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Why designing for behaviour in hospitality is so important.

Designing for Human Behaviour: The Key to Hospitality Success.

Dimly lit room with glowing wall tiles, round table. Large text: "WHY DESIGNING FOR BEHAVIOUR IN HOSPITALITY IS SO IMPORTANT." Mood is reflective.
 

In the world of hospitality, great design goes beyond aesthetics, it shapes behaviour, influences engagement, and drives business success. While food remains a crucial factor, it is not the sole reason people visit restaurants.


The most successful hospitality spaces are those that seamlessly blend psychology, behavioural science, and design thinking to create environments that encourage desired actions, from longer stays to increased spending and repeat visits. By understanding how people naturally interact with spaces, designers can craft experiences that feel intuitive, engaging, and ultimately, more profitable.


“People think that design is styling. Design is not style. It's not about giving shape to the shell… and not giving a damn about the guts. Good design is a renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need and beauty to produce something that the world didn't know it was missing.”

We have established through the many years of conceptualising hospitality spaces that while food is important, it is not the only reason people go to restaurants. Food is a passport factor, and in this day and age, with the fierce competitive landscape, it is a minimum requirement for any restaurant that hopes to compete. What separates great restaurants from the good ones, however, are a lot of abstract intangibles.


Designing for hospitality is clearly also not about choosing finishes, furniture, or fittings, but rather a process that comes down to firstly understanding the specific subset of people that you are designing for. No, not the client, but rather the client's clients or visitors. This then comes down to designing for their repetitive behaviours. There has been a lot of focus in recent years around the value of design based on how people behave and interact naturally with an object, space, building, or interface. It has been a very steep growth curve with a plethora of new terminology, soundbites, and suggested approaches to problem-solving in line with all the new categories of design. It also seems as if design, in many respects, has perhaps finally matured as a profession offering legitimate business contributions and handsome returns on investment provided it is respected, harnessed, and integrated correctly with enough understanding of its position within the business problem-solving toolbox.

Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, famously prioritised the needs of the people over the needs of the business, creating products that people would fall in love with.


“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think the design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

There is no doubt that Jobs was not only exceptionally gifted in understanding emotional human triggers, but he was also searching for solutions in places no one had seen before. Arthur Schopenhauer, the German philosopher, said,

“Talent is hitting the target no one else can hit. Genius is hitting the target no one else can see.”

Jobs was certainly that.


Apart from that, Jobs was a design thinker long before the term Design Thinking was popular. The definitive process of Design Thinking comes from a California-based design company called IDEO. They famously designed Apple’s first mouse.


Design Thinking can be described as a method by which designers solve problems through immersion. Designers start with empathy. Through interviews and observations, they try to “fall in love with the problem”: Why do people do what they do, and where could they find opportunities for improvement? The best designs consider, on a very deep level, their users or occupants. It’s a pretty logical and intelligent approach. The world is, however, moving ever faster and faster. The issue with true immersion is that few commercial projects allow it, and certainly, in our experience, most if not all hospitality projects are conceptualised in about the same time it takes to complete a dinner service. As we have established, on a purely practical level, through a lack of available time, one is therefore seldom able to collect all the critical data around a problem as Design Thinking really requires.


It is to this end that we started thinking about ways to speed up the total process. What if we thought about a space as being occupied by humans with automated behaviours and patterns? What if we could hack the process, understand exactly how most humans will be moving and interacting in very specific environments, and therefore automate certain parts, arriving perhaps at explicit guidelines and specific answers or patterns of design? The rest of our time could then be spent on developing and prototyping the layers of unique visual tangibles to frame the solution and make it relatable. Would this be possible?


In our search for answers, we stumbled upon Behavioural Design (also called Behavioural Change Design). Behavioural Design is the combination of Design Thinking with the science of influence. Behavioural Design combines Psychology and Behavioural Science to understand why people make the choices that they make and what other information they need to make healthier choices. In short, Behavioural Design helps people make better decisions.


Through many studies, observations, and research specifically in the field of social spaces over many years, we started noticing and documenting universal biases, behaviours, responses, desires, and needs, which informed some very successful design patterns in response to these behaviours. This led to what we started calling Design for Behaviour. In short, we see Design for Behaviour as simply the packaging of Design Thinking and Behavioural Design findings with respect to the actions that people repeatedly and predictively perform in very specific environments.


We posit that all the predictive patterns, biases, needs, and intuitive human responses to social spaces must inform the primary construct of any design. How the space is wrapped in finishes, texture, pattern, and tonality, whilst also important, is secondary. It is perhaps the veneer that Jobs referred to. It is not, however, what real impactful hospitality design requires. It's about creating an environment that encourages the behaviours that will best serve hospitality environments, such as customers staying longer, spending more, or returning for repeat visits.


Design for Behaviour is a powerful tool that can help restaurant owners reduce their risks and build more financially robust businesses. Unlike art, though, design building blocks do not have to be original. The construct does not have to be reinvented. Problems need to be solved, but for most problems, there are often many tried and tested solutions.


Design for Behaviour isn’t, however, just about following a formula—there are many intangibles that come into play. Understanding human triggers and biases is important, but it’s not enough to guarantee success. There is a part to this entire journey that also requires some art, some magic, and a boundless intuitive leap into the creative abyss to deliver something compelling that people will deeply care about. The venue has to be human, elicit emotion, and be relatable to the core audience. It needs to be "beautiful," as subjective as that may be.


Don Norman, the former vice president of Apple, coined the term “User Experience” and said, “It is not enough that we build products that function, that are understandable and usable, we also need to build products that bring joy and excitement, pleasure and fun, and, yes, beauty to people’s lives.”


Designing for behaviour in hospitality is more than aesthetics, it’s about understanding human instincts and creating environments that foster desired actions. By integrating behavioural insights with design thinking, hospitality spaces can encourage engagement, enhance customer experience, and drive business success. When done right, design becomes an invisible force that shapes how people interact, feel, and return.


 

Information Reference Index:

The Psychology of Restaurant Design: How Space Influences Customer Behavior.

Behavioral Design Strategies in Food Service

The Psychology of Dining Space Design

Design Thinking in Hospitality

The Effect of Design of Restaurant on Customer Behavioral Intentions



 

COOOP. Design for Behaviour.  COOOP Design Studio is an award-winning design collective of Architects, Interior Architects, Engineers and  Service Providers under the creative and technical direction of Callie van der Merwe, Marcus Wilkins, Roberto Zambri & Calvin Janse van Vuuren

We apply predictive human behavioural knowledge to design and curate 

highly successful social spaces within the built environment.



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​​​​​​​© 2022 COOOP ™.  All rights reserved. 

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