The Journal of Design Strategies Volume 10: The Design of Influence

The Journal of Design Strategies The Design of Influence

Vol. 10, No. 1 | Fall 2021

VOL. 10, NO. 1 | FALL 2021 THE DESIGN OF INFLUENCE

EDITORIAL STAFF

The Journal of Design Strategies is published by The New School in association with the School of Design

GUEST EDITORS

Strategies at Parsons School of Design.

Lawrence Marcelle and Matthew Robb The Stephan Weiss Lecture Series and Journal of EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Design Strategies are made possible by an endowment

Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo

established by the Karan-Weiss Foundation, Donna Karan, Gabrielle Karan, Corey Weiss, and Lisa Weiss.

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Mike Fu

PARSONS

2 West 13th Street, 9th floor MANAGING EDITOR

New York, NY 10011

Molly Davy Parsons focuses on creating engaged citizens and GRAPHIC DESIGN

outstanding artists, designers, scholars, and business

HvADesign

leaders through a design-based professional and

Henk van Assen

liberal arts education.

Meghan Lynch Izzy Natale

Parsons students learn to rise to the challenges of living, working, and creative decision-making in a world where human experience is increasingly designed.

The school embraces curricular innovation, pioneering uses of technology, collaborative methods, and global perspectives on the future of design. © The New School 2021. All rights reserved.

ISSN: 1935-0112. ISSN: 1935-0120 (online).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

3

LETTER FROM THE DEAN

4

STEPHAN WEISS LECTURE SERIES

5

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

Lawrence Marcelle and Matthew Robb 20

Behavioral Insights in Action: Behavioral Change for Good

Nina Mažar 42

Wicked Behavioral Problems

Ruth Schmidt and Sarah Reid 56

Using Nudges as Design Principles: Mindful Guidance for Behavior Change

G. Mauricio Mejía 68

Nudging Each Other: How Do Nudges Fit Within Democratic Design?

Brian E. Butler 86

Do No Harm: Notes on The Ethical Use of Nudges

Valerie Joly Chock 100

Nudging for Welfare and Freedom: An Exploration of Ethics for UX Designers

Laura Valis 112

Theory-Storming in the Urban Realm: Using Nudge Theory to Inform the Design of Health-Promoting Places

Evonne Miller and Debra Flanders Cushing 122

Nudging “The Man on The Clapham Omnibus”: Designing Behavior in Captive Environments

Nyein Chan Aung and Robbie Napper 134

CONTRIBUTORS

LETTER FROM THE DEAN I am pleased to present Volume 10 of The Journal of Design Strategies, “The Design of Influence.” The articles included here explore intersections of the design disciplines and the field of behavioral science research popularly known as “nudge theory.”

As discussed in the bestselling 2008 book Nudge by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, this research has shown that people’s choices can be profoundly influenced by the way those choices are presented and framed—that is, by how they are designed. Nudges can be ways of leveraging typical human cognitive and perceptual biases for our own good, and this is precisely the recommendation that Thaler and Sunstein make to “choice architects” of all kinds. But the same cognitive and perceptual biases that can be activated for individuals’ own benefit can also be activated to serve other purposes, including commercial ones that primarily benefit companies and investors, or governmental ones that may conflict with citizens’ expectations of liberty or privacy. Nudge theory has thus opened new avenues for the application of design expertise and raised corresponding new questions about the efficacy of design, and the responsibilities of designers, in shaping our decisions.

The articles contained in this volume deepen our understanding of both the promise and perils of the emerging field of nudge-based design. They include efforts to describe specific nudge initiatives from a design perspective; to define limits for the ethical application of nudges by designers; to identify differences in the methodological stances of the behavioral sciences and the design disciplines; and to propose ways that design has its own implications for nudge theory—implications that may greatly expand the power and range of application of nudges, while also mitigating some of the risks associated with this rapidly developing domain of design practice.

I am very grateful for the Karan-Weiss Foundation’s continuing sponsorship of the Stephan Weiss Lecture Series and of this Journal. That support makes possible the ongoing exploration of the new and emerging roles that design is playing in constructively addressing both the opportunities and the challenges of our contemporary world.

Rachel Schreiber Executive Dean, Parsons School of Design 3

STEPHAN WEISS LECTURE SERIES

Each year, Parsons’ School of Design Strategies hosts the Stephan Weiss Lecture Series, launched in 2002 to commemorate the life of the late artist and sculptor Stephan Weiss, husband and business partner of the fashion designer Donna Karan. Weiss co-founded Donna Karan International in 1984, and was instrumental in every significant venture the company undertook: launching and structuring new brands, most notably the Donna Karan Beauty Company; signing new licenses; establishing in-house legal and creative departments; devising its computer design technology; orchestrating the company’s initial public offering in 1996; and negotiating its sale to the current owner, LVMH Moët HennessyLouis Vuitton.

Since its founding, the Weiss Lecture Series has allowed the School of Design Strategies to share the work of important figures from the worlds of business, design, arts, government, journalism, and academia with the New School community as well as the public, and to support research and dialogue exploring how design may contribute to industry as well as to the general well-being of individuals and communities, to social and environmental sustainability, and to innovative types of democratic participation and civic engagement.

Recent Weiss lecturers have included Jessica Gordon Nembhard, professor of community justice and social economic development in the Africana Studies department at John Jay College in New York City; Jeanne van Heeswijk, an internationally prominent visual artist whose work addresses long-term challenges of urban transformation; Cathy O’Neil, a mathematician, data scientist, and author focused on ethical challenges stemming from big data; Tim Wu, Professor at Columbia Law School and widely published author whose work addresses problems of regulation in the technology sector; Fatou Wurie, international development specialist at UNICEF, with a portfolio focused on innovative solutions for gender equality; Inderpaul Johar, Graham Willis Professor at the University of Sheffield’s School of Architecture and co-founder of the London-based design practice Architecture 00; and Arturo Escobar, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus, at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

The Stephan Weiss Lecture Series is made possible by an endowment established by the Karan-Weiss Foundation, Donna Karan, Gabrielle Karan, Corey Weiss, and Lisa Weiss.

4

Letter from the Editors

For almost a century, the field of economics has rested on an axiomatic account of rationality, often referred to as rational choice theory. This account envisions human beings as narrowly self-interested, as generally qualified to know or determine what their true interests are, and as motivated to constantly pursue their own advantage as they understand it. People conduct an ongoing cost-benefit analysis, taking in new information and adapting to shifting environments, in order to maximize their individual advantage or “utility”—that is, to realize an optimum set of their subjectively defined ends. Rational behavior, on this view, generally consists in the pursuit of the most efficient means to any such end. With people’s goals thus understood as subjective, the field of economics has generally taken its own role to be the clarification of the best means for realizing those subjective ends, whatever they might be. More precisely put, the task of the economics discipline as understood by most practitioners in recent decades is to map out patterns of self-interested conduct, at both individual and national levels, in order to arrive at public policy recommendations intended to lead to the greatest number of individual preferences being satisfied over the long term. Efficiency in the achievement of overall utility or welfare has accordingly been taken as the field’s ultimate goal and conceptual lodestar. The figure of homo economicus has come to serve as a sort of mascot or personified summary of the assumptions governing the economics discipline: the axiomatic account of rationality, the view of humans as essen-

Efficiency in the achievement of

tially self-interested, and the efficient distribution

overall utility or welfare has been

of goods and services to be expected and promoted

most economists’ ultimate goal and

when many such self-interested persons gather in the

conceptual lodestar.

marketplace in order to meet their personal needs and realize their goals.

Letter from the Editors

5

1

Duncan K. Foley, Adam’s

Fallacy: A Guide to Economic

A key methodological assumption of economic theory constituted along these lines has involved maintaining a dichotomy between facts and values. In particular, most

Theology (Cambridge: Harvard

economists have assumed that their work, and the public policy recommendations

University Press), 2.

that they produce as outputs, need not refer directly to moral values or norms in

2

Lionel Robbins, An Essay

on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (London: Macmillan, 1932), 15.

any way. The methodological separation of facts and values has even led to the exclusion of moral questions that directly implicate economic matters: the gross inequities that free-market economies tend to produce, the limiting effects that racial, gender, or other biases may have on people’s concrete economic prospects, the environmental impact of current industrial activity on the ability of future generations to meet their own needs and pursue their own aspirations, and so on. On the whole, then, the presuppositions underpinning recent economic thought have reinforced and deepened “the central anxiety that besets capitalism—the question of how to be a good person and live a good and moral life within the antagonistic, impersonal, and self-regarding social relations that capitalism imposes.” 1 Among most economists, the standard response has been that over time, those relations will in fact guide societies toward a progressively better condition. Left to their own devices, self-interested actors will seek out opportunities in the marketplace, striving to realize these through the provision of goods and services that other people are willing to pay for. The result will be a virtuous cycle of accelerating production and job creation, increasing opportunities for consumption and the education of consumer tastes, rising standards of living and levels of affluence: a cycle that leaves everyone better off over time. Modern economic thinkers are quick to invoke Adam Smith’s famous metaphor of the “invisible hand,” guiding the increase in overall wealth of a nation purely on the basis of a putative natural tendency to enter into relations

Adam Smith’s famous image of the

of barter and exchange with other self-interested

“invisible hand” clarifies and redeems

persons, and without the need for extensive govern-

the astonishing claim that in a free-

mental intervention or management. The image of

market economy, selfish behavior

the invisible hand clarifies and redeems the claim—

will necessarily lead to an increase in

also Smith’s, and astonishing on its face—that in a

general welfare.

free-market economy, selfish behavior will necessarily lead to an increase in general welfare. As noted, this encouraging idea has helped to justify the ongoing methodological exclusion of moral topics by economic thinkers. In the 1930s, for example, even in the midst of a worldwide economic depression and the vast suffering it was causing, the prominent British economist Lionel Robbins coolly defined his discipline as “the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.” 2 Through the middle decades of the century, the vague assurance that capitalism leads to the best of all possible outcomes—bolstered by the invention of new metrics such as gross domestic product and the observed struggles of planned economies such

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

as the Soviet Union’s—had a liberating effect, permitting economists to abjure “ethics” talk altogether, and focus instead on maximizing efficiency in the markets

3

Much of this research is

collected in Daniel Kahneman

through the development of “pro-growth” public policies and (generally minimal)

and Amos Tversky, eds.,

governmental regulation. Again, with ends taken as subjective and given, and

Choices, Values, and Frames

rationality defined axiomatically as the most direct pursuit of any end irrespective

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

of its substance, the moral salience of those ends is understood to be beyond the scope of the field or “science” of economics itself.

Starting in the 1980s, the emerging subdiscipline of behavioral economics began to nibble away at the dominance of the mainstream view, by demonstrating that in fact, human beings’ actual choices and actions do sometimes deviate from those predicted by axiomatic accounts of rationality. Behavioral economics built on previous empirical research into the psychology of decision-making—research that had already begun to problematize the assumptions on which the economics field rests. For example, in the 1970s the psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky had published studies showing that people tend to fear losses more than they desire equivalent gains, to accept a given or default option to a disproportionate degree in comparison to other alternatives presented, and to favor options that they believe to be popular over unpopular ones—all findings that indicate the inadequacy of “expected utility accruing to homo economicus” as a standard for understanding and predicting human behavior.3 In the jargon of the behavioral sciences from which behavioral economics emerged, human beings generally lack “integrated preferences”: our experienced desires and preferences in a given context do not generally organize themselves into ranked lists or “schedules,” because they do not, in fact, flow from a running calculus of personal advantage.

Once again, however, the efficiency of the market has been understood to depend on each agent consistently trying to maximize his or her individual preferences.

So if these are not integrated—if they are undetermined, inconsistent, or contradictory—then there can be no such maximization and hence no basis for believing that free markets really do produce the most efficient distribution of resources, and we can no longer justify current economic relations on the grounds that they do so. In reintroducing the facts of human psychology into economic thought, in other words, behavioral economics undermines the fact/value dichotomy within the explanatory schema of the economics discipline. Questions that had been central for economic thinkers from Aristotle to Smith, but obscured by mainstream economic thought in the 20th century, begin to surface once again: What ought we to want? How can we be sure that our personal preferences conform with the requirements of a good life? And how do we establish the appropriate means in order to decide on, and to realize, those ends stemming from a deeper reflection on our aspirations and obligations than one focused on the next thing to buy or sell?

