Richard Mathera

Hi, I’m Richard.

I use behavioral science to solve real-world problems, helping organizations

Behavioral Science for Finance, Healthcare, and Tech | Richard Mathera

I solve real-world problems in finance, health, and tech using behavioral science. As Managing Director at Irrational Labs, I oversee behaviorally-informed collaborations with partners such as Microsoft, PayPal, Optum, Credit Karma, One Medical, California Labor Workforce & Development Agency (LWDA), and the World Food Programme.

Areas of Expertise

  • Product psychology: Understanding how people interact with products and designing experiences that people love
  • Behavioral design for healthtech: Applying behavioral insights to improve patient adherence and health outcomes
  • The psychology of money: Helping companies shape financial behaviors through behavioral design
  • Designing effective incentives: Creating incentives that work with, rather than against, human behavior
  • In-product & out-of-product testing: Running experiments to validate behaviorally-informed hypotheses, uncovering key behavioral drivers & driving results
Learn More

The real transformation comes from redesigning programs around how people actually make decisions and take action.

Richard discovered critical behavioral insights that shaped our healthy eating program.

Cissie Bonini
Executive Director, Vouchers 4 Veggies

Working with Irrational Labs has been eye-opening in the best kind of way — we learned how to use behavioral design in a creative, yet structured way to drive meaningful impact for our members and for Credit Karma.

Satyen Motiani
Senior PM, Credit Karma

This was so well done. The product context was clear, the challenge before and solution after looked great. Thanks!

Sudhakar Kaushik
CEO, Founder, Jeeva

See Me Speak

To design products that work, you have to understand how the people you are building them for think and behave.

Behavioral science gives us this tool set. I’ve seen it transform leading companies—and as a speaker who brings it to life, I transform my audience’s perspective on products and the world.

Where to find me

A simple 5-question quiz increased virtual PT enrollment by 64%. How? By solving the real problem: people incorrectly assume successful physical therapy must involve hands-on treatment.
How do you double conversion when you've got a great product but people aren't taking full advantage of it? This is the question Marvin Behavioral Health faced. While many medical professionals were using Marvin for therapy, we saw an opportunity to get even more through signup and onboarding to start their therapy journey.
Had a fantastic conversation with Brad Cost and Jay Greenstein on the TechTalk podcast! We discussed how behavioral science is transforming healthcare outcomes by driving smarter design choices.
Wonderful turnout for my "How to Create Habits in Healthcare" talk for Irrational Labs today!
Looking forward to stopping by the HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) 2024 conference!
Ever wished you could fast-forward to see if your new feature or product is a hit or a miss? While we can't jump into the future, quantitative UX research is a powerful approach that can help.
Pricing is one of the biggest growth levers. So why are so few companies using pricing studies? It’s because pricing studies seem risky, complex, and hard to run.
Have you ever struggled to remember to take your medicine on time? Or recall the details about a medication? You're not alone.
So you’re a health plan or health tech that takes on patients. The only problem? You can’t seem to get them to engage with your product. Sound familiar?
Healthcare providers today are drowning in data. Can behavioral science help them to make sense of it all—and impact patient health for the better? The team at Belong Health believed it could.
Asking for help is hard—and when we’re lonely, it can feel even harder. But what happens when we change the frame and offer to help someone else instead?