visual representations of things that can be described by various adjectives

Ikea researchers explore Kiwi homes before opening first NZ store Christine Gough, head of interior design at Ikea Australia, is one of 40 Ikea researchers visiting hundreds of Kiwi homes to gauge what products to stock in its Auckland mega store.

Resources to help you address frictions in your government services, improving customer experience.

“significant” p-value ≠ “significant” finding: The significance of statistical evidence for the true X (i.e., statistical significance of the p-value for the estimate of the true X) says absolutely nothing about the practical/scientific significance of the true X. That is, significance of evidence is not evidence of significance. Increasing your sample size in no way increases the practical/scientific significance of your practical/scientific hypothesis. “significant” p-value = “discernible” finding: The significance of statistical evidence for the true X does tell us how well the estimate can discern the true X. That is, significance of evidence is evidence of discernibility. Increasing your sample size does increase how well your finding can discern your practical/scientific hypothesis.

Opt-in samples are about half as accurate as probability-based panels

Mercier and Sperber prefer the term “myside bias.” Humans, they point out, aren’t randomly credulous. Presented with someone else’s argument, we’re quite adept at spotting the weaknesses. Almost invariably, the positions we’re blind about are our own.

Our results show that a decadeslong effort to educate the U.S. public about recycling has succeeded in some ways but failed in others. These efforts have made recycling an option that consumers see as important – but to the detriment of more sustainable options. And it has not made people more effective recyclers.

“We don’t have a hundred biases, we have the wrong model.” So said Jason Collins in a recent blog, perhaps somewhat provocatively likening the use of biases as akin to the activity of ancient astronomers who were required to compile an exhaustive number of deviations to retain the broken model of the universe revolving around the earth. Collins challenge is whether the model at the heart of behavioural science is similarly broken.

Causal layered analysis, a theory and practice of organisational, social and civilisational change, seeks to transform the present and the future, through deconstructing and reconstructing reality at four levels. The levels are: the litany or day to day unquestioned views of reality, the systemic, the worldview/stakeholder perspective and the deepest, often unconscious, myths and metaphors. Problems are considered at all four levels and multiple worldviews and stakeholders are brought into to consider alternatives. By moving up and down layers and considering alternative perspectives, transformative policy and strategic solutions are created.

Why do we believe misinformation more easily when it’s repeated many times?

Nudging provides a way to gently influence people to change behavior towards a desired goal, e.g., by moving towards a healthier or more environmentally friendly lifestyle. Personalized and context-aware digital nudging (named smart nudging) can be a powerful tool for efficient nudging by tailoring nudges to the current situation of each individual user. However, designing smart nudges is challenging, as different users may need different supports to improve their behavior. Determining the next nudge for a specific user must be done based on the user’s current situation, abilities, and potential for improvement. In this paper, we focus on the challenge of designing the next nudge by presenting a novel classification of nudges that distinguishes between (i) nudges that are impossible for the user to follow, (ii) nudges that are unlikely to be followed, and (iii) probable nudges that the user can follow. The classification is tailored to individual users based on user profiles, current situations, and knowledge of previous behaviors. This paper describes steps in the nudge design process and a novel set of principles for designing smart nudges.

If you have ever been tasked with influencing a behaviour, you will know that it is critical to understand that behaviour in context. You need to understand the issues faced by the people affected. At BIT, we refer to the process of understanding behaviour in context as Exploring. Exploring is about discovering what people do and crucially why.

If we are to use behavioural science as a lens to understand behaviour, we need to make sure that our lens is not always ‘zoomed in’ on the individual and their immediate situation but that we also ‘zoom out,’ so that we can see the wider social, cultural, economic and political environment. When we do this, we can see more clearly how our responses and behaviours are not only the result of our individual psychology but are also socially, economically and historically situated. There is a nuanced balancing act between the individual and these wider ways in which our behaviour is shaped that will inevitably be a source of debate and disagreement.

Below, I’ll break down the three key steps to creating a compelling pitch for behavioral science. A bonus: you can put it all together in one minute or less to make a short—and sweet—sell on our amazing field.

Draft your emotional Before/During/After for each moment. Challenge yourself to superforecast how you think people will feel at each moment. Design, adjust, re-adjust.

The JTBD Canvas 2.0 is a tool to help you scope out your JTBD landscape prior to conducting field research. It frames your field of inquiry and scopes of your innovation effort.

In 2022, Nick Chater and George Loewenstein published a pre-print called ‘The i-frame and the s-frame: How focusing on individual-level solutions has led behavioral public policy astray’. The paper argues that “behavioral scientists“ have focused too much on policy ideas that aim to shape individual behavior (the “i-frame“), rather than the systems in which people behave (the “s-frame“) and therefore they “may have unwittingly promoted the interests of the opponents of systemic change”. I greatly respect the authors of this article and agree with their ultimate goal of applying behavioral science to public policy more effectively. However, I find this paper to be deeply flawed and ultimately self-defeating. My concerns come in three categories.

