power of the incoming administration.
It’s somewhat amazing that so many projects with the same basic pattern have emerged within a few weeks of the election. And what is that pattern?
- Offer the value proposition: Harness your anger, frustration, and bewilderment to something more meaningful.
- Give a brief, actionable path: Do this discrete action today, it will take you less than 5 minutes.
- Hold yourself accountable: Commit to your daily actions online, or with a small group, or through the product.
- Loop until you get to successful outcomes.
Sound familiar? Probably, if you have used any of the many apps that try to increase users’ healthy behaviors or mindful behaviors, or that try to form new habits.
The behavior change/habit formation pattern has come to politics.
Most of the projects are in early stages, and it’s not clear yet if one of these (or others) will take over as a dominant one.
It will also be interesting to see if any civic behavior change apps diverge more significantly from the standard health behavior change pattern — to better fit social (rather than personal) goals.
It’s harder to gather data about immediate civic outcomes than it is about health/wellness. There’s no steps to count, pounds to watch, or heart rate to measure. That means that sustaining civic behavior change needs other kinds of feedback and outcome measurement to be a sustainable, ritual product.
