Knowing that customer journey is like a river, not a railway, you can’t control the current, but you can shape the flow. That’s where behavioural science steps in — not to script the journey, but to design the conditions that influence it.
We already challenged the traditional, linear view of customer experience — the “railway model”. Customer behaviour is like a river, shaped by emotion, context, and invisible forces.
Now we shift from understanding behaviour to designing for it. You don’t control the customer’s path — but you can shape the conditions that influence their flow. But if we’re not laying tracks for customers — how do we design at all? That’s where behavioural science comes in.
Behavioural science explores the cognitive processes, emotional states, and social influences that shape individual and group behaviour. It provides insights into decision-making, habits, and the effects of context on actions — often revealing gaps between what people say and what they do.
Now that we know that the customer journey is a river to be read, we can start shaping its banks — guiding, not forcing, the customer toward meaningful action. We’ll cover some of the methods and approaches that offer key learnings in actual customer behaviour: how to grab the attention, how to support the journey, and how to reinforce the habit.
Before any journey begins — before choices, clicks, or conversions — there’s one critical gatekeeper: attention.
Not intention. Not awareness. Not interest. Attention is the scarce, volatile, emotional spark that determines whether a customer even sees the path you’ve built for them.
If the customer experience is a river, then attention is the moment they actually look up — notice the bend ahead, the glint of light on the water, the shape of something at the shoreline.
Without that shift in awareness, nothing else happens. They continue to drift — or worse, they hit something unexpected and bail.
In behavioural science, attention is not just “what people are looking at.” It’s an emotional and cognitive filter — what the brain decides is worth engaging with, even briefly. And it’s fragile:
Designing for attention means meeting the customer’s mind where it is — not where you wish it were. You must earn the first second.
People notice what makes them feel. Surprise, joy, fear, loss — even mild discomfort. These emotional jolts create salience, which moves a customer from passive drift to active noticing.
Example: A landing page that starts with a relatable “pain point” (not a benefit) often captures attention faster. It meets the customer’s felt experience, not their abstract goal.
Striking the balance: things that feel new, but also safe. In behavioural terms, we’re drawn to what’s different enough to stand out, but still close enough to what we already know.
Example: Spotify’s year-end “Wrapped” is a familiar format (a recap) with a novel twist (your personal soundtrack).
Not all friction is bad. Sometimes, a well-placed interruption — a pattern break — can actually wake up the brain.
Example: A checkout flow that momentarily pauses with a “Did you forget X?” prompt can reengage dormant attention, if it’s emotionally or contextually relevant.
The same message at the wrong time is noise. The right message at the right time feels like magic. This is where behavioural design intersects with moment-mapping — knowing when the user is likely to notice.
Example: A nudge to upgrade just after a user completes a milestone in an app — not before, not during.
If customer journeys are rivers, attention is the first ripple that breaks the stillness. Don’t plan the journey — create the ripple.
Now that we’ve captured attention, we face the next challenge: How do customers move once they’re engaged? Spoiler: not in straight lines. And not always the same way.
A 2022 article in Harvard Business Review ("What You're Getting Wrong About Customer Journeys") offered a pivotal insight: customer journeys don’t follow one shape — they follow multiple behavioural patterns. And each requires different design tactics. Sometimes people need familiarity and ease, sometimes they value novelty or make the necessary steps to reach their higher goal. Customer journeys can be categorised into four distinct archetypes according to their level of effort and predictability.
Effortless and predictable (think Starbucks Pickup).
In any routine, the less friction encountered, the more satisfied the customer is. Streamlining the user experience and ensuring consistency across encounters. The goal of streamlining is to eliminate all non-value-added touchpoints, whereas the goal of ensuring consistency is to help customers learn the routine and perform it without much thought.
Effortless and unpredictable (think TikTok’s For You page).
Streamlining only mitigates pain points; it doesn’t induce pleasure. To facilitate joyrides, companies must also apply the design principle of endless variation across the customer journey to generate frequent moments of delight.
Effortful and predictable (think Duolingo).
The design principle of goal-posting. Essentially, that involves breaking ambitious objectives into increasingly smaller ones until the next goal is so small that it spurs the customer to act. Rewards for hitting each target.
Effortful and unpredictable (think Adobe Creative Cloud).
It’s challenging, and tends to require great effort. Unlike treks, odysseys don’t need a set end point; the journey is the destination. A key design principle here is substantive variation, which involves offering a diverse mix of customer thrills and challenges for functional reasons. Another key design principle for odysseys is journey tracking. Recreation, creative industries are part of it.
In case of predictability, be aware that in unpredicted situations, customers generally aren’t motivated to make big decisions at the start since they don’t know what to expect. While in predicted situations, it’s usually better to have the purchase at the outset and don’t bother the customers again.
When you design based on journey type, you respect the psychology underneath the behaviour — and support it accordingly. Also, when companies have customers enrolled in multiple types of journeys, they’re more likely to retain them. As some journeys lose their allure, others might begin to gain momentum.
Don’t forget: you’re not laying a track. You’re setting out buoys, signals, and resting points along a meandering river — aware that some customers will loop, some will leap ahead, and others will drift sideways.
Once attention is earned and movement begins in the right journey designed for behaviour, there’s one more behavioural lever to pull: reinforcement.
Most businesses don’t struggle with getting customers once. They struggle with keeping them.
That’s where the Hook model, created by Nir Eyal, comes in — a framework of 4 steps that helps turn one-time engagement into habitual behaviour.
1. Trigger
What starts the loop?
Example: Feeling bored (internal trigger) leads someone to open TikTok.
2. Action
What is the simplest thing the user can do in response?
This action must be easy, emotionally satisfying, and require minimal effort.
Example: Swipe up to see a short video. Tap a heart. Type a word.
3. Reward
What’s the payoff — and can it be slightly beyond expectations?
The brain is wired to crave novelty and reward — especially when it can’t fully predict the outcome.
Example: You don’t know if the next Instagram post will be amazing or boring — so you keep scrolling.
4. Investment
What does the user put in that increases their likelihood of returning?
This could be time, effort, content, reputation, or data.
Example: Creating a playlist on Spotify or uploading a profile photo on LinkedIn. These raise the “cost of leaving.”
If attention is the ripple and journeys are the current in the river, the Hook model is the boat designed for the actual river. It suits all the requirements you need for that specific and exact movement.
It’s how you design repeat engagement that:
To create the right hook,
But watch out! The Hook model is powerful — and like any behavioural framework, it can be misused. Designing for repeat use must serve the user’s real goal, not just the business KPI.
Hooked is good. Manipulated is not.
When you’ve got the customer’s attention, you’ve escorted them along the journey that offers the reward for them, you can build up the habit for that customer. Behavioural science can help you ground your customer experience in what people actually notice, feel, and do.
You don’t need to build a railway. You need to read the river, shape its banks, and create currents people want to follow — again and again.