Letter from the Editors

7

4

Page references in this

volume will be to the revised

Popular awareness of behavioral economics and its implications received a significant boost with the 2008 publication of Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health,

second edition: Richard H.

Wealth, and Happiness, by University of Chicago colleagues Richard H. Thaler and

Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein,

Cass R. Sunstein.4 By means of an engaging series of examples, the authors show

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and

how distortions and limitations in most people’s reasoning abilities can be inten-

Happiness (New York:

tionally leveraged to promote the eliciting of specific outcomes in a wide range of

Penguin, 2009).

contexts. A “nudge” is the name the authors give to a structured presentation of options that will reliably but noncoercively guide people toward one outcome over others. Through the careful structuring of a situation calling for a specific choice or decision, nudges can guide people toward certain outcomes, but without forcing or coercing those outcomes in any way. While acknowledging that people can be, and indeed frequently are, influenced in ways that undermine their best interests, the authors also point out that people can be influenced to make decisions that are beneficial to themselves—by promoting their health, wealth, or overall happiness, for example. This latter path is the one Thaler and Sunstein recommend. Indeed, in the account of “nudge theory” propounded in their book, the authors stipulate that, to be legitimate and admissible, nudges must leave the targets (“nudgees”) measurably better off—and it is nudgees themselves who are entitled to make that assessment. In insisting that economic thought open itself to the facts of human psychology as empirically demonstrated by the behavioral sciences, nudge theory also thereby reveals the inescapability of moral considerations in the economic sphere. Behavioral economics therefore represents a challenge to the assumption, still widely maintained among professional economists, that economic thought as such need not concern itself with moral matters. Indeed, in contrast with the ostensibly neutral appeal to efficiency central to mainstream economics, nudge theory presents itself as being continuous with the major traditions in Western ethical thought—most obviously with the moral traditions of utilitarianism and deontology. The util-

Behavioral economics represents a

itarian command to maximize the welfare of all who

challenge to the assumption, still

are affected by one’s actions is reflected in Thaler and

widely maintained among professional

Sunstein’s insistence that nudges must be designed

economists, that economic thought as

in such a way that they actually improve people’s

such need not concern itself with moral

lives, increasing their overall welfare. Deontology, the

matters.

moral position primarily associated with Immanuel Kant, affirms that to be moral, reasons for action must be “universalizable”—that is, must be capable of becoming, without conflict or contradiction, reasons for all. Since acting only on universalizable maxims or policies precludes the possibility that some people will be used or instrumentalized—treated as “mere means” to the pursuit of one’s goals—deontology underpins a strong conception of human rights, understood as the imperative to respect the autonomy, integrity, and freedom of the individual

8

T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

The simultaneous ethical commitments to maximize welfare, while respecting individual autonomy and freedom of choice, are encapsulated in the name that Thaler and Sunstein give to their theoretical position, “libertarian paternalism.”

human person. The ostensible alignment of nudge theory with deontology is registered in Thaler and Sunstein’s insistence that the theory be understood as a form of libertarian moral thought, one committed to avoiding coercion and to preserving freedom of choice among individual human agents, and in their proviso noted above, that any alterations in people’s actual choices or decisions caused by nudges must in principle be endorsed by nudgees, even if only retrospectively. The simultaneous ethical commitments to maximize welfare, while respecting individual autonomy and freedom of choice, are encapsulated in the name that Thaler and Sunstein give to their theoretical position, “libertarian paternalism.”

In responding to the behavioral-scientific insight that people’s overall well-being is influenced not only by the range of available options and opportunities, but also by the way those options and opportunities are presented, nudge theory highlights a fundamental importance of design. For contrary to the standard economic view, the behavioral sciences have shown that the structuring of choice itself—in other words, the way a choice situation is designed—can reliably impact the choices that concrete individuals actually make. Nudge theory, therefore, reveals an ineluctable non-neutrality of design. After all, Thaler and Sunstein point out, a set of alternatives must always be presented in some specific way or another: certain options will inevitably be prioritized, whether through spatial or visual positioning, by coming early in a sequence, or in some other way. But since the behavioral research that Thaler and Sunstein invoke has shown that the structuring of choice affects people’s decisions and hence their well-being whether for good or for ill, nudge theory reveals design itself as ipso facto an ethical domain. That is, those who are involved in structuring the choices of others (tellingly, Thaler and Sunstein call these people “choice architects”) are constantly confronted with moral questions, in particular: “Is my framing or presentation of the options available to people likely to influence them in ways that will enhance their welfare?” “Does my framing of the options maintain a respect for the autonomy of the people that I am trying to influence?”

“How best could I resolve any tensions between these values that may emerge from the choice architecture in this context?” The animating insight of Nudge—that there is no such thing as a “neutral” design of a choice situation—makes the inescapably moral bearing of the design professions explicit.

Letter from the Editors

9

A brief survey of several of the examples discussed by Thaler and Sunstein will 5

Thaler and Sunstein,

Nudge, 37–39.

6

Thaler and Sunstein,

Nudge, 1–4.

illustrate the non-neutrality of design and the ways in which the authors understand their enterprise to uphold widely shared contemporary moral values. Taken together, the examples also help clarify what is at stake in the rapprochement between behavioral economics and the design professions that Nudge highlights and promotes. Notwithstanding Thaler and Sunstein’s admonition that choice architects must try to “nudge for good,” some nudge initiatives, whether actually implemented or just proposed under the aegis of the authors’ recommendations, have in fact been quite controversial. And the nature of the controversies suggests that the design discipline itself may have something to contribute to discussions within the behavioral sciences regarding how to manage the reintroduction of ethics into economic planning and policymaking.

At one extreme, there are many nudge initiatives already in existence that would appear to raise no serious ethical concerns, while aiming for unambiguously good outcomes, and that therefore should presumably be limited based purely on nonmoral considerations like cost, feasibility, or effectiveness. Thaler and Sunstein’s “road stripe” example, we claim, is in this first category. Stripes painted across a road at decreasing intervals on the approach to a sharp corner will predictably reduce traffic accidents at that corner.5 The reason is that, as drivers approach the corner, the decreasing distance between the stripes creates the illusion of increasing speed, thus prompting the drivers to hit the brakes. Here, the leveraging of a kind of optical illusion to yield an obvious benefit—fewer accidents—exemplifies a typical nudge, and one presenting little cause for ethical concern. Indeed, the road stripes do appear to be compatible with the mainstream moral traditions with which Thaler and Sunstein seek to affiliate their position via the rubric of “libertarian paternalism.” On one hand, a taxpayer-financed road stripe painting program aimed at reducing traffic accidents at a dangerous corner is a clear example of governmental paternalism: a public entity leveraging expert knowledge to guide citizen behavior on behalf of the citizens’ own well-being. On the other hand, the fact that the stripes in no way prevent drivers from approaching the curve at a high rate of speed—or for that matter, from actually crashing—shows the libertarian respect for personal freedom that Thaler and Sunstein are anxious to maintain.6 Both the utilitarian mandate to maximize welfare (or put differently, to minimize pain and suffering) and the deontological mandate to respect autonomous agents or persons are clearly present in the road stripe case.

By contrast, the more famous “cafeteria” example illustrates how tricky the seeking of an ethical imprimatur for certain nudge initiatives can become. As has been well established in numerous studies, the relative locations and manner of presentation of foods in a cafeteria—prominently visible and easily accessible, as opposed to

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

visually or spatially deemphasized—can predictably impact what patrons select to eat, as do other design factors including the size of plates and trays. In particular,

7

See, e.g., Per-Anders

Tengland, “Behavior Change

foregrounding healthy foods like fruits and vegetables, while making chips and

or Empowerment: On the

sweets harder (but not impossible) to see or access, will reliably increase the propor-

Ethics of Health-Promotion

tion of healthy foods in the cafeteria patrons’ diets; similarly, stocking the cafeteria with small plates or trays will reliably reduce overall caloric intake among the patrons, even though all remain free to go back for seconds if they so choose (most

Strategies,” Public Health Ethics 5, no. 2, (July 2012): 140–153, doi.org/10.1093/ phe/phs022; Mark D. White, Manipulation of Choice: Ethics

people don’t). Clearly, then, cafeteria designers have a certain agency or power

and Libertarian Paternalism

to influence people to adopt healthier lifestyles in the area of diet. Nevertheless,

(New York: Palgrave

even taking health as an unqualified good, the issue of whether people should be guided, however subtly and noncoercively, toward (in this case) food choices they

Macmillan, 2013).

8

Thaler and Sunstein,

Nudge, 105–119.

otherwise might not have made seems more ethically problematic than in the road stripe example. People’s relationship with food involves deep layers of identity, with personal tastes and preferences, family and cultural traditions, and prevailing social norms all intersecting and sometimes competing for priority each time a person enters a grocery store or opens a restaurant menu. The provision, preparation, and consumption of food, in other words, is an aspect of most people’s lives that is of a wholly different degree of significance than the evolutionarily primitive perceptions of distance and speed that are acted upon in the road stripe intervention.

The sense that the design of a cafeteria might be implicated in a kind of bypassing of the patrons’ autonomy helps to explain the scrutiny and controversy that some cafeteria redesign initiatives have generated. It seems possible that a cafeteria’s layout, even one designed with patrons’ physical health as the primary goal, may in fact appropriate some of the patrons’ agency in the important context of choosing what to eat, compromising their freedom or autonomy in the process. This, in any case, has been a concern of many critics reacting to various proposals for designing health-promoting cafeterias.7 Finally, and perhaps most problematic of all, is the set of nudge initiatives proposed

by Thaler and Sunstein to increase rates of personal retirement savings.8 Their discussion of this topic centers on two related proposals. The first is for employers to automatically open retirement savings accounts for their newly-hired employees and to invest a small percentage of the employees’ income on their behalf. The second proposal, which the authors call Save More Tomorrow, involves automating savings rate increases, raising the percentage taken out of an employee’s paycheck each time the employee gets a raise. Plans like these, which replace an “opt-in” with an “opt-out” choice architecture as the default arrangement within employer-based retirement savings plans, have been shown to increase overall savings among working Americans, thereby supporting their financial preparation for retirement.

Given this unambiguously good result, it may not be immediately obvious just how controversial these ideas have been. But the proposals have in fact been sharply

Letter from the Editors

11

criticized from a wide range of political perspectives. From a classic liberal or liber9

See, e.g., Jeremy Waldron,

“It’s All for Your Own Good,”

tarian perspective, employer-based automatic savings plans (like health-promoting

The New York Review of

cafeterias) may appear to take something away from the individual, to constitute

Books, Oct. 9, 2014.

an infantilizing incursion on another person’s freedom—including, in this case, the freedom to make suboptimal retirement savings decisions.9 A different kind of criticism focuses instead on the way the proposals, by concentrating attention on technical matters like whether to adopt an opt-in or an opt-out choice architecture as part of an employer’s retirement plan offerings, tend to foreclose more wide-ranging discussions about the meaning and role of a dignified retirement and old age within a capitalist society. Notice, for example, that the question “How ought I to save for retirement?” implicates other much larger questions, like: “Why it is good to rest from labor?” “Why should we care whether all older people—and not just ourselves when we are no longer working—have dignified lives?” “Is it appropriate or just that such dignity in later life be a simple function of the amount of wealth that individual workers have accumulated over their career, or to the degree of foresight and personal discipline they have shown in securing their own futures? Should standards of living among retired persons instead be designed to reflect or honor a person’s overall contribution to society, or the physical toll taken by a lifetime of work?” In this way, a practical question about how individuals can best save for retirement can lead to other, much larger questions touching on the criteria of a good society—a society worth contributing to and retiring in. Part of the problem with employer-based automatic retirement savings plans, on this view, is that they simultaneously invite and suppress a deeper reflection about the meaning and role of retirement in an industrial society, and thus about how best to understand the problem these initiatives seek to address. From this standpoint, which might win both politically progressive and socially conservative adherents, the apparent tendency of some nudge proposals to close off debate on fundamental questions like these is a source of deep concern.

