Responsibilities Of A Senior Behavioral Designer At A Behavioral Design Firm
Marisa, a Senior Behavioral Designer, works on global development projects focusing on sustainability, agriculture, and human rights, managing one to three projects concurrently across various phases. Her work involves identifying behavioral problems, such as "people are not doing X behavior, we want them to do X behavior," diagnosing barriers through user research, designing human-centered solutions (e.g., messaging, role models, reducing hassles), testing these interventions (ideally with randomized control trials), and finally disseminating findings through presentations, papers, and seeking funding for scaling.
Project Management, Problem-Solving, Communication, Data Analysis, Teamwork
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Marisa Nowicki
Senior Behavioral Designer
Behavioral Design Firm
University of North Texas
Carnegie Mellon University: Masters in Public Policy and Management (MSPPM), 2019
Medical, Sciences & Related, Psychology
Climate, Environment, Sustainability & Waste Management, Nonprofit, Foundations & Grantmaking
Consulting
Honors Student, Scholarship Recipient, Took Out Loans, Greek Life Member, First Generation College Student
Video Highlights
1. Marisa works on diverse projects involving sustainability, agriculture, and human rights, showcasing the broad applicability of behavioral design.
2. Her process involves identifying behavioral problems, diagnosing barriers, designing solutions using human-centered approaches (e.g., messaging, role models, reducing hassles), and rigorously testing those solutions.
3. Marisa emphasizes the importance of understanding the context and environment to understand why people may not be exhibiting desired behaviors, highlighting the practical application of behavioral science principles.
Transcript
What are your main responsibilities within your current role?
I'm a senior behavioral designer at a behavioral science and design firm. My team works on global livelihoods and development projects, and my portfolio focuses on sustainability, agriculture, and human rights.
Within this area, I manage projects end-to-end for various partners and funders. I typically handle one to three projects concurrently, each in different phases of development.
Project phases include identifying business development opportunities, like grants, and coordinating with potential funders and partners. We also identify engagement strategies for collaborative work.
Once a project begins, we help partners define the scope and the behavioral problem they aim to solve. Partners often approach us with assumptions, such as "people are lazy and won't finish this program."
We then help them clarify the specific behavior they want to change, stripping away assumptions. The goal is to move from a general problem to a clear behavioral statement: "People are not doing X behavior; we want them to do X behavior." For example, "People are not completing this program; we want them to complete this program."
Next, we diagnose the behavioral barriers. This involves extensive conversations and sometimes experiencing the process ourselves to understand environmental factors hindering the desired behavior.
Often, people want to engage in the desired behavior, whether it's finishing a program, reporting human trafficking, or recycling, but face obstacles. We investigate what in their environment makes this difficult.
After diagnosing the barriers, we move to the design phase. Using human-centered design approaches, we brainstorm solutions to address these barriers.
This might involve changes to messaging, role model interventions, reducing hassles, restructuring information, or using educational entertainment. We also consider social norms and other influencing factors.
We then user-test these design ideas and conduct usability testing to select one or two to implement. Ideally, if funding allows, we test these solutions to measure any behavioral change.
We prefer to run randomized control trials, comparing a group that receives the solution to a control group. This helps us determine the solution's effectiveness.
Finally, we disseminate our research findings through presentations, conferences, and publications. We also seek funding to scale successful interventions.
In my role, I typically manage one to three projects simultaneously. It's common to be in the design phase for one project, the diagnosis phase for another, and so on. We engage in a variety of tasks across different projects.