Amy Bucher's Blog

I’m sad to say the Mad*Pow brand and website are no more following the company’s acquisition in 2019. I’m going […]

The post Repost from Mad*Pow – Reopening After COVID-19: How to Support Employees’ Safety Behaviors first appeared on Amy Bucher, Ph.D..

I always intend to update this site more often than I manage to do it. I’ve learned that the busier I am at work, the …

The post A Small Update first appeared on Amy Bucher, Ph.D..

Note: This comes from a five month old draft. Unfortunately, the situation has gotten worse rather than better, although we now have a roadmap to vaccination. Yay to that! I don’t think I would ever have claimed otherwise, but it’s nonetheless humbling to be presented with the evidence. Individual behavior change tactics are not enough. As the … Continue reading Behavior Change in the Time of Coronavirus: Why We Need Systems Thinking →

Nothing right now feels “normal.” Speaking for myself, six seven months into Covid-19 it remains disorienting that my typical hobbies, routines, and routes remain inaccessible to me. This is the longest I’ve gone in my working life without boarding an airplane (and related to that, probably also eating a delicious Biscoff cookie. Yes, I know … Continue reading How to Use Self-Discovery to Navigate These Pandemical Times →

One thing coronavirus has exposed more broadly is the importance of (good) ethics in tech and design. There have been people raising the alarm about potential missteps and ways to guard against them for years. Some of the more thoughtful books about ethics with algorithms and tech design were published in the last few years … Continue reading How Psychology Helped Me Recognize Toxic Tech →

A key part of our process in a behavior change design project is to do a literature review.  We comb the published peer-reviewed literature to find research that will help us understand the current project. For example, on a recent project where we wanted to design a wellness app for people on Medicaid and Medicare … Continue reading Every Project Needs Its Own Research →

As I write this, it’s been almost seven weeks since I’ve been to my office. My town has been under stay-at-home orders for about a week less than that. Like so many people, I’m suddenly co-working from my home with family members, having put anxiously awaited plans on hold, worried about the state of the … Continue reading A Brief Pandemic Reflection →

Last week I was the inaugural guest on Sustainable UX‘s live podcast series, run by my friend and colleague James Christie. Initially the discussion was intended to be a bit of a book promo with discussion about how Engaged applies to sustainability behaviors. But in between scheduling and the event date, a global pandemic broke out, and … Continue reading What Behavior Change for Sustainability and Pandemic Survival Have In Common →

The reproducibility crisis has hit psychology hard.  In writing Engaged: Designing for Behavior Change, I found myself having to double check whether some of the studies I learned about previously are still considered valid to cite.  Part of the book writing process was a technical review, in which I asked five experts to read the manuscript … Continue reading Can Context-Bound Research Replicate? →

One of my favorite parts of writing Engaged: Designing for Behavior Change was talking to experts for their perspectives.  Each of the twelve chapters of Engaged concludes with a two-page conversation with someone who’s doing exciting work related to that chapter’s topic. The interviews gave me a chance to reconnect with old friends and a convenient excuse … Continue reading 12 Bits of Brilliance: Engaged Interviews →