Hello there,

 

We’re SUE | Behavioural Design. We are a consultancy, academy and research agency for behavioural change. Whether you need a behavioural expert or want to become a behavioural expert yourself: you’re at the right place. In other words, whether you want to inject behavioural science into one of your projects or you wish to master Behavioural Design, we can help you out. We specialise in the applied science of influence, leveraging this mind-shifting know-how into strategies, products, services, campaigns or policies that people will embrace.

Almost nobody knows that behavioural expertise is the missing ingredient that makes a huge difference in successful influence. If you know how people make decisions and shape their behaviours, you can influence them.

We have developed the SUE | Behavioural Design Method©. A structured approach to gain deep insight into human psychology and translate these into real-life interventions, followed by rapid prototyping to ensure the solutions we came up with will have the desired impact. Furthermore, we help our clients to implement those tested interventions. Either by giving them Behavioural Design guidance in the implementation or by teaching them Behavioural Design capabilities themselves in our SUE | Behavioural Design Academy.

 

The most important domains we work on is helping to positively influence:

Our ultimate goal is to give our clients more grip on the positive impact of their products, services, marketing or policies.

What makes us different?

What makes us different from other companies is that we are a unique combination of a
Behavioural Design Consultancy, a Behavioural Design Academy and a Behavioural Research Agency
. This makes us firmly rooted in practice. We inject the latest insights of behavioural science into our consultancy and integrate learnings from our projects into the academy and we leverage our research agency to validate real-time if the developed interventions have the desired effect.

BEHAVIOURAL DESIGN CONSULTANCY

Innovation & Transformation

Leveraging behavioural science principles to design next-generation people-centred products, services, marketing or policies that start at behaviour and influencing decision-making.

SUE Behavioural Design Fundamentals Course

BEHAVIOURAL DESIGN ACADEMY

Education & Inspiration

Educating people how to unlock behavioural insights and apply scientific principles to create products, services, marketing or policies that shape decisions and desired behaviours.

behavioural science principles - consultancy image

BEHAVIOURAL RESEARCH AGENCY

Investigation & Validation

Injecting behavioural intelligence into your innovation or ideation with qualitative behavioural analysis and on the spot real-time quantitative testing of desired behaviours.

We have made behavioural science practical. Translating it into a hands-on method & tools to help organisations power up their innovation, transformation or growth with behavioural intelligence in real life. Behavioural science, applied.

We have developed the SUE | Behavioural Design Method©

The starting point of everything we do is to influence the irrational human being predictably. Our added value is that we give our clients insight into the human behind their target group; we unravel their decision-making process and the forces that shape their behaviour. We add behavioural intelligence. The SUE | Behavioural Design Method© ensures that we find validated, concrete answers to the (complex) challenges or innovation needs of our clients time and again.

 

Our method is firmly rooted in behavioural science, but its true power is that we have taken the most breakthrough insights and translated them into very practical steps. Our mission was to make behavioural science work for real-life challenges. Therefore, for each of the three model steps, we have developed a hands-on tool that bridges the gap between science and practice. And helps our clients unlock behavioural science’s power to create next-generation, people-centred products, services, campaigns or policies.

We apply our method in client projects, and we train leaders, teams and professionals worldwide to master the Behavioural Design Method© themselves.

Step 1 Insight: The Behavioural Design Canvas©
with in its heart the SUE | Influence Framework©

Step 2 Intervention: The SWAC Tool©

Step 3 Impact: The SUE |4C Influence Flow©

Our expertise is to think outside-in instead of inside-out.

We go through our method via a process of Behavioural Design Thinking. This is the practical design thinking approach powered up with behavioural science. We like to call it design thinking ‘on steroids’. Design thinking helps you figure out what to make or develop from a human point of view (it puts people in the middle of the development process). But adding up behavioural science to this gives you answers to the why. Why do people need certain things, and why do people behave (or not) in specific ways? This enables us to:

Make sure that in the ‘Insight’ phase, we do not simply unlock insights, but we unlock insights that give a deep understanding of the human decision-making process. What are behavioural bottlenecks? And what are potential behavioural boosters?

In the ‘Intervention’ phase, we do not simply develop intelligent and creative interventions but come up with strategies and ideas deeply rooted in behavioural science, making sure they will indeed effectively influence choices and behaviour.

Make sure that in the ‘Impact’ phase, we do not only run tests, but we design our prototypes and tests in a way that take our human tendencies and biases into account.

Further down this page, you can read more about our team, our work and our background. Do you want to move our to our services right away? Then click on one of the links below:

 

Would you like to power up your team or project with behavioural intelligence?

