· 2 min read
Every behaviour has a reason: what psychiatry teaches product builders
A customer who refuses a parcel, a user who abandons a form, a merchant who never logs in again. None of them are irrational. They are telling you something.
The idea from psychiatry that has influenced my product work most is a simple one: every behaviour has a reason. A behaviour that looks irrational from the outside usually makes sense once you understand the person’s situation, fears and expectations.
Product teams often do the opposite. Customers who refuse parcels are “fake buyers”. Users who abandon a form are “lazy”. Merchants who stop logging in “didn’t get it”. Labels like these end the investigation exactly where it should begin.
Behaviour is information
When a customer orders and then refuses at the door, they are not being random. Something changed between the click and the knock: the excitement faded, the delivery date slipped, the total was different, nobody called, a friend said the store was unreliable. The refusal is the symptom. The reason is somewhere in the days before.
Treating it that way changes what you build. Instead of blacklisting customers, you confirm orders quickly, set a real delivery day, remove surprises and keep talking. That is how a small automation that messaged customers at every step of their shipment took our delivery rate to 97%.
Ask “what would make this sensible?”
A useful habit, borrowed from clinical interviewing, is to assume the behaviour is sensible and ask what would make it so.
- Why would someone abandon a checkout at the phone-number field? Perhaps they don’t want a call, or they don’t know why it’s needed. Say why.
- Why would a merchant never publish the store they designed? Perhaps publishing feels irreversible. Show a preview and promise an undo.
- Why would a visitor read a whole case study and not get in touch? Perhaps contacting feels like a commitment. Offer a lighter first step.
Respect, not manipulation
Understanding behaviour gives you power, and power can be used to help people or to trick them. Psychiatry is clear about which side to be on. In product terms that means no dark patterns: no fake urgency, no hidden fees, no confusing cancellations, no guilt-tripping copy. Design that reduces anxiety and keeps promises earns trust that lasts longer than any trick.
Small signals of safety
People decide whether to trust a product long before they can judge its quality. Small signals matter: a clear price, a real name, a quick reply, the ability to undo, data the user can export, an interface that speaks their language properly. In nqrah, decisions like previewing every AI change before it applies, or never sending customer details to AI models, are as much about how people feel as about what the software does.
Mental health meets technology
These ideas are also why I want to keep working where mental health meets technology. Digital products shape how people feel every day, in small ways, through how they confirm, remind, interrupt and reassure. After graduation I plan to specialise in psychiatry, and I hope to bring both disciplines to the same table.
If you build products, try this for a week: whenever you are tempted to call a user irrational, write down three reasons the behaviour might make sense. One of them is usually the next thing you should build.
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