As a team, we talked about COM-B as a way to consider behaviour, and to help shape the research and design in our work. This model is focused on behaviour changes, and focuses on the combination of Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation. Francis described some of the high-level features and how it helped the Support Model team (which spawned this work on self-serve support) to think about barriers and enablers for people seeking support.
COM-B and research
We touched on how useful it can be to take a behavioural lens to research. In our case, this might be desk research (in terms at looking at what other teams in the programme have discovered), research with subject matter experts, and possible research with people in schools. What current behaviours exist, positive or negative? What barriers or enablers have been identified? Are challenges that schools face to do with broadly capability, opportunity, or motivation? And so on.
COM-B and planning & prioritising actions
Francis talked a bit about the impact mapping work he was involved in with Katie French and Jude Webb, in Get Help Buying for Schools. Katie had already conducted and analysed research through this lens of COM-B, and together they worked on identifying which actors would be most likely to help the service achieve a key (user-centred) goal, and which behaviours would be the most promising indicators that the team is getting things right.
Importantly, those three focused on that behaviour being a result of needs being met. That is, "If we solve these problems and meet these needs for a user, what would be the behavioural outcome we hope to expect to see". Could be useful for this team, too, as an approach.
Working with COM-B
Later in the day, Freddie found a great worksheet (in a spreadsheet) that looks like it could be very helpful for our team (and beyond!). It collects together actionable content and concepts from COM-B and the behaviour change wheel.
Reference: The Behaviour Change Wheel: a guide to designing interventions