User experience (UX) design is a human-first approach to designing physical and digital products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users.
"User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products."
- Don Norman, Cognitive Scientist & User Experience Architect
Integrating behavioral science into UX design can lead to more informed and enjoyable products and services. This is because insights from behavioral science make it possible to uncover some of the hidden psychological mechanisms, conscious and unconscious mental processes, and deep-rooted motivations that cause users to engage in different actions. An understanding of behavioral science is also useful for identifying the barriers that prevent users from carrying out different types of behaviors.
Behavioral Economics offers a framework to understand and intervene at key moments of decision making, to strategically nudge people towards a desired behaviour. When done well, this "nudging" can have a profound impact.
This brief video from the Google Play Playtime EMEA speaker series highlights a few examples of behavioral science being applied to UX design.