The Behavioural Lenses Toolbox: designing for behaviour change | HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht

Design for behavioural change is a field of growing importance. Its growth is driven, on the one hand, by the fact that most of the problems we face as humanity are behaviour-based (e.g. threats to sustainability, health and well-being), and on the other by the notion that well-designed interventions can support people in changing their behaviour in the desired direction. This development has led to a growing number of design professionals, institutes and governmental organisations focusing on designing for behaviour change and consequently to a growing need for methodological support.

The Behavioural Lenses Approach is an initiative towards a method that allows designers to use theory from the behavioural sciences to inform their work. Together with partners from creative industry and academia, we developed a theoretical framework (Hermsen, Renes, & Frost, 2014) and a toolkit (Hermsen, 2015) based on 5 so-called 'lenses', which relate to five general aspects of behaviour (change): Habits and Impulses; Knowing and Believing; Seeing and Realising; Wanting and Being Able To; Doing and Persisting.

The toolkit has been used in a broad range of projects in practice and academic research (e.g. Hermsen, Renes & Frost, 2014; Hermsen et al., 2015, 2016; Van Essen, Hermsen, & Renes, 2016; Ploos van Amstel et al., 2017).