Feel free to contact us. We are happy to tell you more about our consultancy or academy. Helping you innovate, transform or grow levering insights from behavioural science in practice.

Contact us

No worries, no strings attached!

Our work domains

Our Consultancy and Academy serve national and international clients all over the world. We have trained 1.500+ professionals from 45+ countries who attended our SUE | Behavioural Design Academy. We have led sprints in a.o. Australia, the United States, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Brazil and South Africa. We have worked (and work) in the following domains:

  • Health & Wellbeing
  • Sustainability & Energy
  • Financial Services & Insurance
  • Creative Services & Consultancy
  • Government & Non-Profit
  • HR & Employment
  • Education & Personal Development
  • Technology & Media
  • Business & Innovation
  • Retail & FMCG
  • Fundraising & Development
  • Transport & Urban Development

Here you can find some of our success stories of the Consultancy or reviews of our former clients and participants from all the above-mentioned domains (you can filter the reviews by domain).

All our work can be executed bilingual (Dutch and English). We offer open edition training and tailor-made in-company training. We both work from our head offices in Amsterdam, at client locations or 100% virtual.

Our accreditation

We’re an official education acknowledged and globally accreditated by the Education Quality Accreditation Commission (EQAC). The EQAC is committed to promoting high standards of education, recognising professional excellence and providing an invaluable guide to education quality and recognition in the complex sector of worldwide education. To get this accreditation, we were evaluated on a quality code covering our curriculum, our method of teaching and our general conditions. All to make sure that you are guaranteed the best level of education.

Want to find out how behavioural science can amplify your impact?

Please contact us for a 'Sixty with SUE': an hour of non-binding advice in which we can see how we can use Behavioural Design to tackle your project challenge or strategic problem.

Book a 'Sixty'

Go ahead, it is free and there are no strings attached!

The importance of Behavioural Design: the Missing Layer

We always refer to Behavioural Design as the missing layer. If you start to think about it, it’s just crazy. We all spent so much time, effort, and money on our ideas, businesses, plans, personal goals. And they all have to do with human behaviour. You have to start eating healthy or go to the gym; your clients have to buy your products, you want your employees to be more creative, you want citizens to recycle, you want the people in your organization to embrace change, you want people to save for their pension, you want people to donate. It’s all behaviour.

And still, we all proceed with our plans without actually knowing how behaviour works. How people make choices. How people come to decisions. And we did it too. For years! While it is actually a science. The science of behavioural economics has been researched for over 30 years how human decision making works. It’s not something we claim to have invented; it is proven in substantiated research. And this knowledge is there for you to unlock. Only we’ve made it easier for you. We have combined the eight essential books, dozens of research papers and scientific experiments into a simple to follow, learn and apply method. Just imagine how magical it can be!

If you know how people make decisions, you'll know how behaviour works, and you'll have the secret ingredient to turn your ideas into success.

The SUE Mission: help people make better decisions

Insight into human behaviour can be dark wisdom. It can be used for good and evil. We want to be a driving force for the first. We want more and more people to use the power of behavioural psychology to help people feel and do better. This is the mission we live by on a daily basis. Please check out our Behavioural Design Ethics.

To unlock the power of behavioural science to help people make better decisions in work, life, and play.

That’s why we have clients that came to us for questions like: how can we get people to donate to make life in refugee camps liveable? How can we help youngsters out of debt? How can we stop people from using their mobile phones in traffic? How can help people not to run into problems with their mortgage? How can we make people support entertainment for sick children in hospitals? How can we help people with diabetes live a healthy life? How can we help people build a lasting sports habit? How can we have people vote against extremist right? And so on.

Our culture: Knalldrang

We are both Berlin fans, and absolute techno addicts (which amongst others explains the numerous trips to Berlin). We also love making up German words. Astrid has techno playlists on Spotify that all have self-invented German names if you’re ready to dance you should check them out (username astrid.groenewegen). But our culture is also best described with a Germanism, it’s called Knalldrang:

The unstoppable urge
To move things forward
And come up with brand new solutions
At the speed of light
Occurring in the magical collision
Between behavioural science, creativity, and fun
Manifesting itself as brilliant sparks
Of energy and super-duper ideas
That people get jumpy excited about

Knalldrang is the fuel for fulfilling the SUE mission. Knalldrang will help us change the world for the better.

The founders of SUE

We’re Astrid and Tom; we are entrepreneurs, behavioural designers, writers, teachers and dedicated to helping you to become more successful in achieving your personal and work goals. We do so by helping you apply Behavioural Design to positively influence behaviour or make better decisions.

