Definition
A target behavior is the action that makes value explicit to a person: the moment they notice their effort was worth it. In The Behavioral Startup it is the behavior that, “when performed, makes value explicit to an actor, closing the loop of effort.”
In the book’s words
“A target behavior is our goal. It’s the behavior that, when performed, makes value explicit to an actor, closing the loop of effort. It’s that action that gets you to understand that your effort was worth your while. These usually take the form of noticing something.”
The Behavioral Startup, Nacho Parietti
The book’s example is a paycheck. You work all month on a promise of value. The target behavior is checking your bank account and seeing the salary there: that’s when the deal with your employer proves it was worth it. Until that moment, the effort runs on a promise.
Why target behaviors matter
“We will call these behaviors that make value evident target behaviors. The whole method revolves around the objective of identifying these target behaviors, constructing the path for users to reach them, and measuring the results.”
The Behavioral Startup, Nacho Parietti
If people never reach a target behavior, they never see the value, and the rule the whole method serves breaks:
“People must obtain more value from your product than the effort the product demands from them.”
The Behavioral Startup, Nacho Parietti
Examples of target behaviors
Notice the pattern: almost every target behavior is someone noticing something.
- Payroll: An employee checks the bank account and sees the salary deposited.
- Volunteering platform (volunteers): Receiving an “impact report” after completing a project, seeing before and after photos of the project, receiving a thank you message from the beneficiary.
- Volunteering platform (organizations): A dashboard showing volunteer hours and projects completed.
- Subway: Arriving at the place you wanted to go.
- Donations: A donor sees what their contribution actually did. Without that, the good work happens but the donor never notices it.
The payroll, volunteering and subway examples are from The Behavioral Startup.
Target behavior vs required behavior
“Required behaviors are those that the product requires from actors in order to be able to generate value. The stations that actors must go through to be able to reach the value they were promised.”
The Behavioral Startup, Nacho Parietti
The book uses a subway map. The target behavior is clear: you want to travel to a specific place. Everything before it is required:
| Target behavior | Required behaviors |
|---|---|
| Travel to a specific place |
|
“If one of these behaviors, for whatever reason, does not occur, the target behavior has no chance of being executed.”
The Behavioral Startup, Nacho Parietti
How to measure them
“The most important metrics are tied to your target behaviors. Let’s call these “value metrics.” These show that value was made evident by your product, indicating that you’ve reached the value-fulfilling part of your funnel. Are users reaching this stage repeatedly? If not, you might have overestimated the value relative to the effort required.”
The Behavioral Startup, Nacho Parietti
To map the required behaviors of your product, use Model 6: Target Behavior Funnel.
Go deeper
The Behavioral Startup explains, step by step, how to find the target behaviors of each actor, build the path to them and measure them. And when people still don’t reach them, The Behavioral Handbook has the strategies to fix it.
Get The Behavioral Startup Read Handbook chapter 1 freeModel 4: how to prioritize your target behaviors
This is the original model from 2021. It uses the lists of behaviors from models 1 to 3; if you don’t have them yet, start with Model 1: Product & life.
So far, we have identified the growth, nutrition, and reproduction behaviors required for your product. We have ensured that they make the product ecosystem viable by checking that they provide value to each actor. Without one of these behaviors, the product would not work by itself.
Throughout this process, your development priorities have probably changed; issues that did not seem relevant have risen in importance from this perspective. It is usual for these priorities to continue to evolve. The objective of this model is to find some certainties in this regard, order your goals so that you set a course in an ever-shifting ocean.
By this point, we should have three unsorted lists resulting from updating the first model with the behaviors found in model Model #3: Type of needs . These are the Target Behaviors of our product. Our goal as product designers is for these behaviors to happen. So why prioritize a list of essential behaviors? Unfortunately, throughout product development, situations often create the illusion that a part of the project is more critical than it is.
An example of these illusions is the bicycle parking effect, described by C. Northcote Parkinson. Parkinson noted that a nuclear plant design committee spent disproportionately more time discussing trivial matters, such as bicycle parking supplies, than addressing the plans for the nuclear plant itself. They preferred to treat the simple task in length and differed from attending to the challenging issues.
The example is generalized in Parkinson's law which states that "The time spent on any aspect of the agenda will be inversely proportional to the amount [of money] involved." A nuclear reactor is a complex object, which requires a lot of information, so the committee participants assume that the experts' recommendations are correct. On the other hand, bicycle parking is where the participants feel more secure giving their opinion and trying to establish their convictions in the project.
