A lot of “Health 2.0” tools seek to help people change their behaviors to lead more healthy, productive lives. This is an admirable goal, and one I wholeheartedly endorse. Some of the tools are really “gee-whiz” neat!
However, many people involved with building Health 2.0 tools have little or no formal background in human behavior. How do you expect to build tools that seek to change human behavior, with no human behavior experts — you know, psychologists — consulting with you or on your staff?
That’s like trying to write a piece of software without a programmer.
In reply to a query on this topic, and how people change their behavior, I wrote the following over at the Society for Participatory Medicine’s e-patients.net blog. I think it encapsulates my experience with understanding human behavior (as a supposed expert in human behavior)…