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I was in a conversation recently with a client who asked a fair question -- one that tends to come up when teams are first exposed to Habit Lens work: how, exactly, is a Habit Lens interview different from a well-designed market research interview?
On the surface, the distinction is not immediately obvious. If you were to listen in, you would hear many familiar elements: a discussion of current behaviors, reflections on treatment experience, reactions to new product concepts. It can sound, at first pass, like a thoughtful and well-structured qualitative interview.
But the difference is not in the topics being discussed. It is in what we are listening for -- and, more importantly, how we go about uncovering it.
Over the past few years, we’ve spent a significant amount of time refining how we study habit in healthcare settings -- especially among physicians and other health care providers (HCPs), where time pressure, pattern recognition, and clinical risk all shape behavior in ways that are not always fully visible through traditional research approaches.
This article is the first in a series intended to unpack that work in more detail -- starting with how Habit Lens interviews are designed and conducted in the context of healthcare providers.
Most marketing research interviews are designed to understand behavior at a descriptive level. What is happening, why it is happening, what people say they value, and where they perceive strengths and weaknesses. These are necessary inputs into any commercial strategy. But they tend to treat behavior as something that can be explained through conscious reasoning, as if decisions are made afresh each time.
A Habit Lens interview starts from a different premise: that much of what we are trying to understand is not fully conscious at all. It is embedded in routine, reinforced through repetition, and executed with minimal deliberation. In that sense, behavior is less a series of decisions than it is a system -- one that operates largely beneath the surface.
The task, then, is not simply to ask respondents what they do, but to help them see it.
This is why Habit Lens interviews tend to slow behavior down. Rather than summarizing routines at a high level, we ask respondents to walk us through them in detail: step by step, moment by moment. Where does treatment actually take place? What, specifically, reminds them that it is time? What has to go right for that routine to stay on track?
These are not incidental details. They are the structural elements of the behavior itself: the context in which it occurs, the cues that trigger it, and the conditions that allow it to repeat, sustain and endure.
Drawing on the habit literature of Charles Duhigg, Nir Eyal, and others, the Habit Lens interview is designed to surface the underlying mechanics of the habit cycle, not as an abstract framework, but as a lived experience.
What often emerges is a level of detail that respondents themselves have not previously articulated. A reminder tied to a specific time of day. A caregiver’s subtle involvement that keeps things on track. A sequence of small steps that, over time, have become automatic.
Individually, these details may seem minor. Collectively, they form the infrastructure of the behavior.
And it is precisely this infrastructure that determines whether a behavior is resilient or fragile. Whether it can absorb disruption, or whether it begins to break down under pressure. Where the vulnerabilities or openings are for change.
One of the more revealing aspects of this approach is how it handles friction. Traditional research tends to focus on clear pain points: what is not working, what respondents would change, or wish they could change, if they could. But in many pharmaceutical categories, behavior persists not because it is optimal, but because it is sufficiently workable.
Patients and physicians alike adapt. They accommodate. They develop routines that, over time, feel stable and comfortable, even if they are imperfect.
As a result, the most important sources of insight are often not the obvious frustrations, but the ones that have been normalized.
This is why we ask questions that probe more subtly:
That last question, in particular, tends to open and expose a different line of inquiry. It shifts the conversation away from static satisfaction and toward dynamic thresholds: points at which accumulated friction becomes sufficient to prompt change. As reflected in one of our recent discussion guides, even a simple fill-in-the-blank: “If ______ got worse, I would seriously reconsider my treatment?" is a query that can reveal the conditions under which a stable behavior begins to loosen.
In practice, this is where much of the strategic value lies. Not in identifying dissatisfaction, but in understanding tolerance -- and where its limits reside.
A similar shift occurs when we explore new product opportunities. Conventional research often focuses on evaluating a profile: what stands out, how it compares, whether it is appealing, and the likelihood of adoption and usage.
But adoption is not a discrete decision. In real life, and especially in health care, it is a transition from one established routine to another.
Accordingly, Habit Lens interviews place less emphasis on stated preference and more on lived feasibility. Respondents are asked to imagine, concretely, what it would look like to switch. What would the first few weeks feel like? What would be uncertain? What would need to be relearned? And perhaps most tellingly, what might they miss about their current approach?
These questions are not hypothetical in the usual sense. They are an attempt to simulate the disruption of an existing habit and the formation of a new one.
In doing so, they surface the often underappreciated costs of change: not just clinical or financial, but behavioral. The effort required to reconfigure routines, rebuild confidence, and establish a new sense of normal.
And in many cases, it is these behavioral costs -- not product attributes -- that ultimately determine whether adoption occurs.
Equally important is understanding what sustains the current behavior. Here again, the focus extends beyond satisfaction.
We are keen to understand reinforcement: what gives someone confidence that their current approach is working, what signals stability, and what elements of the routine have become so well learned that they are effectively automatic.
In many cases, what emerges is not active preference, but a form of behavioral equilibrium. The current approach works well enough, meshes within the contours of daily life, and is continually reinforced by the absence of negative outcomes.
That equilibrium, once established, can be remarkably resilient.
Which is why so many new products, despite stronger clinical profiles, often struggle to gain traction. They are not competing against dissatisfaction. They are competing against stability.
This leads to perhaps the most critical question: where does change actually begin?
Habit Lens interviews are designed to identify the specific moments -- often small, sometimes fleeting -- where that equilibrium becomes vulnerable. A life transition that alters context. A near-miss that introduces doubt. A conversation with a physician, nurse or peer that reframes expectations.
These are not broad drivers of intent, but concrete cues that can initiate reconsideration.
And importantly, our team distinguishs between what might be interesting and what would be actionable. Between passive openness and active urgency. Because in practice, behavior changes not when alternatives are available, but when the conditions for change feel both necessary and manageable.
This is where the concept of thresholds becomes particularly important. It is not enough to know that friction exists; we need to understand how much friction is required before it triggers action. What tips the balance from “I can live with this” to “something needs to change”?
That is a very different question -- and one that requires a different kind of interview to answer.
For I&A teams in biopharma, the implication is a shift in perspective.
If behavior is understood only at the level of stated preference, then strategy will tend to focus on persuasion: on making a product more appealing, more differentiated, more compelling.
But if behavior is understood as a system of cues, routines, reinforcements, and thresholds, then the question becomes different: where, within that system, is there leverage?
A Habit Lens interview is designed to answer that question. It makes visible the mechanics that sustain existing behaviors and, in doing so, reveals where they may be most susceptible to change.
In an industry that often assumes rational, deliberative decision-making, this provides a useful counterpoint. It reminds us that much of what drives behavior is not actively decided in the moment, but carried forward from patterns established over time.
And that if we want to change those behaviors, we need to understand not just what people think -- but how their habits actually function.