That sounds ambitious, helping you make better decisions and change your behaviour. Before we get into that, a short introduction might be in place. Tom is a clinical psychologist who, after an internship of 6 months in a mental institution, decided never to practice psychology in the medical arena again. Instead, he started in research followed by advertising. Tom has done it from a qualitative researcher to strategic planner, creative direction, to TED speaker. Born and raised in Belgium, but now based in Amsterdam and never wanting to leave again (well, for Belgium, it could be someplace where the sun shines more often).

Astrid is a graduated social scientist who decided, instead of doing a PhD in communications and lab experiments, to see if she could add some creativity to the scientific research ending up in advertising. From account to strategic planning, copywriting, and creative direction, she looked at practice from all angles. Born and raised in Den Haag in the Netherlands, but for many years living in Amsterdam and happy there (but she can also be seduced to sunny places).

We met over ten years ago; we led a digital agency together. We fell in love (not just with the work, but also personally). We jumped ship together, left the digital agency, and founded SUE | Behavioural Design and SUE | Behavioural Design Academy. As we speak, we’re still a happy, energetic duo always looking to learn more, fight indifference and make this world a better place.

We hope to meet you one day!

 

What’s the story behind SUE?

So, what’s the story behind SUE | Behavioural Design and SUE | Behavioural Design Academy, then? When we started SUE in 2011, we didn’t want to start just another creative agency. We had our roots in the broad spectrum of advertising (we worked for clients such as Nike, Heinz, Philips, etc.) and won over 20 (inter)national awards). Still, we both thought the exciting things were not happening in advertising anymore but innovation. Two powerful forces, technology and behavioural science, were in the driving seat of all interesting new businesses, products, and services.

Especially behavioural science, or behavioural psychology, caught our attention. Why do people do the things they do? Why do they make certain decisions or choices? Why do people sometimes take action and sometimes have total inertia? And why do people do things that aren’t always good for them?

It just clicked. This is what we wanted to do. We wanted to become experts in behavioural science. But not just the theory. We wanted to be the first to combine science with practice. That’s why we call it Behavioural Design. It has action to it. It is something you can do. If you have the proper know-how and tools, it can be very impactful and powerful.

If you know how people think, and how they make decisions you know why they do the things they do or don't do. You can actually change behaviour.

The SUE network

s we are very dedicated to our mission and we genuinely want Behavioural Design to be used to innovate or transform to human-centric products, services, policies or organisations, in 2021, the SUE network has expanded with SUE & The Alchemists (SATA). Klaas Dijkhoff (former home secretary and Minister) and Bas Erlings (former campaign leader of the Dutch Liberal Party) founded this SUE sister with Astrid and Tom.

The focus of SATA is changing public image and reputation by leveraging behavioural science. We help boards develop or optimise their strategy or campaigns to influence positive change in opinions and behaviour. For more information about SUE & The Alchemists, please visit the website.

 

Furthermore, to us, it is of the utmost importance that our developed behavioural interventions will be effective. Qualitative research to do a thorough behavioural analysis and test proof our interventions is a custom part of the Behavioural Design Method©. We can now also validate these quantitative in panel research.

Part of the SUE family is the quantitative research platform My Dialogues that helps us validate real-time at the actual target group whether our ideas of insights scale. We get this answer within minutes during the project or process. Here is where you can find more information about My Dialogues.

One more thing: were does the name SUE come from?

SUE | Behavioural Design was named after the famous Johnny Cash song ‘A boy named SUE.’ If you don’t know it, you have got to listen to it. As in: listen to the words.

Okay, we’ll save you the trouble (spoiler alert): it’s about a boy who is given a girls’ name by his father. The boy is not happy to say the least (probably had a hard time at cowboy school) and seeks revenge. And then he FIN-AL-LY meets his father. Introducing himself with famous words: How do you do? My name is SUE! He is ready to go in for the kill.

His father completely down and out in the losing position explains to the boy it was for his good that he gave him a girls’ name: it would help him to toughen up. Which he knew the boy was going to need as he wouldn’t have him as a father around. It was a beautiful fatherly gift so to speak (reframing always works). Boy breaks. They do a man-hug thing. And it all ends well.

We at SUE, truly love interventions that are done for the sake of good….and we are a sucker for man-hugs. So, there you go. Our name is SUE. How do you do?

Intrigued why people do things or don't?

In our Fundamentals Course, we help you master a method to unlock the unconscious decision-making of people and use principles from behavioural science to translate these into products, services, campaigns or policies that shape behaviour.

Check out the Academy

Did you know we are a globally accredited educational institution?

sue behavioural design