Using behavioral science to improve your product | Kristen Berman (Irrational Labs)
Kristen Berman (guest), Lenny Rachitsky (host), Narrator, Narrator
In this episode of Lenny's Podcast, featuring Kristen Berman and Lenny Rachitsky, Using behavioral science to improve your product | Kristen Berman (Irrational Labs) explores designing Products That Nudge Real Behavior Change, Not Just Intentions Behavioral scientist Kristen Berman explains how to apply behavioral economics to product design, focusing on what people actually do versus what they say. She introduces the "3B" framework—Behavior, Barriers, Benefits—as a practical model teams can use to drive meaningful behavior change. Through case studies from TikTok, One Medical, fintech apps, and onboarding flows, she shows how small, psychology-informed product tweaks can significantly change outcomes. She also addresses the ethics and incentive structures that determine whether these tools help or exploit users.
Designing Products That Nudge Real Behavior Change, Not Just Intentions
Behavioral scientist Kristen Berman explains how to apply behavioral economics to product design, focusing on what people actually do versus what they say. She introduces the "3B" framework—Behavior, Barriers, Benefits—as a practical model teams can use to drive meaningful behavior change. Through case studies from TikTok, One Medical, fintech apps, and onboarding flows, she shows how small, psychology-informed product tweaks can significantly change outcomes. She also addresses the ethics and incentive structures that determine whether these tools help or exploit users.
Key Takeaways
Get uncomfortably specific about the target behavior, not just outcomes.
Teams often aim for abstract goals like “engagement” or “retention”; Berman argues you must define a concrete action (e. ...
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Map and reduce both logistical and cognitive barriers.
A detailed behavioral diagnosis—step-by-step screenshots plus attached psychologies—reveals where friction actually lives, from form fields and wait times (logistical) to uncertainty, status quo bias, or information aversion (cognitive).
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Design for immediate, not just long-term, benefits.
Because people are present-biased, products need near-term rewards—completion satisfaction, social visibility, status, or small incentives—layered on top of long-term benefits like better health, finances, or productivity.
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More friction can sometimes increase conversion when it boosts motivation.
Well-designed questions in signup flows (e. ...
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User-stated desires often fail in practice without environmental support.
In a fintech case, a heavily requested budgeting feature produced no change in spending because it demanded too much ongoing effort; defaults and simple rules-of-thumb proved more behaviorally realistic levers.
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Tiny, timely interventions can significantly reduce harmful behaviors.
For TikTok, adding an ‘unverified’ label and a “Are you sure? ...
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Incentive design determines whether behavioral tactics are ethical or predatory.
Berman’s LendingClub story shows that if teams are measured only on short-term conversion, even well-intentioned practitioners drift toward exploitative ideas; tying KPIs to specific, user-benefiting behaviors and longer time horizons helps keep things aligned.
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Notable Quotes
“In order to change behavior, you have to pick a behavior.”
— Kristen Berman
“Any kind of work that we put on the user, we should be skeptical.”
— Kristen Berman
“We are what we measure. It really matters what you measure.”
— Kristen Berman
“Sometimes we say deadlines are a gift.”
— Kristen Berman
“Behavior is contextual. That’s why we are religious about testing.”
— Kristen Berman
Questions Answered in This Episode
How can a product team systematically choose the single most impactful behavior to target among many plausible options?
Behavioral scientist Kristen Berman explains how to apply behavioral economics to product design, focusing on what people actually do versus what they say. ...
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Where in our current onboarding or core flows might adding friction (e.g., reflective questions) actually improve conversion or quality of use?
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Which psychologies—such as status quo bias, uncertainty aversion, or completion bias—are most likely blocking our users today, and how could we validate that?
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How should we redesign our team KPIs so they align behavioral tactics with genuine, long-term user outcomes instead of just short-term metrics?
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What would a full behavioral diagnosis of our product look like, and what surprising barriers or missed immediate benefits might it uncover?
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Transcript Preview
Economics says, look, people are rational. We make decisions with no emotion. We use n- lots of computational energy, weigh the pros and cons. I mean obviously, that's just not true. It ignores the whole field of psychology. And so, in behavioral economics you combine the field of psychology and economics and say, "Look, people make decisions with lots of emotion. We are present biased. We overweight our, our present selves. We follow social norms. But the good news is that we do these things in predictable ways, and once you understand how and why people behave, you can start to change it." And so, behavioral science and behavioral design basically uses those insights on psychology to actually apply it within real-world problems.
Welcome to Lenny's Podcast. I'm Lenny, and my goal here is to help you get better at the craft of building and growing products. I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and scaling today's most successful companies. Today, my guest is Kristen Berman. Kristen is the CEO and co-founder of Irrational Labs, where she and her team use behavioral science to help companies like Google, Airbnb, PayPal, Microsoft, Fidelity, and TikTok build better and more successful products. In our conversation, we cover a ton of real-life examples of product changes that her and her team helped craft that led to significant impact at the companies. We talk about what biases and psychologies they find most commonly get in the way of people achieving what they want to achieve in your product, her biggest surprises and insights about human psychology and how it relates to product design, a couple of real-life case studies, including her work with TikTok and the change they made in the product as a result, and so much more. I found this conversation super fascinating and super tactical, and I can't wait for you to hear it. And so, with that, I bring you Kristen Berman. Hey, Ashley, head of marketing at Flatfile. How many B2B SaaS companies would you estimate need to import CSV files from their customers?
At least 40%.
And how many of them screw that up, and what happens when they do?
Well, based on our data, about a third of people will consider switching to another company after just one bad experience during onboarding. So, if your CSV importer doesn't work right, which is super common considering customer files are chock-full of unexpected data and formatting, they'll leave.
I am 0% surprised to hear that. I've consistently seen that improving onboarding is one of the highest leverage opportunities for both sign-up conversion and increasing long-term retention. Getting people to your aha moment more quickly and reliably is so incredibly important.
Totally. It's incredible to see how our customers, like Square, Spotify, and Zuora, are able to grow their businesses on top of Flatfile. It's because flawless data onboarding acts like a catalyst to get them and their customers where they need to go faster.
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