Interaction Design · Project 1 of 3 · Weeks 1–5
Advanced GD Project 3: Civic UX — Designing for Behavioral Change
Psychology, systems thinking, and design as a civic act
FORMAT
Individual
WEEKS
8-12
METHODS
Problem definition research · Stakeholder mapping · Behavioral psychology research · Cognitive bias analysis · Ethical design audit · User journey mapping · System mapping · Figma · Wireframing (low to mid fidelity) · High-fidelity mockup · Prototype · Reflective writing · Presentation
TAGS
Human Rights, Design Thinking, Interaction, Aesthetic Psychology
Why this project
A behavioral design system is an argument about human beings — about what they need, what gets in their way, and what a designed environment can do to help. That argument carries ethical weight. The same psychological principles that nudge someone toward a healthy habit can manipulate them into a purchase they did not want. The difference between persuasion and manipulation lives in the intent behind the design, the transparency of its mechanisms, and whether the person using it is better off for having done so.
Designing for a real community issue, for people with specific circumstances and limited options, carries a different kind of responsibility than designing for a consumer product. The research has to be real. The empathy has to be grounded. The ethical reflection has to be honest rather than performative.
The Brief
PROJECT PROMPT
Design challenges that matter are rarely isolated. They are systemic — shaped by behavior, culture, technology, and environment simultaneously. This project asks you to enter that complexity as both a UX designer and a civic actor.
Identify a real, specific issue relevant to your community or the Pacific Northwest region involving human behavior: a pattern people are stuck in, a resource they cannot access, a system that fails the people inside it. Choose one focus area or hybridize thoughtfully across social, environmental, or technological systems.
Your design must ethically influence behavior — transparent about what it is doing, empowering user choice rather than removing it. Designs relying on dark patterns are not permitted. That prohibition is the point of the project.
Your design must deliberately leverage at least three behavioral principles, named and annotated in your wireframes: Loss Aversion · Framing · Social Proof · Reciprocity · Commitment and Consistency · Anchoring · Scarcity · Operant Conditioning · Self-Efficacy · Fresh Start Effect · Goal Gradient Effect.
Your system must function across at least two interconnected touchpoints, supported by a system map showing relationships among users, environments, institutions, and design artifacts. Three process reflections are built into the timeline as evidence of thinking, not summaries of decisions already made.
Final deliverables are screen-based and portfolio-ready: annotated wireframes, high-fidelity mockups, and a navigable Figma prototype.
DELIVERABLE
Problem definition and research document: 3–5 pages (issue, stakeholders, contextual research, strategic opportunity, ethical reflection, inspirational precedents; minimum 3 scholarly or professional sources)
User journey map: current state and proposed state, intervention points marked and named
System map: relationships between users, environments, institutions, and design artifacts across touchpoints
Wireframes: low-to-mid fidelity in Figma, annotated to name the psychological principle operating at each decision point, across minimum 2 interconnected touchpoints
High-fidelity mockups: 2–3 polished screens showing the most critical moments of the experience (Figma)
Prototype: core user flow demonstrated and navigable in Figma
Three process reflections: 1–2 paragraphs each — (1) values informing design choices; (2) ethical or accessibility challenges that emerged; (3) how the design might evolve responsibly over time
Presentation: 7–10 minutes covering research, system logic, design decisions, and ethical considerations; prepared for questions
Self-assessment — see separate assignment sheet
What I've learned from running this
This project sits at the intersection of three things I care about most in design education: psychological rigor, civic responsibility, and the capacity to think in systems. It is also the project in which the gap between students who have been genuinely curious about human behavior and those who have treated psychology as a tool for persuasion becomes most visible.
The dark patterns prohibition produces the most significant pedagogical moments of the project. Students who arrive at a design that is technically compliant but functionally manipulative — who have used loss aversion to create anxiety rather than clarity, who have designed social proof as pressure rather than information — have to reckon with what they made. That reckoning matters. It is not comfortable, and making it comfortable would defeat the purpose.
The system map is where students most consistently underestimate the work. Mapping the relationships between users, institutions, technologies, and designed artifacts (showing how a mobile feature, a public poster, and a community partner are part of the same intervention) requires a kind of design thinking distinct from visual design. Students who build that map from real research produce systems that are coherent and grounded. Students who sketch it after the fact produce work that looks systemic but holds together only on the surface.
The three reflective writing checkpoints are the component most worth developing further. They are designed to interrupt the production process at the moments when the most consequential questions are easiest to skip. Students who take the writing seriously write things in those paragraphs that change the design due to the purposeful stop for reflection.