I hope this post gives some ideas to product leads on how to use the Decision Stack as a mental model in all sorts of conversations. The stack is a really powerful coaching tool. It is a framework that helps you to discuss things like: How to achieve alignment and directional clarity across the board. Use the Stack to connect the dots. Ask why things are the way they are and how the organization is planning to reach their goals. Use it to discuss goals and where shared goals would be possible. Use it to discuss team topologies, team empowerment, and mandate.

Linguistic accessibility is important because people in a group often speak more than one language with various degrees of confidence. People also use different varieties of the same language or create their own variety. The way a language develops in a multilingual group reflects what people need and want to communicate.

Could there be another way to practice copyediting—less attached to precedent, less perseverating, and more eagerly transgressive; a practice that, to distinguish itself from the quietly violent tradition from which it arises, might not be called “copyediting” at all; a practice that would not only “permit” but amplify the potential for linguistic invention and preservation in any written work?

The toolkit presented here guides the policy maker through a methodology that looks at Behaviours, Analysis, Strategies, Interventions, and Change (abbreviated “BASIC”). It starts with a BASIC guide that serves as an indispensable and practical introduction to the BASIC manual.

Personas are a widely used tool to keep real users in mind, while avoiding stereotypical thinking in the design process. Yet, creating personas can be challenging. Starting from Cooper's approach for constructing personas, this paper details how behavioral theory can contribute substantially to the development of personas. We describe a case study in which Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is used to develop five distinctive personas for the design of a digital coach for sustainable weight loss. We show how behavioral theories such as SDT can help to understand what genuinely drives and motivates users to sustainably change their behavior. In our study, we used SDT to prepare and analyze interviews with envisioned users of the coach and to create complex, yet engaging and highly realistic personas that make users' basic psychological needs explicit. The paper ends with a critical reflection on the use of behavioral theories to create personas, discussing both challenges and strengths.

According to Social Media Perth, the acronym stands for “get ready with me,“ which is a common form of video content found on platforms like YouTube and increasingly on TikTok as well. These videos are typically created by people in the beauty and fashion spaces, and they involve a thorough documentation of everything an influencer does during their morning or evening routines.

To do so, we propose a framework, which rearranges the 17 SDGs into five main categories to which concepts from behavioural and social scientists can relate: wellbeing, inclusivity, sufficiency, empowerment, and resilience (WISER; panel). The WISER framework can enable behavioural scientists to both design their interventions in a way that encompasses several SDGs, and to more clearly report and review how their interventions contribute to behavioural change towards SDGs, thus enhancing progress towards planetary health

But this deluge of information — in which you are naturally very invested — can also prove overwhelming and unhelpful. We’re big fans of brands like WHOOP and Oura, and regularly encourage readers to dig through Apple’s Health app…but you need to be honest with yourself. If fitness tracking is psychologically increasing your feelings of inadequacy and physically increasing your perception of pain, it’s not worth it. At the least, it’s going to torpedo your performance (at work, in workouts, etc.)

Create powerful digital health apps. Without code. Cogniss is a no-code ecosystem to develop sophisticated consumer and patient-facing digital health solutions (native iOS, native Android & Web) – digital therapeutics, real-world evidence tools, research apps & more.

Extending from the existing seven-step co-design process, this paper outlines a first attempt explaining the formative research study that employed six SMBC to co-create a sustainable marketing program. Three studies were conducted, namely 1) Expert panel review (N = 24), 2) Segmentation study (N = 707), and 3) Co-design workshops (N = 77). As a result, a framework for Marketing Co-creation is proposed to assist practitioners to build programs for behaviour (ex)change. This research proposed a step-by-step process that can be applied by researchers/practitioners ensuring that marketing programs are built with consumers.

Deliberate ignorance is a potential barrier for information interventions aiming to reduce meat consumption and needs to be considered in future interventions and research. Self-efficacy exercises are a promising approach to reduce deliberate ignorance and should be further explored.

An interactive tool to help you take a behaviourally informed approach when designing your communications

In this short follow up post we explain how and why we combine systems thinking and behavioural approaches. We start by introducing the concepts of ‘systems’ and ‘systems thinking’ before explaining why Systems thinking is useful to combine with a behavioural approach.

Now though, venturing into the world of AI-assisted transmedia storytelling, we are presented with what could be an exciting opportunity to overcome challenges such as the ones above and perhaps finally see the emergence of “true” transmedia storytelling. Looking at the rapid advancements in AI over the past year and months (and weeks and days!) it quickly becomes clear that these technologies are offering creators a wealth of opportunities to push the boundaries of narrative experiences.