In some products, we can change the user’s behavior through the corresponding design, and play a certain boosting role. The article combines the author’s own experience to do product design from the perspective of behavioral economics.
Nudge is the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Taylor, a pioneer in behavioral economics. It focuses on how to use nudges to help people make the best decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. The original meaning of the word “boost” in English is “to nudge or poke someone’s elbow with an elbow or other body part to remind or attract others’ attention”. The title of the book “Nudge” is intended to remind you of the mistakes you may make in choosing, and to help you “hand”.
After reading this book, I understand “boosting” as changing the user’s behavior through corresponding design. Combined with my current work, I hope that this note will be helpful to my future product design work and life.
How we are being nudged to exploit
When you donate to charities, they will generally offer you a range of options, such as $100, $250, $1,000, $5,000, or others. In fact, the numbers listed by these charities are not handwritten, and they do affect how much people end up donating. Faced with the options of $100, $250, $1,000, and $5,000, people are bound to donate more money than if faced with the options of $50, $75, $100, and $150.
This is the so-called anchoring effect, and the “anchor” they set acts as a boost. They can set an ingenious starting point for your thinking, and thus the choices you make in a particular situation.
People who have just experienced an earthquake will suddenly buy a lot of earthquake insurance, but the number of these insurance purchases will steadily decline over time, as the memory fades away.
“Availability bias” can improve our perception of high-risk behaviors. They make judgments about the likelihood of such risks based on the ease with which relevant examples are obtained. If people can easily recall relevant examples, they will be more aware of this risk.
Why do some websites and apps offer trial membership services?
Loss aversion: The regret of losing is twice as high as the pleasure of gain. Generally speaking, losing something makes you twice as sad as getting it, so once you get used to the membership experience, you don’t want to lose it.
Why does it automatically renew by default when you purchase a membership?
“Loss aversion” and “choice blindness” in humans suggest that if a choice is designed to be “default,” it will attract more people’s attention. Therefore, the default option acts as a strong boost, because consumers will feel that the default option is a choice approved by the designer.
Why hasn’t your auto-renewal been canceled?
Status Quo Bias: There are many reasons why people are generally more inclined to stay in the status quo. One of the reasons for the “status quo bias” is that there is not enough attentiveness, and many people adopt a “whatever comes and goes” attitude.
People’s self-righteous rules of thumb sometimes lead them astray, they are too busy to overlook something, so they would rather accept the reality than try to judge whether there are different outcomes in different situations. People are highly susceptible to nudges, and even critical decisions are often influenced by reasons that economic theory cannot explain.
Replenish:
On Saturday mornings, when we were walking around the streets, we suddenly found ourselves on our way to work instead of going to our destination – the direction of the mall; on Sunday mornings, we would have a cup of coffee, as usual, read a newspaper, But we suddenly remembered that we skipped a friend for dinner, and it was only an hour before the date.
The above reflects the blindness of behavior. In many cases, people put themselves into “autopilot mode,” where they don’t actively realize what they’re doing. (Intuitive thinking systems feel very comfortable in this situation)
How we are affected by society
One of the most effective ways to nudge comes from social influence.
There are three main types of social impact:
- The first is information. If there are many people who hold the same view and do the same thing, then you will also think that their views and practices are also the most suitable for you.
- The second is peer pressure. If you care a lot about what others think of you (perhaps you mistakenly feel that others are always paying attention to you), then you are likely to choose to follow the crowd and avoid criticism from others.
- The third is the wording.
When teenage girls see other girls having babies, it increases their chances of getting pregnant. Obesity is contagious, and if your best friend is fat, you’re likely to get fat too.
College students are deeply influenced by their classmates. What kind of students share the same dormitory with freshmen will play a crucial role in their academic performance and future development.
As a result, we will see that social people can easily be influenced by other social people.
Why is this so?
One reason is that people like to conform.
How can we control the influence of society on us?
(1) Forget yourself in the eyes of others
If you have a stain on your shirt, don’t worry, people probably won’t notice it, but because people think others are staring at them, they tend to do things that others want to see them do.
(2) Use herd mentality to optimize people’s behavior.
