Behavioral Design
for Health

What you'll take away:

FAQs

1. Who should take this course?

This program is designed for people working to change health-related behaviors in roles within technology companies, public health organizations, pharma, insurance, healthcare delivery (including clinicians!), HR/benefits, health system administration, and health policy.

This program is for you if you want to better understand the psychology of your users – customers using an app, patients seeking care, healthcare providers, the general public – really, anyone whose behavior you’re hoping to change! If you want to become more thoughtful about how you design – content, onboarding flows, dashboards, communication materials, health hardware, etc. – behavioral science should be in your front pocket.

There is a treasure trove of insights about how people make decisions that impact their health. The current toolkits for product, program, marketing, and service design only expose us to the tip of the iceberg. In this course, you’ll come to deeply understand human psychology and how it drives the adoption, engagement, and retention of your product or service to improve people’s health.

2. What is the difference between this course and the Behavioral Design course?

The health course is tailored to people working in environments where they have an impact on people’s health. This may be through products they’re designing, programs they’re building, patients they’re supporting, or providers they’re leading. The majority of examples, studies, and content in this course is related to health behavior change.

3. What if I don’t work for a health-oriented organization?

That’s totally fine! While much of the content is designed for people actively designing products/services/workflows to change people’s health outcomes, it’s also great if you’re interested in improving your own health behaviors (or those of loved ones). Or maybe you’re thinking about starting a company that will impact people’s health. The course exercises are designed to work for all of these use cases, and more.

4. What are the course qualifications?

No previous experience in behavioral economics or healthcare is required. And if you’ve read a few behavioral science or economics books, you’ll certainly still learn new things. We focus on applying behavioral insights to the health problems you’re solving for at work and in your personal life. If you’re a healthcare provider, the content will be useful as you think about behavior change in the context of patient care.

Preference will be given to teams and individuals from companies whose work is focused on improving people’s health and wellbeing.

5. Who is Irrational Labs?

Irrational Labs  was founded by author and professor Dan Ariely and Kristen Berman. Our mission is to use behavioral insights to help people be happier, healthier, and wealthier. Hundreds of companies have used our process and methods to build innovative new products and improve existing ones.

Companies like Google, Aetna, Eli Lilly, Fidelity, Lyft & Uber, Shapa, Cuna Mutual, and AARP have brought us in to work within their product and marketing teams to drive growth and engagement. Dozens of startups have relied on us to help them understand their customers’ needs and build products that solve for them. We are product designers and behavioral scientists. We are deeply passionate about designing our systems and our environment to change behavior – especially health behavior – for good.

6. What is the weekly time commitment?

Every week, you’ll gain access to two new modules of content with about one hour of reading material. You’ll also have around one hour of hands-on exercises to do each week, and you can always engage on Slack to share your thinking and give others feedback on their work.

But the really neat thing that will happen? During this course, you’ll start thinking like a behavioral scientist. So while there are the actual (and non-trivial) time commitments to be aware of, you should expect to become immersed in the content in a way that seeps into your daily life. You’ll start seeing the world a bit differently. You’ll ask more questions. You’ll be more curious. We even hope that your friends start noticing that your conversation has shifted a bit!

7. What if I can’t afford the course?

Pro tip: You can ask your company to sponsor you. A lot of companies have a professional development budget for things exactly like this.

We also offer nonprofit and government employee discounts, as well as a ‘COVID-19 front-line worker’ discount. contact us at [email protected] to get a discount code.

8. How do the online modules work?

You’ll gain access to a platform called Podia, which will feed you the modules. It’s like Coursera in that you’ll log-in and have a list of modules to complete. Learning is primarily self-directed.

9. When does the course start?

Whenever you want to begin! After you’re accepted, you’ll be able to start the course within one week.

10. How long will I have access to the content?

You get access to the course for 3 months – that’s 8 weeks of actively receiving new content, plus another full month to review and cement your learning.