The ethical continuum outlined in these three

Greater clarification is needed in

examples suggests that greater clarification is needed

delineating various categories of nudges

in delineating various categories of nudges and in

and in identifying the ethical risks

identifying the ethical risks associated with each

associated with each category.

category. It may well turn out that, while many or perhaps the great majority of possible nudge initiatives raise no ethical concerns at all, and really do align

unproblematically with the norms and values of the major Western moral paradigms, other such initiatives do raise concerns, and therefore should be modified before implementation. Finally, a fuller ethical analysis may yield the conclusion that some such initiatives should not be implemented at all. So the reintroduction of ethical considerations in the economic sphere heralded by the emergence of

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

behavioral economics, and the application of scientific behavioral research in nudge theory, shows that designers—choice architects—of all kinds must keep the ethical implications of their work constantly in mind as they develop new nudge initiatives. In particular, designers must be informed about the moral imperatives to maximize general welfare and to honor individual rights and freedoms, and supported in developing best practices for jointly upholding (and resolving tensions between) those imperatives. At the same time, the problematically narrow focus of certain nudges such as the cafeteria layout and, perhaps especially, the automatic employee savings plan, highlights a more general criticism of behavioral science-informed nudge initiatives, namely that they tend to draw attention to “low hanging fruit”—minor tweaks that can help facilitate certain transactions, but at the expense of considering the broader social or political context. In some cases a nudge may actually serve to reinforce a system, debatable in itself, within which those nudges only come to appear as good ideas in the first place. In democratic societies, nudges, whether actually implemented or merely proposed, and no matter how beneficial they may appear to be, should not be allowed to foreclose public discussion and debate about matters of shared concern. Above all, nudges must not be allowed to vitiate the political will that would be required to effect needed changes to social or economic arrangements by making those arrangements slightly more palatable or less noticeable.

It is in this context that a deeper dialogue with the design field begins to suggest its value. Over the past

Design can contribute not just

several decades, the design discipline has undergone

technically, but also substantively, to

a transformation, from a form-giving trade largely

the development of nudge strategies

focused on aesthetic concerns and aimed at com-

that maximize the welfare, while

mercial sales to a profession whose practitioners

respecting the autonomy, of nudgees.

contribute productively to discussions not just about how to make things appealing to consumers, but about what “things” (products, services, etc.) should be developed in the first place. A significant trend within the self-understanding of the design profession has been an emerging awareness that designers are well positioned to comprehend and respond to very complex problems involving many heterogeneous aspects or factors. It may be that a professional discipline uniquely attuned to analyzing and strategically addressing issues of great complexity could bring a helpful capacity to incorporate diverse assumptions, perspectives, a constructive openness to edge cases and alternative scenarios, that might help situate nudge initiatives more thoughtfully within concrete contexts of human decision-making. Design can contribute not just technically, but also substantively, to the development of nudge strategies that maximize the welfare, while respecting the autonomy, of nudgees.

Letter from the Editors

13

OVERVIEW OF THIS VOLUME The current volume of The Journal of Design Strategies seeks to advance the emerging dialogue between behavioral economics and design, in both of the directions indicated above: by further clarifying the specific responsibilities of professional designers when they make use of behavioral research to develop nudge initiatives, and by suggesting ways in which a design-based approach to nudge planning may be helpful in registering and incorporating a wider and more diverse range of factors than is typical in many discussions of nudge theory today. The various articles collected in this volume, representing a wide range of disciplinary orientations and perspectives, can be understood as contributions to that dialogue. Anchoring the issue is a transcribed lecture by Nina Mažar, a behavioral scientist and professor of marketing based at Boston University, which she delivered in March 2021 as part of the Stephan Weiss Lecture Series, an initiative hosted by the School of Design Strategies at Parsons School of Design (this Journal is correlated with the Weiss Lecture Series). Professor Mažar’s lecture outlines several recent field research projects she was involved with, which explored the use of nudge interventions by governmental bodies aimed at increasing compliance with tax filing deadlines and participation in a national voluntary organ donation program. Her talk sheds light on the current state of the art in the leveraging of behavioral research to elicit specific beneficial outcomes.

The next three articles address theoretical and methodological considerations pertaining to the intersection of design and the behavioral sciences. Behavioral design researchers and practitioners Ruth Schmidt and Sarah Reid relate the field of behavioral economics to complex 21st-century “wicked problems” that, they claim, designers are well-positioned to address, arguing that design represents an important source of methods for thinking broadly and creatively about such problems, which could help nudges achieve scale where appropriate and to avoid a limiting focus on small-bore and marginal solutions that may leave larger systemic problems untouched. Design theorist G. Mauricio Mejía agrees that the emerging rapprochement between design and the behavioral sciences is an exciting development, but warns that designers must be careful to preserve the open-ended and exploratory character of “design principles” properly understood, and to avoid adopting a narrowly empirical or arbitrarily self-limiting attempt to make the design disciplines more “scientific.” Finally, political philosopher Brian Butler offers a critique of libertarian paternalism as potentially threatening to the ideal of democratic self-governance, and asks whether design may contain the resources for envisioning a society in which citizens “nudge each other” in service of inclusive processes aimed at more rational and mature public policymaking.

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

The next two articles address the topic of “nudge ethics” directly. Graphic designer and graduate philosophy student Valerie Joly Chock evaluates Thaler and Sunstein’s admonition to “nudge for good,” finds the admonition arbitrarily restrictive as a criterion that can give ethical guidance in concrete cases, and proposes an alternative, more relaxed criterion reminiscent of the Hippocratic Oath, detailing how her proposal yields a more expansive range of acceptable nudge initiatives through a survey of intriguing examples. And design researcher Laura Valis analyses the ethical opportunities and risks facing design professionals working in the user experience (UX) field, focusing especially on the pressure for UX designers to create smooth, rapid, and “seamless” customer experiences within commercial environments such as retailers’ websites; Valis argues that honoring the twin moral goals of maximizing individual liberty and general welfare may actually require slowing down certain transactions or decision procedures.

The final two articles in the current volume detail the efforts of design professionals to leverage nudges in specific designed environments. Design researcher Evonne Miller and landscape architect Debra Flanders Cushing discuss the potential of nudge interventions in the context of urban design and planning oriented specifically toward promoting physical activity and social interactions, outlining an approach to innovation in this context that they call “theory-storming,” and illustrating their main claims with a series of examples. Finally, design researchers and practitioners Finally, design researchers and practitioners Nyein Chan Aung and Robbie Napper assess the impact of nudges in the context of public transportation, especially the design of mass transit vehicles, offering the provocative suggestion that common understandings of “reasonable behavior” may themselves be heavily informed by the design of public infrastructure such as mass transportation systems, and the kinds of behavior that such systems tend to encourage in their users.

Taken together, the various entries in this volume provide a conspectus of emerging developments in behavioral economics from the perspective of the design professions; the ethical challenges and opportunities now facing choice architects of all kinds, including professional design practitioners seeking to apply the findings of recent behavioral research to concrete nudge initiatives; and some ways that the design field itself may prove to be a valuable resource for others currently working on nudge interventions, especially those with economic, legal, or psychology backgrounds who may not be familiar with current developments in design theory and practice. It is our hope that there is something of value here for members of all of these diverse groups, and that the articles collected in this volume can advance mutual understanding and thus aid in promoting both individual well-being, and more just societies, through design.

Letter from the Editors

15

A final note: like many a best-laid plan over the past eighteen months, the production schedule for this issue of our Journal was seriously impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and its many consequences both personal and institutional. We regret the long delay in the publication of the volume, and wish to express our sincere appreciation to our contributors for the great patience they have shown during the editorial process.

LAWRENCE MARCELLE and MATTHEW ROBB Guest Editors, The Journal of Design Strategies Volume 10

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

17

18

T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

THE DESIGN OF INFLUENCE

Letter from the Editors

19

BEHAVIORAL INSIGHTS IN ACTION: BEHAVIORAL CHANGE FOR GOOD Nina Mažar

I’d like to offer an overview of three recent large field experiments that I was 1

Nicole Robitaille, Nina

Mažar, Claire I. Tsai, Avery

involved with, and to describe the impact of this work. The specific contexts I will

M. Haviv, and Elizabeth

discuss involved organ donation and tax compliance, but the insights that drove

Hardy, “Increasing Organ

these experiments can be applied in various contexts, whether to help people pay

Donor Registrations with Behavioral Interventions:

off their credit card debt or to improve their academic performance, or even to eat

A Field Experiment,”

more healthfully. And although the experiments I will discuss involved governmen-

Journal of Marketing 85, no. 3: 168–183, journals.

tal outreach and communications with citizens, the takeaways are generalizable

sagepub.com/doi/full/

and suggest opportunities for the application of behavioral insights in private-sec-

10.1177/0022242921990070

tor environments as well.

2

Nicole Robitaille,

Julian House, Nina Mažar, “Effectiveness of Planning

The first experiment I will describe is an organ donation project I helped to

Prompts on Organizations’

conduct in Ontario, where we were targeting individual decision-makers—people

Likelihood to File Their

like you and me.1 The second concerns a project with the Canadian Ministry of

Overdue Taxes: A Multi‐ Wave Field Experiment,”

Finance, where we were trying to change the behavior of organizations. Behavioral

Management Science, Articles

insights are most typically applied to individual decision-making, but in this case

in Advance: 1–14, pubsonline.

we sought to target companies that were delinquent in paying their taxes.2 The

informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/ mnsc.2020.3744

third experiment is a project I helped to conduct under the auspices of the World Bank and executed in Poland, where we tried to get delinquent taxpayers to meet their outstanding tax obligations.3 Across these three projects, I collaborated with individuals from the University of Rochester, the federal government of Canada, the World Bank, the provincial government of Ontario, the University of Exeter, and the University of Toronto, my former institutional home.

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

As noted, the first project was aimed at increasing organ donor registrations in

3

Ontario. Why is that important? Because there is a serious need for donors. I

Marco Hernandez, Julian

Jamison, Ewa Korczyc, Nina

wasn’t really aware of this need before I started working on this issue, but recent

Mažar, and Roberto Sormani,

data from the US, for example, shows that there are currently over 100,000 indi-

“Applying Behavioral Insights to Improve Tax Collection:

viduals on a waitlist for an organ, and every ten minutes another name is added

Experimental Evidence from Poland,” World Bank,

to the list; on average, twenty of these individuals die every day while awaiting a 4

transplant. In Canada, meanwhile, the numbers are smaller in absolute terms due

Washington, D.C., © World Bank, openknowledge.world-

to its smaller population, but still high in relative terms: there are 4,400 people on

bank.org/handle/10986/

the waitlist, and several hundred deaths annually among people waiting for trans-

27528. License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.

plants.5 Moreover, this is a growing issue: the number of names on the waitlist

4

See donatelife.net.

has increased dramatically from 1991 to 2013, while the numbers of donors, and of

5

See organtissuedonation.

actual transplants, have not kept pace (see Figure 1).

ca.

140,000 121,272 120,000

NUMBER OF PEOPLE

100,000

80,000

60,000

40,000 28,954 20,000

1991

14,257

1993

1995

1997

1999

2001

2003

2005

2007

2009 2011

2013

YEAR END Waiting List

Transplants

Donors**

FIGURE 1: Organ donor rates, transplants, and persons needing a transplant in

the United States, 1991–2013. Source: Organ Transplantation and Procurement Network, US Department of Health and Human Services. Based on OTPN data as of January 1, 2014.

B EH AVIOR A L INSIG H T S IN AC T ION: B EH AVIOR A L CH A N G E F O R G O O D

21

Now the interesting thing is that survey data suggests that vast majorities of people in almost every country, including the US and Canada, support organ donation.

But the percentage of people actually registered as donors in these countries is generally much smaller. This divergence between intention and action is something that my research team thought we might be able to reduce using behavioral techniques. When approaching this project, we realized that this wasn’t about people not wanting to donate or not caring about donation. Rather, there seemed to be a disconnect between wanting to do it, on the one hand, and not following through with it, on the other.

