Start at the End: How to Build Products That Create Change

by Matt Wallaert

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Author: Matt Wallaert

Publisher: Portfolio

Hardcover:
ISBN 10: 0525534423
ISBN 13: 978-0525534426

Nudge meets Hooked in a practical approach to designing products and services that change behavior, from what we buy to how we work.

Deciding what to create at modern companies often looks like an episode of Mad Men: people throw ideas around until one sounds sexy enough to execute and then they scale it to everyone. The result? Companies overspend on marketing to drive engagement with products and services that people don't want and won't help them be happier and healthier.

Start at the End offers a new framework for design, grounded in behavioral science. Technology executive and behavioral scientist Matt Wallaert argues that the purpose of everything is behavior change. By starting with outcomes instead of processes, the most effective companies understand what people want to do and why they aren't already doing it, then build products and services to bridge the gap.

Wallaert is a behavioral psychologist who has led product design at organizations ranging from startups like Clover Health to industry leaders such as Microsoft. Whether dissecting the success behind Uber's ridesharing service or Flamin' Hot Cheetos, he underscores with clarity and humor how this approach can improve the way we work and live.

This is an essential roadmap for building products that matter--and changing behavior for the better.

Review

“Clear and concise, this is a book for anyone who believes there is a better way to do business. Wallaert is right: we can all be behavioral scientists. And we all should be.” —Sallie Krawcheck, CEO and cofounder of Ellevest

“Matt Wallaert spends his time finding ways to help people make decisions that will enable them to live better lives, and in this book he shares how we all can. Start at the End is a clear, insightful, wise, and powerful book that will help anyone whose aim is to improve human welfare.” —Barry Schwartz, professor at Berkeley Haas, author of The Paradox of Choice and Why We Work

“The idea that products exist to change behavior isn’t new, yet most product designers don’t start with behavior as an outcome. Wallaert’s intriguing, insightful, and often humorous new book is a guide for anyone seeking to drive customer action.” —Nir Eyal, author of Hooked and Indistractable

“Good businesses are built on a thesis and Matt Wallaert certainly has one. His idea that products must create behavior change is a fresh lens on a vital problem, and the scientific approach this book advocates is compelling. Matt is one of the absolute best conceptual-meets-extremely-practical holistic thinkers out there. I will always make time to soak in his thinking and act swiftly on his ideas.” —Pip Coburn, founder of Coburn Ventures

About the Author

Matt Wallaert is a behavioral scientist and entrepreneur working at the intersection of technology and human behavior, designing products and programs that help people live happier, healthier lives. After leaving academia to build and sell several successful startups, he became Microsoft's Behavioral Scientist and a director at Microsoft Ventures. He is now the Chief Behavioral Officer at Clover Health, a Medicare Advantage plan changing the model of insurance by bending the risk curve with behavioral change. He speaks frequently on the intersection of science and product design and continues to build side projects designed to change behaviors around social inequities.

Humans are born behavioral scientists. From our very first cry, we begin to shape what others do by exerting pressure— bawl and they feed us, coo and they snuggle us. And we are similarly shaped by the pressures of others. We’re taught how to speak, dress, and act both explicitly and implicitly, through millions of subtle interactions with people and our environment. We change the behavior of others naturally and constantly, simply by being alive and part of a larger population.
This natural tendency toward behavior change manifests as our creative drive. Because we’re wired to influence what others do, we’re constantly creating to get what we want. As a consequence, nearly everything we come in contact with is constructed to shape behavior. Sidewalks tell us to walk here and not there. Movies tell us to laugh or to cry. Wearing a tie says, “Call me Mr. Tibbs!” while a Hawaiian shirt elicits a first name.

Yet we rarely connect our desire to create with the goal of behavior change. At most companies, the decision- aking process behind what we build still looks like an episode of Mad Men: people, generally white and male and lacking any expertise other than privilege, throw ideas out until one of them sounds sexy enough, and that’s what gets built. The rationalization is entirely post hoc, created simply to support an idea that a decision maker has already fallen in love with.

Hence the modern “why we make what we make” vision statement. No mention of behavior, no acceptance of the goal of creation, just a mélange of high- ef puff pieces designed to appeal to our need to both stand out and fit in. Even at companies that ought to know better, we have fetishized the process over its outcome and a stylish product over its intended behavior change. Then we attempt to make up for it by shouting as loudly as possible about how cool our products are, hoping to create a motivation where none previously existed. What an awful waste.
Advertising accounts for more than 1 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product: $220 billion of spend to compensate for a process that doesn’t consider behavior change its central aim. Instead of basic psychology, we use brute force to fuel a massive competition for attention, and our world is worse off because of it. Instead of starting at the end— clearly described behavior that is the explicit goal of creation— ur method of design has come to embrace the sexy sell and the need to sound good instead of be good. We have so deeply internalized product marketing that we make products with the advertisements in mind.

If that sounds great and you still want to live in a Mad Men world, it’s not too late to turn a blind eye. No one is forcing you to read this book and start changing behavior. Amazon has a very generous return policy. I encourage regifting— t is the ultimate environmentalism.

But if you believe this system is unsustainable and want to get busy doing something different, good news: you’ve come to the right place. Here we’ll prioritize outcome over process, while recognizing that some processes get you better outcomes. We’ll put behavior change first by starting at the end.

Start at the End: How to Build Products That Create Change

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Start at the End: How to Build Products That Create Change