Why do many product advertisements continue to emphasize user volume?
They often emphasize that “most people like” their product, or that “more and more people” are already using their product, and they’re always trying to tell you how most people do.
(3) Improve people’s blind obedience
A smoking cessation advertisement: The majority (70%) of teenagers do not smoke, which greatly reduces the probability of people’s bad behavior.
How to take advantage of better social guidance?
When researchers measure people’s intentions, they also influence people’s behavior. This phenomenon, called the ” mere measurement effect,” is when people are asked about their behavioral tendencies, and they end up acting on their answers, and this phenomenon occurs in many situations.
When people were asked if they would like to eat a certain food, go on a diet, or exercise, their responses tended to influence their behavior. That said, “merely measuring the effect” is a nudge.
Nudges can be formed by asking people about the purpose of their actions, and the nudges can be increased if they are further asked about what they did and how they behaved. This finding was called the ” guiding factor ” by the great psychologist Kurt Lewin. He used this factor to describe those small influences that can help or prevent certain behaviors from forming.
We often see that instead of forcing people to do things a certain way, it is better to encourage good behavior by removing small barriers.
What is a good selection system?
Six principles of a good selection system:
(1) Expect error (Expect error)
Everyone makes mistakes. A well-designed system allows its users to make mistakes with the utmost tolerance.
The design in the car is becoming more and more user-friendly: if you get in the car without wearing a seat belt, an alarm will sound in the car; if the fuel is running out, there will be a warning sign and a warning sound.
If you use Google Mail to write an email and the word “attachment” is in the body but no attachment is added, the system will prompt: Have you forgotten the attachment?
(2) Feedback (GIve feedback)
The best way to help people improve their behavior is to provide feedback, a well-designed system that tells people whether their behavior is appropriate.
One key feedback missing from early digital cameras was that when a photo was taken, people couldn’t tell by the sound whether the photo was done or not. Today’s digital cameras emit a realistic but false shutter sound when a photo is taken. Some mobile phones aimed at the elderly will also design simulated button tones.
(3) Understand the trade-offs (Understand mappings)
A good choice system can be one in which people improve their ability to balance and make choices that are beneficial to them. One approach is to make various choices of information easier to understand (eg: turning digital information into something that is easier to implement).
For example, I’m making cider, and if I know, as a rule of thumb, that 3 apples are good for a glass of cider, I’d be helped a lot.
One of the selling points advertised when digital cameras are advertised is the pixel, and it seems that the higher the pixel, the better. For consumers, however, the hardest part is converting the pixels into something they actually care about.
How much does it make sense to spend a few hundred dollars to upgrade from 4 to 5 million pixels?
When merchants set options for consumers, they sometimes don’t give options of 3, 5, or 7 million, but tell consumers that the camera can print 4 inches x 6 inches, 9 inches x 12 inches, or “poster”. size” photo.
(4) Incentives
Nudge: Let us see the motivation of our choice.
There are things that a good choice designer can do to shift attention to motivation, and we can do something similar to highlight costs if we want to be protected by the environment and to improve energy independence. Think about it: If the air conditioner in your home shows that the room temperature is lowered by several degrees per hour, and the extra power consumption is generated, what kind of energy-saving effect will it produce?
In some fields, people have different requirements for gains and losses. For example: when people are exercising on the fitness equipment, people can see a picture, this picture shows the calories that have been consumed with food as the unit of measurement; for example 10 minutes of exercise you may only see a few carrots, and after 10 minutes of exercise you may only see a few carrots After a 40-minute workout, you might see a big cookie.
(5) Structure complex choice
Nudge: Simplify an overly complex selection system.
For example personalized recommendations of news software, guess what you like from shopping websites, etc. are all about making complicated choices simple.
(6) Default selection (Default)
Because of inertia, status quo bias, and a “yes, so what” mentality. All of these mean that when people are faced with a choice, they will have a default option in their heart, that is, an option that does not require any effort from the chooser.
Default options are so ubiquitous and influential that they are inevitable because every detail of the choice system has laws that determine what will happen if the decision-maker doesn’t make a choice.
The usual result will be: if I do nothing, nothing will change, and everything will stay the same.