The intention-action gap in organ donation has previously been examined. One of the most famous papers in behavioral science is by Eric J. Johnson and Daniel G. Goldstein. Published in 2003, this paper looked at countries in Europe and the percentage of people that consented to organ donation. Johnson and Goldstein discovered there was a striking disparity between countries, a bimodal distribution (see Figure 2). Countries such as Austria, Belgium, Sweden, France, and Poland have close to 100% of their population’s consent, while Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the UK have fairly low proportions. Why is there such a stark contrast between Germany and Austria, for example, two countries that share a common language and have similar political and social systems? Johnson and Goldstein found that a very particular design decision may have contributed to that difference. The design decision involves whether a person is automatically opted

99.98

100

98

99.91

99.997

99.5

99.64 85.9

90 80 70 60 50 40

27.5

30 20 10

17.17 12

4.25

Sweden

Portugal

Poland

Hungary

France

Belgium

Austria

Germany

United Kingdom

Netherlands

Denmark

0

FIGURE 2: Percentage of population consenting to organ donation in Europe.

Source: Eric J. Johnson and Daniel G. Goldstein, “Defaults and Donation Decisions,” Transplantation 78, no. 12: 1713–1716. Reprinted by permission of Wolters Kluwer Health.

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

in as an organ donor, with an option to opt out; or whether the default is to be a nondonor, with the ability to opt in. Their paper revealed that people typically don’t bother to check a box to opt in or out; in other words, in most cases the default option decides whether or not they will register as an organ donor.

The publication of Johnson and Goldstein’s article helped to stimulate discussions about whether to

People support organ donation, but

change national organ donor policies so that people

they don’t follow through when it comes

are automatically enrolled to become organ donors,

to signing up. Behavioral science may

especially in countries with an organ shortage.

help to close this gap between intention

The logical assumption was that people can simply

and action.

decline to participate in their national program if they do not wish to be organ donors. However, there are

several issues with this proposal. First, there is inconclusive evidence as to whether the opt-in/opt-out alternative really does impact the organ donation ecosystem.

Second, it costs quite a bit of time and money to change the whole system. But the biggest concern involves the ethics of the matter. Some citizens and governments oppose a default policy in which everybody is automatically registered as an organ donor because they consider it a violation of individual civil rights. Some fear that it would be difficult to inform all individuals of this shift, and that people with certain vulnerabilities might be at particular risk of not having the opportunity to make an informed decision. As a result of concerns like these, many countries, including Canada and the US, have not switched to a default organ donor policy, instead opting to use something called a “prompted choice” mechanism to solicit people to sign up as donors. Let’s assume you go to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), and you are asked if you would like to register your consent to be an organ and tissue donor. In that moment, you have to respond yes or no since you’re being actively asked—that is, prompted to choose. Even so, although prompted choice has helped increase overall organ donor registration rates in the countries making use of this mechanism, a significant gap still exists between stated intentions and actions.

When I was at the University of Toronto, several colleagues and I had the opportunity to work with the provincial government of Ontario to see if there was anything we could do to improve organ donor registration rates within the prompted choice context. At various governmental offices, people are already asked to respond yes or no to a question about whether they want to become donors. Was there any way we could apply behavioral insights there to increase the percentage of people saying yes to that question?

B EH AVIOR A L INSIG H T S IN AC T ION: B EH AVIOR A L CH A N G E F O R G O O D

23

6

These offices are similar

to an American DMV, but you

Members of the research team started by visiting a ServiceOntario center,6 as though we were in need of new driver’s licenses, to see how the system actually

can do many more things

works and to identify where there may be bottlenecks or other systemic hurdles.

there as well, such as get a

We saw that when people arrive at the ServiceOntario center, they are assigned a

new health card, a copy of your birth certificate, and so

waiting number from the registration desk. And then they wait and wait until they

on.

hear their number and can approach the service counter. You can imagine that at this point, most people simply want to complete the process they came for (such as filing an application for a new driver’s license) and get out of there. But at the very end of their interaction with the agent at the service counter, just when the visitors are finishing up their intended business, the agent asks the visitors if they want to register their consent to become an organ donor.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that this may not be the best time or place to be asked that question. You came for an entirely different purpose, and you’ve waited for a long time to be served. So being asked such an important and personal question at the very end of the visit may not be effective or even appropriate. The research team next looked at the organ donor registration form itself (see Figure 3). As you can see, there is some factual and contact information on the left-hand side, and a bit of marketing copy: “You can help to save a life by consenting to be an organ and tissue donor!” Then there are some policy items like minimum age, followed by more fine print. If you ultimately decide that you want to enroll in the program, then on the right-hand side, starting at the top, you fill out your date of birth, name, mailing address, and so on—your so-called tombstone data. At this point, you’re thinking, “Wait a second: I’m here at the service center. I’ve just gone through an official transaction with the state, so they already have all of my personal information. That I have to share it all again is a redundancy.” Finally, at the bottom of the form, visitors are invited to sign, indicating their consent.

Neither the process nor the form seem to be optimal. So my research team asked whether there might be ways to give individuals more time to consider this personally important question, and whether the design of the form itself might be modified so as to encourage greater registration rates. Again, we know that people have positive intentions and really support organ donation, but they don’t follow through when it comes to signing up. How could we motivate them to follow through?

In terms of giving people more time, we imagined what it might be like if you got the organ donor registration form at the beginning of the visit to the service center, when you first sign in and are assigned a waiting number. Since you’re waiting anyway, this would be a good time to actually look at the form. This simple alteration in the process was the first change we wanted to propose. Next we thought about

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

what we could do to improve the form. In particular, is it really necessary for people to re-enter their tombstone data if it’s already somewhere else in the system?

Indeed, we found that we could scrap most of the empty fields in the form. We also considered whether there was anything we could do to make the form more

FIGURE W1-1 Standard ServiceOntario Organ Donor Registration Form

8

FIGURE 3: The original ServiceOntario organ donor registration form.

Source: Nicole Robitaille et al., “Increasing Organ Donor Registrations with Behavioral Interventions: A Field Experiment.” Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications, Inc.

B EH AVIOR A L INSIG H T S IN AC T ION: B EH AVIOR A L CH A N G E F O R G O O D

25

visually appealing. With the personal data fields gone, the form as a whole could be smaller, and we decided we would print it on thicker paper so that people in the waiting room could actually fill it out while sitting down.

FIGURE W1-2 Simplified Experimental Organ Donor Registration Form

© Queen’s Printer for Ontario, 2014

9

FIGURE 4: Simplified organ donor registration form. Source: Nicole Robitaille

et al., “Increasing Organ Donor Registrations with Behavioral Interventions: A Field Experiment.” Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications, Inc.

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

Here is our simplified form (see Figure 4). You can see that it looks dramatically different: the form is smaller, and emphasizes the most important information with a larger font. We also added a color banner because we wanted to try a few different nudge statements and make them salient.

Having now simplified both the registration process and the form, we wanted finally to explore ways to increase people’s motivation, so they would follow through and act on their good intention to donate. What could we do? We had to operate within the limits set by the government and by the service center, so we wanted to come up with interventions that they could actually scale without substantially increasing their costs.

The service center has organ donor brochures available on self-serve stands. We thought it would be helpful if people received the brochure at the same time as the organ donor registration form, when they first enter the service center. Of course, the brochure is readily available already; you can just walk up and take one from a stand. But humans tend to be a bit lazy. Retrieving a brochure requires some effort, so why not hand it out to visitors when they show up the service center and take a waiting number?

As for the green banner on our new registration form, we used it to place different nudge statements, each of which sought to leverage people’s sense of altruism.

One of the nudge statements we tested had been successful when used in an online context in the UK. It is based on a concept called reciprocal altruism, and asked, “If you needed a transplant, would you have one?” This nudge was prominently displayed in that green bar in large and heavy font. Our assumption was that most people would say yes when they read that nudge question, and that if you say yes in your mind, you would be more willing to become a donor as well, given that the necessary organs obviously have to come from somewhere. We tried two more nudge statements in the green banner. One said, “How do you think people feel when they or someone they love needs a transplant and cannot get one?” And the third nudge statement asked the reader to put themselves in the situation of the recipient: “How would you feel if you or someone you love needed a transplant and couldn’t get one?”

Once we had these prototypes, we moved on to testing. As behavioral scientists, we usually design experiments where we can test different ideas and compare them against one another to see if they really make a difference. We found a large service center in Ontario with a demographically representative population, where we could measure the daily number of new donor registrations before, during, and after our experiment.

B EH AVIOR A L INSIG H T S IN AC T ION: B EH AVIOR A L CH A N G E F O R G O O D

27

The experiment comprised five different treatments. Each person that came into the center would receive only one of these treatments. We ran each treatment for three consecutive days before switching to the next. In the first treatment, visitors got the new simplified form along with their waiting number when they came into the center. Three days later, the people who came into the service center were given the simplified form plus the informational brochure. In the third treatment, three days after the second, they got our simplified form with a reciprocal altruism statement in the green banner that read, “If you needed a transplant, would you have one?” For the fourth treatment, the message in the banner was the one about imagining others’ predicaments. Finally, for the fifth treatment, the green banner message was the one asking readers to imagine themselves in such a predicament (see Figure 5).

At the end of the experiment, we looked at how many people had actually registered to become organ donors under each of these different treatments. This graph shows that the average daily registration rates at the ServiceOntario branch we worked with are about 3% (see Figure 6). The five gray bars in the middle represent the registration rates during each of the discrete treatments that we ran. The control group is the one that just received the simplified form. The bar labeled “information” denotes the group receiving the simplified form plus the brochure.

“Reciprocal altruism” is the simplified form plus the statement, “If you needed a transplant, would you have one?” And we see that this treatment almost doubled registration rates in comparison to our control group. This is a significant outcome: we were able to shift actual registration rates simply by making these small changes to the solicitation process and form.

The cost of conducting this experiment was relatively low, about CAD $3,000 to cover the printing of the new forms. Meanwhile, what does this change in the number of organ donor registrations mean? Based on these findings, if Ontario were to use our reciprocal altruism intervention in the way we tested it and everything else stayed constant, it would mean 225,000 additional new organ donor registrations annually in Ontario.

Every experiment has limitations, and this one is no exception. First, this was a very short experiment, since we had five different treatments to test, and each ran for only three days. Second, we got no social or demographic data on the participants in the study, so we cannot see whether certain interventions worked better for some groups than for others. Third, we don’t know if the effect on registrations will continue into the future, although the results by themselves were quite encouraging.

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

FIGURE W1-4 Reciprocal Altruism Condition

© Queen’s Printer for Ontario, 2014

FIGURE W1-5 Imagine Self Condition

© Queen’s Printer for Ontario, 2014

11

FIGURE 5: Third, fourth, and fifth treatments of the organ donation brochure.

Source: Nicole Robitaille et al., “Increasing Organ Donor Registrations with Behavioral Interventions: A Field Experiment.” Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications, Inc.

B EH AVIOR A L INSIG H T S IN AC T ION: B EH AVIOR A L CH A N G E F O R G O O D

29

FIGURE W1-6 Imagine Other Condition

© Queen’s Printer for Ontario, 2014

12

FIGURE 5 (CONT'D)

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

9% 8% 7% 6% 5% 4% 3% 2% 1%

3.0%

5.7%

4.1%

5.9%

7.4%

5.0%

4.9%

3.3%

3.3%

0% s

d ar

St

d an

es oc Pr

cc A

ol tr

n

io

at

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al

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t n t s en tio en es m a m roc i i e er lim er P in xp cc xp rd ag -E A -E da t t m I s s an Po Po St th

O

FIGURE 6: Average daily registration rates for organ donation. Source: Nicole

Robitaille et al., “Increasing Organ Donor Registrations with Behavioral nterventions: A Field Experiment.” Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications, Inc.

The second study that I want to discuss had to do with decreasing tax filing delinquency, again in Ontario, but this time with companies and other organizations.

And the reason why I want to present this study is because of the time limitations in the previous one, because of which we didn’t really know whether the impact of our intervention could last. In this second study, my research team had a rare and wonderful opportunity to run the same experiment in two consecutive years, giving us a chance to assess whether the effect of our nudges would wear off over time.

