The Behavioral Design Podcast · Samuel Salzer and Aline Holzwarth

Behavior Change Score with Roos van Duijnhoven

·32 min·2 clips

Roos says sleep products cannot rely on sleep-lab measurement for every user.

1. The Behavioural Design Podcast episode with Roos van Duijnhoven focuses on the Behaviour Change Score and digital behavior change in apps. 2. Samuel hosts Roos van Duijnhoven, a Nuance Behaviour colleague with a background in behavioural change and neuropsychology, because she applies behavioural science to digital products. 3. The episode asks how behavioural science can be translated into practical product decisions for onboarding, retention, and real-world behavior. 4. Roos and Samuel discuss a previous conversation with Susan Murthy about how hard it is to keep people engaged over time. 5. Samuel gives an example from work with a large insurance provider where messaging helped people take a cardiovascular risk test. 6. Roos says that intervention increased test-taking by about 40 or 50 percent. 7. The pair describe how targeting variables and audience segmentation can adapt messages when people do not respond. 8. They explain that some clients still work with internal tools that are less AI-driven, so teams have to make the best of the context. 9. Roos says AI needs to stay grounded in behavioural science and describes the field as frontier science. 10. She frames unanswered questions as part of industry’s role in helping figure them out. 11. Roos explains that the first Behaviour Change Score report was published in summer and focused on fitness apps. 12. She says the report was built because people see many behavioural terms but do not know where to start when applying them to a product. 13. She gives the example of an app that awarded a badge for uploading a profile picture, which she says is not tied to the target behavior. 14. Roos says the report maps behavioral elements across onboarding, activation, engagement, retention, and failure states. 15. She and Samuel note that the team reviewed apps in pairs and used the apps themselves while scoring them. 16. Roos says the report can show both overall trends and app-specific strengths and gaps. 17. Roos says onboarding performed best because it is easier to collect data there and because first impressions matter. 18. She says retention is harder because outside-life barriers, like work or having a child, are difficult to observe. 19. The discussion sounds like a practical interview with a lot of back-and-forth and concrete product examples. 20. Listeners who work on digital health or app design will get the most from it, while people wanting a highly technical methods deep dive may skip it.

As heard by us

A practical look at scoring the behavioral choices behind onboarding, retention, and real-world change.

The Behavioural Design Podcast frames behavior change as a product-design challenge, using a practical scoring lens to move from theory into decisions.

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Why you'd press play

Want to know why a fitness app can look strong at onboarding yet go quiet when you stop using it?

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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