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Nudge : A behavioral science to adopt good Habits

 

Nudge 

A behavioral science to adopt good Habits


In behavioral science or psychology there is an interesting concept called The Nudge Theory. This idea was first published in a book called “Nudge : Improving decisions about health, wealth and Happiness”.

Wherever we go, we are constantly being nudged. By the Government, by big corporations, marketing companies to name a few and we don't even know it. So what is this nudge theory and why are we being nudged?  Well, it is used to change our behavior to adopt some good habits or influence our decisions.  This concept is very powerful if we use it for good. To adopt good habits or to make smart decisions.

Lets understand it with examples.

In India, there is a food delivery app named Zomato. They used this concept to reduce plastic consumption by targeting human’s lazy behavior. 

So when user order a food from Zomato, they get plastic cutlery with food. Zomato calculated this cutlery consumption that is reaching 1.2 million kg per year. So Zomato introduced a small feature by which users who are ordering food can opt out of plastic cutlery. But we humans are so lazy, nobody cared to select that option. When Zomato saw no impact of this feature, they put The Nudge effect at play by changing the default setting of opting for cutlery to reverse. That is, now users will not get plastic cutlery with food by default, if they want it, they need to explicitly mention it by selecting the checkbox. But as we are lazy beings, most of the people don't  care to select that option either and that way Zomato is now able to reduce plastic consumption of 1.2 million kg per year.

There is another interesting case study of Sweden, Stockholm subway. That subway has an escalator and staircase to navigate between floors. Most of the people were using escalators and because of this, not only energy bills were shooting high but people are getting fat and unhealthy. To change this behavior, the government installed a piano beneath staircase steps. Essentially turning the whole staircase into a big piano. As an impact of this people start using staircase just out of fun and hence reduced escalator usage.

One more great example of leveraging human psychology to make good decisions is Amsterdam airport's washroom. There , cleaning staff was worried about the urine slippage around the urinals. They had posted instructions to be careful while urinating but there was no improvement. They put The nudge effect at play. They simply put bug stickers at the hole of the urinals. Now, people started targeting that bug while urinating hence by reducing slippages by 20%.

So, How can we leverage The Nudge Theory to software industry for improving user experience, encouraging positive actions and promoting desired behavior.

  1. User interface design:  

    1. Visual Cues: Using  visual elements such as colours, icons or animation to nudge user to take appropriate action.

    2. Process Indicator : if your system takes longer than expected, don't ask user to hang around instead, give them appropriate message so they they can utilize that time for other tasks. This will reduce user’s frustration they incurred while waiting for some process.

  2. Alter Default Setting as per human Behavior

    1. Set default positive : setting user action defaults to value which is hard for humans to go there as we saw in Zomato’s example.

  3. Nudges in Onboarding: 

    1. User journey : Break down complex user journey into smaller manageable steps with guidance to nudge users through the onboarding process.

    2. Highlight Key features:  Emphasize the most critical features during the onboarding process.

  4. Reminders

    1. Reminders : Sending timely reminders to encourage users to take actions.

    2. Push Notifications: Use push notification to remind users to complete unfinished tasks


So The Nudge Theory is very effective in transforming people’s behavior without restricting their freedom of choice. This should be used to bring a positive impact on society or product.

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