Effective funding of public services depends on taxes, and a key component of taxation involves minimizing collection costs. The traditional approach is to levy penalties and fines and to increase interest rates for people and companies who are not compliant in paying their taxes on time. We wanted to test a newer approach, applying insights from behavioral science in a field experiment involving organizations that were tax delinquent. It is interesting and important to know whether the kinds of nudges that have been developed and shown to work with individuals will also work for organizations. You could argue that of course they should work with organizations, because organizations’ actions are the result of individuals’ decisions and behaviors. However, organizations tend to use various cognitive support systems that reduce their reliance on the sorts of heuristics that can

B EH AVIOR A L INSIG H T S IN AC T ION: B EH AVIOR A L CH A N G E F O R G O O D

31

sometimes lead individual decision-making to less than optimal outcomes. Group decision-making is in many contexts more rational and strategic in comparison with the way that individual people make decisions. For example, morals play less of a role in group settings, especially when it comes to issues like tax evasion or delinquency. So the moral appeals that governments sometimes make to promote appropriate behaviors among individuals tend to be less effective when directed at corporate entities such as businesses. Our organizational tax experiment was carried out with the support of the Ministry of Finance in Ontario, which gave us the opportunity to help them message companies that were delinquent in paying their employee health taxes. This is a tax that has to be paid by almost all organizations in Ontario, depending on the number of employees they have. In total, there are about 83,000 firms that have to pay this tax annually in Ontario, and each year, about 8% fail to pay this tax in a timely fashion.

As with the ServiceOntario experiment, the corporate tax compliance experiment involved just a few simple modifications to the outreach and communications to the target organizations. In Canada, taxes for organizations are due March 15 and then marked overdue on April 21, at which point you get a late notice in the mail.

As soon as the payment becomes overdue, companies incur large penalties with compounding interest. On April 21 during the first year of our experiment, 40% of the delinquent companies were sent the standard letter that the government uses for this purpose, while the randomly selected remaining 60% were sent a modified letter that my research team had designed. We extracted our data on November 2 to see what had happened with regard to companies paying their taxes: how fast they paid and how much they paid. As mentioned, we ran this same experiment for two consecutive years.

Figure 7 shows the simple intervention the research team developed for this experiment. On the left is the standard letter that organizations normally get. You can see that it indicates the government has not received the organization’s employer annual health tax return, with all relevant information following. Typically a flyer also accompanies the letter, with more detail about how to file. Our version of the letter is on the right. Similar to the ServiceOntario experiment, we didn’t really change the content, just moved things around so companies could more easily seen by when, where, and how they needed to act. We also simplified the language a bit and added a key deadline of May 2, after which the government escalates its collection efforts. We also incorporated a so-called planning prompt in the letter, providing very specific alternative ways for the organizations to file their taxes, whether by regular mail, in person, or online (see Figure 7).

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CONTROL LETTER

EXPERIMENTAL LETTER

FIGURE 7: Control and experimental letter templates for employer health tax

collection in Ontario. Source: Nicole Robitaille, Julian House, Nina Mažar, “Effectiveness of Planning Prompts on Organizations’ Likelihood to File Their Overdue Taxes: A Multi Wave Field Experiment.” Reproduced under Creative Commons license.

If you’re delinquent in your taxes, whether as an individual or as a company, you should really pay immediately because every single day adds to the interest penalty.

So in theory, including the May 2 deadline in our letter could have backfired, by subtly encouraging people to postpone filing until that deadline, despite the accruing penalties. And telling companies where and how to file is really not needed, since they have that information on the second page of the standard letter or in the flyer that comes with it. More importantly, almost every company that is delinquent has had previous filing experience (97% of our delinquent organizations in year one and 99. 9% in year two had previous filing experience), so it’s not as if paying this tax is something entirely new or unexpected for these organizations.

Nevertheless, since we know that planning prompts such as those incorporated into our experimental letter can help individual people to meet their own commitments by breaking a task down into concrete steps, we wanted to test the effectiveness of this type of intervention in an organizational context.

B EH AVIOR A L INSIG H T S IN AC T ION: B EH AVIOR A L CH A N G E F O R G O O D

33

The results of this experiment were broadly positive. Figure 8 shows the percentage of late-filing organizations that eventually did file their annual return on the Y axis, and the number of days after the late notice letter was sent on the X axis. The solid gray line represents the behavior of organizations that received the standard letter sent by the government, while the dashed line represents what happened with the organizations that received our redesigned letter. You can see that putting in the May 2 deadline really made a difference, encouraging more companies to pay by that date. Indeed, the graph shows that nine days after the late notice was sent, there was a significant difference in the percentage of organizations that filed having received our letter versus the standard letter. And that difference stays significant almost 77 days after the late notice letter has been sent. So, across 11 weeks, we see that our experimental letter performed better in comparison to the standard letter, with organizations filing about 4. 4 days earlier on average (see Figure 8).

N.S.

N.S. N.S.

N.S.

N.S.

*

*

N.S. N.S. N.S. N.S. N.S. N.S. N.S.

151

*

*

N.S. N.S.

145

*

80%

*

73

90%

67

Percent of Organizations Filing Annual EHT Return

100% N.S.

* **

70%

***

60%

****

50% **** 40%

30%

****

20%

10%

N.S.

187

193

175

181

169

157

163

139

127

133

115

121

109

97

91

103

85

79

55

61

49

37

43

31

19

25

7

13

1

0%

Days After Late-Notice Letter Posted Experimental Letter

Control Letter

Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals calculated each weekend when there was little to no processing of returns. N. S., p > 0. 05; *p < 0. 05; **p < 0. 01; ***p < 0. 001.

FIGURE 8: Comparative impact of control and experimental late-notice letters

on timing of organizational tax filing in Ontario, 2013 tax year. Source: Nicole Robitaille, Julian House, Nina Mažar, “Effectiveness of Planning Prompts on Organizations’ Likelihood to File Their Overdue Taxes: A Multi Wave Field Experiment.” Reproduced under Creative Commons license.

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As I mentioned, we ran this experiment for two consecutive years. In the second year, the overall results looked almost the same as they did for the first year, in fact even a bit better. This was a surprising result, especially given that the intervention was rather small in scale. Moreover, a few organizations were delinquent in both years, allowing us to see whether the effectiveness of our modified letter decreased on a second exposure. Here too we set up a simple control mechanism: if companies were delinquent in two consecutive years, we arranged for them to receive either our new letter twice; the standard letter twice; our letter first and then the standard letter; or the standard letter first and then ours. When we compared these four groups, we found that organizations did not become less sensitive to our new letter even if they received it in two consecutive years: its effectiveness did not diminish. This is an important finding.

As with the organ donor experiment, there were virtually no new implementation costs here because a letter had to be printed in any case. And what was the impact?

Extrapolating from the data that our experiment generated, if all the delinquent organizations had received our simplified tax collection letter while other conditions remained constant, the Ontario government would have received about half a million Canadian dollars in additional tax revenues, while saving about $10,000 in collection costs, in a given year.

The major limitation in this second experiment is that we cannot disentangle the individual contributions of the several simultaneous changes that the research group made to the letter. We also don’t know whether other interventions might yield even better results. But those are some of the predictable limits that you run into when you want to test something. In particular, there are practical limits to how many interventions you can run at one time, while still leaving big enough sample sizes for meaningful statistical analysis.

This scale-based limitation was largely overcome in the final experiment I’d like to discuss, this one involving the entire country of Poland. Once again the context was tax compliance, but the research team’s focus was on individuals who were late in paying their taxes, not organizations. Because of the large scale of a national experiment, we were able to try a variety of different nudges, some of which had been successfully deployed in other countries, and compare them against one another.

The relevant population comprised about 150,000 individual taxpayers who had declared their personal income tax, but failed to pay their taxes owed, making them targets of the government’s outreach strategy. Again, we were able to redesign the Polish tax authority’s standard letter and to randomly assign individual taxpayers to receive one of our redesigned prototype letters. Given the large sample size, we were also able to control for the demographic categories and total amounts owed

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35

across the various delinquent groups, ensuring the general representativeness of each group to receive a particular letter in the course of our experiment.

In Poland, taxes are due on April 30, and late notice letters are mailed out starting on May 23. During our experiment, late payers randomly received one of several versions of the late-notice letter, described below. We extracted the data in June, July, and August, recording the percentage of delinquent individuals who ultimately paid their taxes and total outstanding taxes paid.

In Figure 9, you can see that we tested a lot of different things in this experiment.

On the far left is the control group that received the dunning letter, that is, the typical letter that the government sends to delinquent taxpayers. We designed a “behavioral baseline” letter, simplifying the government’s standard dunning letter.

Then we developed a series of nudge statements that we either knew had been used in other contexts, or where previous lab experiments seemed to suggest that they could change people’s behavior (see Figure 9).

Testing the Content of the Letters

Testing the Delivery Method

Late Payers (n=149,925)

Control

Regular mail

Group

Behavioral

Dunning

Baseline

Social Norm

(6,091)

(15,474)

Letter

Deterrence +

Public Good

Public Good

Positive

Negative

Deterrence

(15,424)

(15,350)

(15,442)

(6,091)

Registered mail

Execution Order (15,292)

Omission (15,249)

Omission + Deterrance

Omission Taxpayer Perspective

(15,238)

(15,261)

Dunning Letter

Source: Data from the Polish authorities.

I This trial built on lessons from a pilot experiment in 2015, when the World Bank and the UK Behavioural Insights Team supported the authorities in designing and conducting a trial in two regions, Lubuskie and Wielkopolskie, which compared the results from one behavioralletter with those from the dunning letter.

FIGURE 9: Experimental approaches in tax collection nudges. Source: Marco Hernandez

et al., “Applying Behavioral Insights to Improve Tax Collection: Experimental Evidence from Poland.” © World Bank. License: CC BY 3. 0 IGO.

The Polish government usually sends these late notices via registered mail, which is much more expensive than regular mail. So to begin our experiment, we arranged for half of the control group to receive the standard dunning letter via regular mail, and half to receive the letter via registered mail, just to see whether the delivery

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

method makes a difference. Then we turned our attention to the letter itself. Figure 10 shows the Polish government’s standard letter. It’s not visually appealing. There

ANNEX 7.

is a table that makes it look very complex, and a second page that looks even more CONTROL LETTERS AND EXPERIMENT LETTER VARIANTS complex, with a lot of difficult language (see Figure 10).

REGISTERED Dunning Letter – ENGLISH translation

APPLYING BEHAVIORAL INSIGHTS TO IMPROVE TAX COLLECTION 38 FIGURE 10: Standard letter for late tax collection in Poland. Source: Marco

Hernandez et al., “Applying Behavioral Insights to Improve Tax Collection: Experimental Evidence from Poland.” © World Bank. License: CC BY 3. 0 IGO.

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37

My research team asked how we could capture all the essential information in a simpler, more readable document. Once again, in developing our behavioral baseline letter, we didn’t really change much of the content; we moved things that didn’t fit well on the first page to the second page, and used simpler language and shorter sentences. Then, from that baseline, we produced several variations, with small edits incorporating one of the nudge statements we had developed. There were three “soft tone” letters. One of them focused on social norms: we conveyed real statistics adjusted for the taxpayer’s region, noting for example that eight out of ten residents in the region had already paid their income tax, thus the delinquent taxpayers were part of a minority whose members had not yet fulfilled their civic duty. Social norms have been successfully invoked to improve tax compliance in the UK, in Guatemala and in other countries. So this type of nudge statement was a no-brainer to try, because it was often the strongest type implemented elsewhere.

Other countries have also tried “public good” messages, pointing out what is being financed with the taxes in either a positive frame or negative frame. The positive frame would involve a statement like, “Are you aware that 38% of your personal income tax goes to your municipality? From this income, your municipality finances preschools, schools, roads, and safety, benefiting everyone in your municipality, including yourself and your family. Don’t be an irresponsible inhabitant of your municipality: pay your delinquent taxes.” The negative frame public good message would emphasize that “without tax revenues, your municipality cannot finance such-and-such important governmental functions or initiatives, damaging everyone in your municipality, including yourself and your family.”