In my experience, the most common of these illusions is to consider that some functionality is the only reason why the product is not a success. It leads teams to focus on specific functionality, which generates value only for some actors and neglects others fundamental to its success.
To avoid these illusions, we need an objective way to establish the importance of each of these behaviors that we want to generate. How much of our time and effort we will dedicate.
We have been working under the assumption that a product is a life-like thing. For life, the first necessity is to grow. A product that does not grow in a user, those that fail to show users value, does not have the opportunity to add value regularly and has even fewer chances to be recommended. Therefore, first and foremost, the product must be used for the first time by the user. A seed grows before it can sustain itself, and only when it matures and has excess energy, it reproduces.
That is the reason why free trials are successful. When a product can show its value regularly, this is the best possible adoption strategy. If you can significantly lower the user's effort in the Growing stage and show value later, your product will succeed. Many companies spend the vast majority of their initial capital on this type of strategy. Even when most products cannot afford this luxury, it should not change the fact that most of the investment should be made at this stage.
Objective behaviors categorized as "Grow" should, in principle, have a higher priority. The behaviors in Nurture take precedence over those listed in Play because if your product shows value periodically to a user, they will usually take care of reproducing it, even when you have not designed anything for this to happen. As they say in Jurassic Park, despite the dinosaurs being sterile: "life finds a way."
The diagram constructed in models Model #2: Actors Requirements and Model #3: Type of needs will be helpful to prioritize within lists. *For some actors, the value is evident, and the effort is minimal; for others, not so much. The objective is to prioritize the actor which the product is providing less value.*
Value depends on context. We know that resolving survival needs is a must if the user doesn't have it covered, but it could be of little value to those who do. In turn, Relationships and Personal Growth needs are valuable when the survivorship aspect is covered.
"My kingdom for a horse!" (Richard III)
The model
Make a list for each actor and rank each target behavior according to its value received relative to the actor context. There is no need to quantify value; the objective here is to create an orderly list. Remember that we already defined Grow behavior as precedence over Nurture and Reproduction, so you need to qualify them within categories.
The last step is to combine the lists into a single target behavior list to rule the MVP development. For this, we will rank actors according to (you guessed it) the value they receive. The objective behaviors of the actor that gets the least value are a priority because they are the ones we must devote more attention to, the weakest point of the value offer. But, it is also vital that each actor gets something out of the platform or won't engage, so we need to plan for them. Therefore, we cannot focus on just one actor.
Take the behavior that provides the most value of the user that gets less out of the platform. Then continue with the next actor in the "get least value" and select their most valuable behavior, and so on. In the end, you should have a prioritized list of Target Behaviors. This list helps you focus on designing value for users we need but are not easy to engage.
There are still some more optimizations you can perform. There may be duplicate behaviors; different actors may need to do the same thing. In this case, that behavior becomes a priority (we cover two actors with the same effort), so we place it at the beginning of the list. It is also likely that there are behaviors that we cannot realistically affect with our product, it is good to know that they exist, but we must rule them out of our prioritization for design.
Finally, Draw a line under the last nutrition behavior. The behaviors above the line are necessarily part of our MVP.
Frequently asked questions
What is a target behavior?
A target behavior is the behavior that, when performed, makes value explicit to a person, closing the loop of effort. It is the moment someone realizes their effort was worth it, and it usually takes the form of noticing something.
What is an example of a target behavior?
An employee checking the bank account and seeing the salary deposited. For a volunteering platform: a volunteer receiving an impact report after completing a project, or seeing before and after photos of the work.
What is the difference between a target behavior and a required behavior?
The target behavior is where people get value. Required behaviors are the steps the product asks for before that: for a subway trip, the target behavior is arriving at your destination, and buying a ticket, finding the station and getting on the train are required behaviors.
How do you prioritize target behaviors?
Rank them per actor: behaviors that help the product grow in a user come first, then the ones that nurture it, then the ones that make it spread. Start with the actor who gets the least value, put behaviors shared by several actors first, drop the ones your product cannot affect, and draw a line under the last nurture behavior: everything above it goes in your MVP.
These models grew into a book
The eight models became the ANVERSO models, explained step by step in The Behavioral Startup. And when people still don’t act, The Behavioral Handbook has the strategies to fix it.
Get The Behavioral Startup Read Handbook chapter 1 free