The Polish government also asked us to develop some “hard tone” letters, with content like: “Not paying taxes places an unfair burden on others. We are therefore determined, more than ever, to collect taxes from those who avoid paying them. As part of the execution procedures, we can, for example, block your bank accounts, garnish your wages, and in addition, you will have to cover all execution expenses that arise, etc.”—all of which is true. We deployed some of these hard tone messages with an attached form representing the next stages in the collection process, so people could see how complicated things could become as they would be required to share detailed information about their income, bank accounts, other assets, and so on. In another slightly softer version, we wrote that “So far, we have considered your payment delay to be accidental. However, if you disregard this notice, we will consider it an intentional choice of yours and think of you as a dishonest taxpayer.” We also created a version of the hard-tone letter incorporating an “omission” statement from a taxpayer perspective, saying, “So far, your payment delay may have been accidental. However, if you disregard this notice, you should consider it an intentional choice of yours and think of yourself as a dishonest taxpayer.”

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

The results of this experiment yielded five big takeaways. First of all, delivery by regular mail works just

The research team’s behavioral

as well as the more expensive registered mail. When

messages significantly improved tax

we look at the percentage of taxpayers who paid their

compliance in comparison with the

income tax upon receiving a letter, there’s no signifi-

standard letter that the government has

cant difference: it’s about 40%, regardless of whether they got the standard letter via regular mail or via

traditionally sent.

registered mail. That was good for the government to know because they can save money by simply sending these letters in the usual way. Second, all of the behavioral messages significantly improve tax compliance in comparison with the standard letter that the government has traditionally sent.

When we look at our worst-performing behavioral letter, which was the public good with a negative frame, it still delivered a nearly 7% increase in payment rates in comparison to the government’s standard letter. But when we look at the best performer, which was the omission-plus-deterrence statement, there was a 20. 8% increase in payment rates. The results look similar when we consider the amount that people paid. Here, the worst performer was actually the public good letter with a positive frame, but it still yielded a 10% increase in the amount that people paid compared to the standard letter, while the omission-plus-deterrence letter delivered a 30. 8% increase. Third, we learned that hard-tone messages are significantly more effective than soft-tone messages. This finding is shown in Figure 11, in which the performance of the government’s standard dunning letter is represented by the orange bar on the far left; this graph shows that our research group’s softtone messages yielded about a 9% increase in payment rates in comparison with the standard letter, while the hard-tone messages increased payment rates by twice as much as the soft-tone messages. This was a surprising result, particularly considering that the social norm soft-tone message was one of the most successful in the UK and Guatemala. We see here that the social norm message did well enough, but not nearly as well as any of the hard-tone messages. The results are similar when we look at the amounts paid (see Figure 11).

Our fourth takeaway was that some messages work better with certain taxpayers than with others. Here we had the ability to look at differences by subgroup and, for example, found that the deterrence messages work much better for parents, whereas the public good messages increased compliance among younger people, while decreasing compliance among older people. Another interesting finding was that public good messages were much more effective in rural areas. The exact reasons for these disparate results are unclear. Perhaps the choice of public goods that we highlighted was a contributing factor. We have a few other ideas, and are actually in the process of running some follow-up studies to better understand these results. Finally, we discovered that some of our behavioral messages performed

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39

significantly worse than our behavioral baseline letter (the one lacking any nudge statement). While all our behavioral letters were better than the government’s standard dunning letter, our behavioral baseline letter performed significantly better than those incorporating one of the soft-tone messages. Again, this result is puzzling, given that social norms (a soft-tone nudge) have worked so well in other countries.

In terms of impact, our findings indicate that, if everybody had gotten our best performing letter (omission plus deterrence) this would have yielded $10 million in additional taxes collected at 40% reduced cost. As for limitations, as mentioned, we don’t know why the soft-tone letters performed worse in this context than our behavioral baseline, what psychological processes or phenomena were manifested in the context of this particular experiment. These uncertainties suggest directions for further research.

48

***

***

46

***

44

‡‡

42 40 38 36

‡‡ 40.2

43.8

46.3

46.9

Control group (dunning letter)

Soft-tone behavioral

Standard behavioral

Hard-tone behavioral

Source: Ministry of Finance data.

Notes: Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals. Stars indicate a significant difference from the control group (dunning letter) – *=0.1, **=0.05, ***=0.01; daggers indicate a significant difference from the standard behavioral letter – †=0.1, ‡=0.05, ‡‡=0.01.

FIGURE 11: Tax payment rates by letter tone. Source: Marco Hernandez et al.,

“Applying Behavioral Insights to Improve Tax Collection: Experimental Evidence from Poland,” © World Bank. License: CC BY 3. 0 IGO.

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

Behavioral science contains enormous power to elicit needed outcomes, without imposing on the freedom of individuals, requiring the passage of new legislation, or increasing implementation costs.

Through this overview, I hope to have shown that behavioral science contains enormous power to elicit needed outcomes, without imposing on the freedom of individuals, requiring the passage of new legislation, or increasing implementation costs. I also wanted to point out that in many contexts there may be various different ways to improve outcomes, but that sometimes it’s hard to know which way is optimal, because testing all the possibilities is not feasible. How reliable are our measures? Will our measures work differently on different groups of people?

Is it realistic for a company to scale what we have tested? Do we know whether the observed effects will last? Finally, it is critical to be aware of the ethical dimension of applying behavioral science insights in the field. In particular, when we give advice to governments or to companies, we need to think about whether there could be any unintended consequences. Considerations like these show why it’s always important to have interdisciplinary teams involved from the beginning of a nudge-based research and implementation program, with design, legal, IT, and marketing and communications personnel all contributing to help figure out what direction is the most viable, achieving the greatest leverage at the lowest cost, and all while observing basic ethical and political values of the communities where the teams are operating.

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WICKED BEHAVIORAL PROBLEMS Ruth Schmidt and Sarah Reid

In their 1973 paper “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” Horst Rittel and 1

Horst W. J. Rittel and

Melvin M. Webber, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” Policy Sciences 4, no. 2 (1973): 161–167.

Melvin Webber articulated a set of principles that characterized what they called wicked problems.1 These complex challenges—in areas such as public health, poverty, and other thorny societal issues—defy hypothesis-driven problem-solving due to a shared set of attributes:

Multiple perspectives Wicked problems tend to involve multiple stakeholders with different and often competing perspectives, interests, and expectations. Healthcare, for example, requires addressing the needs of patients and clinicians, but also those of families, nurses, administrative staff, caregivers, and specialists, as well as hospitals, insurance companies, and other system entities. This diverse range of stakeholders means that definitions of “value” may be fundamentally different depending on whom you ask, and solutions typically fall on a spectrum from better to worse, in lieu of a single fixed outcome that is quantifiably the best and most appropriate.

Interconnectedness Because wicked problems lack clean boundaries and resist being broken down into smaller component parts, attempting to solve problems piecemeal can create tensions elsewhere in the system. Employment, for example, may initially seem like a straightforward supply-demand equation, but its fundamental connections to education, transportation, housing, and even geographical location—and how these issues impact cost of living, quality of life, access, and equity—are impossible to tease apart or address in isolation.

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

Uncertainty Wicked problems tend to entail a variety of dynamic and emergent factors, making

2

John Camillus, “Strategy

as a Wicked Problem,” Harvard

it difficult to calculate likelihoods or gauge tradeoffs between different possible

Business Review (May 2008).

courses of action. Solutions for food insecurity, for example, must be respon-

3

sive to fluctuations in weather conditions, energy costs, farming subsidies, and

“Wicked Problems in Design

trade tariffs, all of which defy expectations or historical patterns. Uncertainty also heightens the potential for unintended consequences, in which the eventual

Richard Buchanan,

Thinking,” Design Issues 8, no. 2 (Spring 1992): 5–21, doi. org/10.2307/1511637.

outcome of a solution subverts its original intent or its impact affects stakeholders beyond the target group.

Uniqueness Without historical data or reference points, wicked problems thwart our natural inclination to seek comparable situations to guide problem-solving. Even if we do successfully resolve a particular issue, the highly contextual nature of solutions means that our ability to scale them is limited at best. Addressing poverty in one context is likely to rely so heavily on the particulars of the local environment, stakeholders, and values that it would be impossible to apply an identical approach in a different situation.

Lack of testability Without benchmark data, agreed-upon criteria for success, or the ability to test component parts, we cannot confidently trace the causality of solutions to wicked problems in any meaningful way. Yet at the same time, implementation carries enormous responsibility and ethical weight; given the likely cost and complexity of solutions, having a do-over is simply not possible.

What unifies wicked problems is that they are challenges within complex adaptive systems, where not only potential solutions, but the problems themselves, are difficult to fully or crisply articulate. Although they can occur in various domains, even in business strategy,2 wicked problems also frequently bear on public policy.

Helping people navigate their health, for example, is a complex problem connected to finances, food, and equitable access to services, all of which are deeply influenced by both public policy and commercial industries like hospitals, health clubs, insurance plans, pharmacies, and grocery stores.

Largely due to their interconnectedness, and the plurality of perspectives they typically exemplify, these challenges are very human. Not surprisingly, then, human-centered design, with its roots in futures- and systems-oriented problem-solving and comfort with ambiguity, has historically been identified or recommended as a source of constructive approaches to wicked problems.3 But in recent years, another more nascent discipline that also seeks to understand and solve for humans—behavioral economics—has entered the fray.

W ICKED B EH AVIO R A L PRO B LEM S

43

FROM “GETTING THE IDEA RIGHT” TO “GETTING THE 4

Herbert Simon, “A

Behavioral Model of Rational

RIGHT IDEA”

Choice,” in Models of

The field of behavioral economics grew from the recognition that people often

Man, Social and Rational:

make decisions on the basis of inaccurate probabilistic reasoning, that their imme-

Mathematical Essays on Rational Human Behavior in

diate environments can influence decision-making more than general appeals to

a Social Setting (New York:

their own best interests, and that they are subject to a variety of cognitive biases,

Wiley, 1957), 198.

5

Adam Biran et al.,

Wolf-Peter Schmidt, Kiruba

most notably under circumstances of perceived uncertainty and risk. Experiments across different populations and contexts demonstrate the myriad ways in which

Varadharajan, Divya

the homo economicus rational choice model of decision-making insufficiently reflects

Rajaraman, Raja Kumar, Katie

what Herbert Simon referred to as the “boundedness” of human judgment, choice,

Greenland, BTech Gopalan, Robert Aunger, and Val Curtis,

and action.4

“Effect of a behaviour-change intervention on handwashing with soap in India

With its insight into human behavioral tendencies and demonstrable success in

(SuperAmma): a cluster-ran-

public policy settings, the field clearly has much to contribute to wicked challenges.

domised trial,” The Lancet

From encouraging handwashing habits in India,5 to increasing hiring and retention

Global Health 2, no. 3, (2014): e145–e154, doi.org/10.1016/ S2214-109X(13)70160-8.

of women and minoritized individuals in the workplace,6 to “greening” agricultural policy,7 applied behavioral economics (increasingly referred to as “behavioral

Iris Bohnet, What

design”) has already helped address some aspects of these knotty problems by

Works: Gender Equality by

focusing on adjustments to users’ “choice architecture” that encourage—but,

6

Design (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016).

7

Fabian Thomas et al.,

importantly, don’t force—more desirable behaviors. These empirically grounded and relatively low-cost mechanisms to influence citizen behavior have contributed

Estelle Midler, Marianne

to hundreds of effective nudges and interventions across the globe, primarily tar-

Lefebvre and Stefanie Engel,

geting well-defined and discrete behavior change across areas as diverse as organ

“Greening the common agricultural policy: a behavioural perspective and lab-in-the-field experiment in Germany,” European Review

donation, voter registration, medication adherence, hiring practices, financial counseling, and equitable healthcare for women and people of color.8 Recently, there has also been a swell of interest in having behavioral economics play more of

of Agricultural Economics 46,

an upstream role, informing new policy in addition to improving the adoption or

no. 3 (July 2019): 367–392, doi.

implementation of existing policies.9 To accomplish this, new and more expan-

org/10.1093/erae/jbz014.

8

OECD, Behavioural

Insights and Public Policy:

sive approaches have already been recommended in a variety of contexts, such as focusing on better diagnoses of behavioral issues,10 or “snowballing” individual

Lessons from Around the

applications by taking a portfolio view to interventions rather than designing and

World (Paris: OECD Publishing,

implementing them in relative isolation, in order to address large and complex

2017), doi.org/10.1787/ 9789264270480-en.

systems-level shifts.11

While a focus on behavior change has yielded positive results in many settings, it also tends to prioritize the most visible and behaviorally explicit aspects of a problem.

44

T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

Yet simply extending the field’s current mindset and methodology to address these larger challenges may not be sufficient. While a focus on behavior change has yielded

9

Michael Sanders,

Veerle Snijders, and Michael

positive results in many settings, it also tends to prioritize the most visible and behav-

Hallsworth, “Behavioural

iorally explicit aspects of a problem. This can come at the expense of achieving larger

science and policy: where

system goals or addressing less apparent root causes of behavior, and may also inadvertently presume that documented behavioral tendencies are equivalently expressed 12

across cultures, when instead they may vary across groups.

are we now and where are we going?” Behavioural Public Policy 2, no. 2, (November 2018): 163; George Loewenstein and Nick Chater, “Putting nudges

As currently practiced, for example, behavioral design tends to focus on increasing the number of organ donors rather than ensuring that organs are successfully acquired and transplanted, or on making the act of voting easier for some rather than addressing the fact that in the US, ancillary factors such as disparities in access to

in perspective,” Behavioural Public Policy 1, no. 1, (May 2017): 28; Richard Thaler, “Much Ado About Nudging,” Behavioral Public Policy—Blog, bppblog.com/2017/06/02/

polling places, onerous registration processes, and gerrymandering systematically

much-ado-about-nudging.

disenfranchise certain populations. Increasing participation in a flawed system is not

10

a substitute for fixing it.13

“What Are We Forgetting?”

Pelle Guldborg Hansen,

Behavioural Public Policy 2, no. 2, (November 2018): 193.

Ironically, then, as behavioral economics’ conceptual lens, tools, and methods have become increasingly optimized for formulating “think small” process improvement interventions, it may also have become almost perversely ill-suited to tackle the more systems- and futures-oriented challenges that wicked problems pose. At worst, its

11

Nathalie Spencer,

“Complexity as an opportunity and challenge for behavioural public policy,” Behavioural Public Policy 2, no. 2

strong adherence to the scientific method may have rendered it incapable of adopting

(November 2018): 229.

the more open-ended forms of inquiry that are necessary to tackle highly ambigu-

12

ous problems. Because we cannot force wicked problems to conform to behavioral

al., Chatterjee Promothesh,

economics’ mode of problem-solving, but also recognize the field’s proven value to human public policy challenges across a range of geographies and areas of focus,14 we must instead explore how it might be augmented by other methodologies.

Pronobesh Banerjee et

Sanjay Mishra, and Anubhav A. Mishra, “Loss Is A Loss, Why Categorize It? Mental Accounting Across Cultures,” Journal of Consumer Behavior 18, no. 2 (March/April 2019):

As a discipline with complementary strengths, the field of design is a strong con-

78.

tender. Design’s integration of trend analyses and weak signals with user insights

13

and a strong systems orientation make it a natural fit for envisioning and construct-

Design, Revised and Updated:

ing plausible, human-centered solutions and alternative futures. Yet design also needs behavioral economics: well-crafted future scenarios risk remaining merely smart on paper if they underspecify the social, psychological, and cognitive constraints that might lead users to dismiss or avoid potential solutions. Behavioral science’s identification of “evergreen” tendencies and predictable foibles of human cognitive processing, demonstrated through replicable lab experiments, offer time-

Tim Brown, Change by

How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation (New York: HarperCollins, 2019), 252-257.

14

OECD, Behavioural

Insights and Public Policy: Lessons from Around the World.

and space-agnostic insights about human behavior that can de-risk these scenarios and narratives developed through design-led innovation processes. Without behavioral insights to augment designers’ concrete knowledge of the here and now and to ground innovative ideas in how people actually think and act, rather than what they say they want to do, design faces its own kind of “last mile” problem.

W ICKED B EH AVIO R A L PRO B LEM S

45

15

Nina Mažar, “Behavioral

Economics: Ethics and

We need a new conception of behavioral design—neither

Integrative Thinking,” in A.

behavioral science (+ sticky notes and empathy) nor design (+

Samson, ed., The Behavioral Economics Guide 2019: 7–10,

nudges), but one that elegantly incorporates elements of both

behavioraleconomics.com;

disciplines.

Spencer, “Complexity as an opportunity and challenge.”

16

Sarah Reid and Ruth

Schmidt, “A new model for

Calls for an integrative approach to complex problems15 and models describing

integrating behavioral science

a new problem space for design and behavioral science16 have begun to gain

and design,” Behavioral

traction, but a true hybrid discipline has yet to be fully articulated. How might we

Scientist Special Issue: Nudge at 10 (September

integrate insights from behavioral science with a more generative, design-oriented

2018), behavioralscientist.

mode of identifying, framing, and solving for wicked challenges? Accomplishing

org/a-new-model-for-in-

this will require a fundamental shift in perspective: from “getting the idea right,”

tegrating-behavioral-science-and-design.

or optimizing for known solutions in a stable system, to “getting the right idea,” by focusing more on the effective framing of problems before we even begin to solve for them, including questioning what counts as a problem in the first place.

We suggest that this new conception of behavioral design—neither behavioral science (+ sticky notes and empathy) nor design (+ nudges), but one that elegantly incorporates elements of both disciplines—will require three radical recenterings and extensions: 1.

Moving beyond “behavioral change” to embed behavioral insight into a wider set of human-centered challenges

2.

Decoupling insights into human behavioral tendencies, obtained through behavioral science lab experiments, from the mode of inquiry used to identify and solve problems, and in which those insights have traditionally been applied

3.

Using behavioral insights to inform and generate new, plausible approaches to complex adaptive systems problems, rather than as a filter to identify situations to which known findings apply

WHERE THERE ARE PEOPLE, THERE IS BEHAVIOR While even modest behavioral change can be a powerful tool, especially when applied at scale, the narrow conception of behavior defined in terms of change—I used to do [X], now I do [Y]—represents only a fraction of the situations that can benefit from insight into how people perceive, select, and act on choices. Consider these cases, where the addition of a behavioral lens can improve smart-on-paper ideas or enhance new offerings:

46

T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

•

In situations where accessing information or services online requires creating a new username and password, many people may decide to pass because the

Elizabeth Bruch and Fred

Feinberg, “Decision-Making

perceived burden of remembering outweighs the perceived value of the content.

Processes in Social Contexts,”

This is not behavior change per se, but insights into human judgment and deci-

Annual Review of Sociology 43

sion-making under uncertainty are certainly relevant.

•

17

(July 2017): 208.

Disneyland’s masterful command of experience design and its ability to delight customers has little to do with behavioral change in the traditional sense. Yet a range of behavioral principles are in play in the form of hyperbolic discounting through prepaying for tickets, peppering “dead time” with entertaining diversions to nullify “peak-end rule” effects, and the use of anchoring and mental accounting to make high prices seem reasonably normal.

Shifting from a mode of designing for behavior change to designing with behavior in mind invites us to apply our knowledge of enduring human tendencies to a much broader suite of design challenges, where human behavior is integral to effective solutions, but not the sole focus. Wicked problems, with their high levels of ambiguity, force us to focus

Wicked problems, with their high levels

on the necessary tradeoffs and consequences of any

of ambiguity, force us to focus on the

proposed solution; this sits in stark contrast with behavioral change challenges, in which solutions are conceived and intended primarily to correct for deviations from a presumed optimal choice.17 Broadening the nature of behavioral design has implications for how we see and define the problems we’re trying

necessary tradeoffs and consequences of any proposed solution; this sits in stark contrast with behavioral change challenges, in which solutions are conceived and intended primarily to

to address, and which challenges we invite under

correct for deviations from a presumed

the tent, but also how we solve for them. While

optimal choice.

behavioral change has proven to be a valuable tool in addressing smaller individual components of wicked problems, we will benefit from embracing a more expansive conception of how and where to apply behavioral insight if we’re to grapple with the complex nature of larger systems problems.

BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS INSIGHTS AS A FREE AGENT Proponents of behavioral economics have long touted the importance of empirical lab experiments to identify and demonstrate humans’ “irrational” tendencies, and valorized randomized control trials (RCTs) as the gold standard for evaluating an intervention’s success. Over time, this reliance on experimental results to inform hypothesis-driven solutions, and on RCTs to test their effectiveness, has become synonymous with the term “behavioral design.” As a result, the insights into human behavioral tendencies that have been generated by experiments have essentially become conceptually fused with the mode of problem-solving inquiry in which they

W ICKED B EH AVIO R A L PRO B LEM S

47

18

Sara B. Heller et al., Anuj

K. Shah, Jonathan Guryan,

have been popularized. This implicit association has helped to establish a scientific mindset and methodology as the yardstick for solving behaviorally-oriented prob-

Jens Ludwig, et al., “Thinking,

lems—yet the very nature of wicked problems is stubbornly resistant to the linear

Fast and Slow? Some Field

and operationally-minded structure of hypothesis-driven, scientific method-based

Experiments to Reduce Crime and Dropout in Chicago,”

problem solving.

(NBER Working Paper No. 21178, 2016): 4.

The good news is that this association is more methodological habit than rule of law. We can decide to consciously decouple behavioral insights themselves—the knowledge of behavioral biases and heuristics that influence how people perceive information and make decisions—from behavioral design’s hypothesis-driven mode of inquiry, or the scientific method in which those insights have most often been applied. This enables us to take full advantage of the bevy of lab-generated behavioral insights but also to attain freedom in how, what, and where we apply them.

GENERATIVE APPROACHES AND OUTCOMES Youth violence is a well-known issue in certain south and west side Chicago neighborhoods. Inextricably linked with issues of poverty, education, employment, and racial inequity, it is a classic wicked problem. Young men are particularly at risk. In the absence of role models or guidance to help manage impulsive behavior, minor conflicts can escalate quickly and lead to severe, even fatal, consequences.

The youth guidance program “Becoming a Man” was created to help curb violence spurred by a lack of impulse control in the heat of the moment. Participants learn self-modulating techniques that insert “positive friction,” and practice their ability to recognize and moderate the triggers that might otherwise cause them to respond aggressively. The techniques have been shown to cut violent-crime arrests in some target populations by 50%, while also increasing high school graduation rates by nearly 20%.18 Clearly, the program has had a significant positive impact on changing behavior, yet it was not developed directly from behavioral science lab findings and is hardly a typical output of the behavioral design process.

As discussed previously, behavioral design focuses almost exclusively on implementing evidence-driven interventions that have a high likelihood of achieving a desired behavioral change. Wicked problems, by contrast, often benefit from new and exploratory generative thinking, leveraging known data in oblique ways to arrive at heretofore untested, but sometimes revelatory, approaches. Focusing only on known approaches, however impactful, can inadvertently limit our problem-solving scope, reducing our ability to explore and develop novel and unproven, but potentially highly effective, solutions.

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

This more generative application of behavioral insight is not entirely new, and companies are increasingly applying behavioral insights in the development of

19

Noam Scheiber, “How

Uber Uses Psychological

innovative business offerings or business models. Rental insurance offered by the

Tricks to Push Its Drivers’

company Lemonade, for example, uses behavioral economics more generatively

Buttons,” The New York Times,

to harness the power of social norms, perceptions of reciprocity and honesty, loss aversion, and anchoring. When claims are submitted, for example, the app applies many known levers that are likely to keep people from falsifying or inflating their information, such as asking claimants to declare their loss in the first person singular, employing a chat feature to personalize the face of the company and elicit a familiar mental model of texting with friends, and requiring both a signature and recorded video statement to declare their loss. Uber has also applied behavioral

April 2, 2017, nytimes.com/ interactive/2017/04/02/ technology/uber-drivers-psychological-tricks.html.

20 Marianne Bertrand, Sendhil Mullainathan, and Eldar Shafir, “Behavioral Economics and Marketing in Aid of Decision Making Among the Poor,” Journal of

insights to their user experience through mutual ratings systems, reducing the

Public Policy and Marketing

uncertainty of car availability and location and simplifying payments with linked

25, no.1 (Spring 2006): 9–10.

credit cards that not only obviate the need to calculate a tip or pay at the moment, but also create a perception that the ride is essentially free. In doing so, they have reshaped expectations around getting from point A to point B, but at a cost: from the driver’s perspective, these behavioral prompts can create perverse incentives to accept rides and flock to suggested locations that benefit the company more than the driver.19 Applying an understanding of human behavior to address the root causes of wicked problems will require a similar sensibility, balancing knowledge of what works with ethical considerations to ensure that behavioral design is used for good, not for evil.

IMPLICATIONS FOR A HYBRID FIELD Embracing our three recommended extensions has the potential to reposition behavioral design from a reactive discipline, correcting for biases and bottlenecks that are already occurring, to a proactive one located further upstream, which reframes what we’re even solving for and informs policy development. This

We have the potential to reposition

shift contains several important methodological

behavioral design from a reactive

implications.

discipline, correcting for biases and bottlenecks that are already occurring,

Embracing principles, not just precision

to a proactive one located further

The traditional path from behavioral insight based

upstream, which reframes what we’re

in lab experiments to solution development follows

even solving for and informs policy

a familiar arc. For example, research has shown

development.

that augmenting peoples’ “implementation intent” with more specific information, such as hours and locations of health clinics, increases the likelihood of getting tetanus shots.20 Armed with these findings, we might look for other similar scenarios. Then, based

W ICKED B EH AVIO R A L PRO B LEM S

49

21

Ruth Schmidt, “Strange

bedfellows: Design research

on knowledge of the context, we could test increasingly specific combinations of details in randomized control trials to determine the most effective approach.

and behavioral design,” Synergy—DRS International Conference 2020, doi. org/10.21606/drs.2020.252.

22

Mary Ann Bates and

This process would likely yield high confidence in our solution’s projected impact, but only in a single context. In contrast, articulating our initial findings as a principle—”Concreteness of details can boost implementation intent”—allows us

Rachel Glennerster, “The

to establish general rules which give us directional guidance for addressing many

Generalizability Puzzle,”

situations. Principles may be particularly useful for wicked problems, where aim-

Stanford Social Innovation Review (Summer 2017): 50.

23

Banerjee et al., “Loss is

a loss, why categorize it?

ing for precision is a fool’s errand. Not only do we lack prior examples or reliable experimental findings, but context is also a moving target. Yet we do know a great deal about behavioral tendencies at a more general level. For example:

Mental accounting across cultures.”

24

Christopher Alexander,

•

tions of uncertainty

A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (New

People struggle to effectively weigh options and make decisions under condi-

•

York: Oxford University Press,

People tend to process and experience things relatively, not absolutely (making a $100,000 salary may seem fine until learning that a peer makes

1977).

$125,000) •

We tend to compare what’s easy, whether those are quantitative values (e.g.

SPF 8 versus 30), or what’s front of mind or most salient (per the “availability bias”)

•

We are influenced by senses of identity, kinship, and fairness when judging between options

•

We look to reference points, such as prior experiences, other people, or established structures, to understand what “good” or “right” looks like

We can use principles to identify situations where particular issues are likely to occur, but also use solution-based principles to articulate early hypotheses about potential approaches.21 Theories of scarcity’s impact on decision-making and our need to dedicate extra cognitive cycles when learning something new, for example, both share a common ancestor in the form of “cognitive load,” or a decreased tendency to effectively manage rational decision-making when our ability to dedicate attention becomes overwhelmed or fractured. We also know, at a principles level, that simplifying inputs or providing decision-making structures, such as prioritization criteria, can be helpful in reducing excess or unnecessary cognitive effort.

While the specific effects of cognitive load and the most effective form of structure may be highly context-dependent, principles give us a running start to begin designing.

Overcoming see-one/solve-one The cornerstone of behavioral design is the rich trove of experimental data that demonstrates deviations from rational decision-making and behavior. These

50

T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

results are then typically used both to seek out problems—what situations might benefit from this finding?—and to inform interventions—what results are appli-

25

Nicole Schadewitz and

Timothy Jachna, “Comparing

cable to this situation? However, a tight fit between research findings and the

inductive and deductive

specifics of the problem to be solved can result in a “see-one/solve-one” situation,

methodologies for design

where solutions are so grounded in the particulars of the context that they are nearly impossible to scale or translate elsewhere.

patterns identification and articulation,” International Design Research Conference IADSR 2007 Emerging Trends in Design Research (November

While starting with well-documented lab findings may supply invaluable

2007): 3–4.

confidence, adhering to a top-down, linear approach could result in missed opportunities to learn across instances.22 The importance of cultural context when solving for behavior has become increasingly recognized,23 but other more tacit or more surprising contextual factors that contribute to the success of interventions may only be identified by seeing patterns within aggregated results.

Design’s tradition of embracing abstraction in the form of design principles or pattern languages24 can help us break down problems, structure unsorted data, and solve problems by leveraging commonalities, rather than transplanting singular solutions into other contexts. This is particularly important in an era of “big data,” where we rarely lack information but often struggle to make meaningful use of it.

Identifying contextual similarities across instances uses solutions and RCT results as data inputs, rather than evaluative ends in themselves, enabling us to tackle constellations of problems rather than treating them as one-offs. Not only does this hybrid inductive/deductive approach help us apply what we know to more diverse present-tense contexts,25 but these patterns and resulting insights can also inform future-oriented solutions.

The role of data The use of empirical evidence provides a welcome level of confidence in our ability to prove the efficacy of solutions to well-defined challenges, but a perceived need to prove causality can also restrict our conceptual frame to include only quantifiable problems with testable solutions. As a result, we may continually defer taking on critically important challenges that lack antecedent data or are perceived to be unverifiable because they don’t fit the model of what we’re accustomed to looking for. This is akin to using a metal detector; when our instrument is calibrated only to sense metal objects, we are likely to overlook other potentially valuable items.

Tackling wicked problems requires us to embrace a wider scope of qualitative and quantitative data as fodder for potential solutions, taking advantage of all the information at our disposal to inform plausible approaches—what could be— before evaluating potential solutions or dismissing them based on their perceived probability of success.

W ICKED B EH AVIO R A L PRO B LEM S

51

26

Colin Camerer et al., Anna

Dreber, Felix Holzmeister,

Ironically, this flexible approach to data also releases us somewhat from the grip of the current replicability crisis.26 Replicability matters a great deal when confidence

et al., “Evaluating the

in experimental outcomes is used directly as a proxy for confidence in real-world

replicability of social science

applications. But when used in a more generative mode, as a contribution to a set

experiments in Nature and Science between 2010

of possible exploratory avenues rather than as a pretested solution, the burden of

and 2015,” Nature Human

proof for individual experimental results is significantly reduced.

Behaviour 2, (August 2018): 637–644, doi.org/10.1038/ s41562-018-0399-z.

To be clear, we are not advocating for the abandonment of experimental or eval-

27

uative research, which is still critical. But the comfortable confidence of familiar

Richard Thaler and

Shlomo Benartzi, “Save More Tomorrow™: Using Behavioral Economics to Increase

solutions may keep us from seeking potentially more successful, but as yet undiscovered, possibilities. For knotty problems that don’t have historical precursors,

Employee Saving,” Journal of

we could do worse than to start with expansive and relevant speculations about

Political Economy 112, no. S1

what to build, informed by human behavior, rather than deciding what is off the

(2004): 165–166.

28

Ruth Schmidt,

table before we even begin.

“Broadening the nature of behavioral design,” Behavioral

Interrogating systems

Scientist (April 2019),

The maturation and methodological codification of behavioral design has led to a

behavioralscientist.org/ broadening-the-nature-of-be-

natural heightening of boundaries, or what’s considered in or out of the discipline.

havioral-design.

While a more isolationist approach will continue to be effective for “last mile” solutions, it is less likely to be as effective for thornier systems challenges with more multifaceted qualities and societal-level complexity, where a more synthetic tack, which corrals strategies from multiple disciplines to identify, frame, and solve problems, may be necessary.

This is particularly important when isolated successes may lull policy makers into assuming that the social systems within which solutions play out are themselves equitable. The Save More Tomorrow (SMarT) program has been long hailed as an effective example of “nudging” by increasing 401k savings through opt-outs, defaults, and autoescalation.27 While it has shown impressive results for participants, this solution is only accessible to a specific and increasingly shrinking population of full-time workers in traditional jobs, rendering large swaths of young people, vulnerable populations, and a growing cohort in the gig economy or other nonstandard employment arrangements largely invisible and unsupported.

When systems are themselves biased, successful nudges operating within those systems may actually perpetuate, or even amplify, these biases.28

In the context of wicked problems, where the stakes are high across all stakeholder groups, we must wrestle with the ethics of who is served and what is defined as normal.

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

Individual interventions designed to remedy individuals’ biased assumptions 29

and behaviors can also result in overcorrection, as when removing criminal

Amanda Y. Agan and

Sonja B. Starr, “Ban the

records from consideration during hiring actually increased discrimination due

Box, Criminal Records, and 29

to residual and racially biased assumptions about who might have had a record.

Multidimensional approaches that work at micro, meso, and macro levels of

Racial Discrimination: A Field Experiment,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 133, no. 1

behavior, which combine social cues, messaging, financial and nonfinancial incen-

(February 2018): 230.

tives, and more formal metrics or policies, may be better equipped to shape and

30 Deborah Lupton, The

encourage more desirable behaviors.

Imperative of Health: Public Health and the Regulated Body (London: SAGE Publications,

AN ETHICAL IMPERATIVE

1995), 2.

Here we must reflect: to what end? Our appeal to recenter an entire field is not a

31

small ask, but also not a purely epistemological exercise. The urge is anchored in

“Population Health and Social

and arises from human need; fundamentally, solving wicked problems is about people and their welfare. In crafting potential futures, we must continually scrutinize how our own biases inform the ways in which we conceive of problems and

Patrick O’Byrne,

Governance: Analyzing the Mainstream Incorporation of Ethnography,” Qualitative Health Research 22, no. 6, (2012): 860.

the public we’re designing for.

Decentering “normal” Ethics has become more prominent in behavioral design, but more often than not these conversations focus on research and methodological issues, such as the transparency of interventions and the mandate of nudging “for good.” These topics are welcome and important, but don’t go far enough. In the context of wicked problems, where the stakes are high across all stakeholder groups, we

In crafting potential futures, we must

must also wrestle with the ethics of who is served and

continually scrutinize how our own

what is defined as normal.

biases inform the ways in which we

While everyone might agree at some level on the importance of health, for example, the ways in which

conceive of problems and the public we’re designing for.

we perceive, define, and prioritize what that looks like may be very different. Is success defined by process efficiency and cost effectiveness, or patients’ perceptions of their care? Is the quality or the length of life a higher priority? Who decides what is designated as a preferred or default option? What Deborah Lupton refers to as the “imperative of health”30 can all too easily appear to be objective and noncontroversial, rather than socially constructed and in service of dominant cultural norms.31 While nudges have always been conceived as preserving choice, the availability of options or defaults is always determined by other humans, and thus can never be entirely agnostic or neutral.

W ICKED B EH AVIO R A L PRO B LEM S

53

32

James I. Charlton,

Nothing About Us Without

Inclusion and participatory design By building a deep and contextualized understanding of who and what we are

Us: Disability Oppression and

attempting to solve for, and extending beyond choice architecture to also consider

Empowerment (California:

value, norms, identity, story, and fit, this new discipline can begin to integrate and

University of California Press, 1998), 3–18.

33

Daniel Kahneman, Jack

L. Knetsch, and Richard H. Thaler, “Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and

address the tangle of viewpoints and perspectives that are a natural part of complex, adaptive systems problems. Designing with, not at, people—“nothing about us without us” 32—forces us to reckon with our own biases and assumptions of what’s good or normal that we often take for granted. Inclusion also conveniently

the Coase Theorem,” Journal

carries the additional benefit that even temporary or perceived ownership tends

of Political Economy 98, no. 6

to increase our sense of personal investment, à la the well-known endowment or

(December 1990): 1342–1346.

IKEA effects.33 This requires inviting audiences and perspectives not solely in the interest of solution expediency, but as an ethical imperative. It also means looking beyond the measurable impact of interventions to the introduction of entirely new engagement models that shift the center of gravity of processes, roles, and power. Rather than having a handful of experts in behavior and public policy design for the public interest, collaborative and participatory models borrowed from design can provide opportunities to cocreate with those who will ultimately live with solutions. As a result, those individuals and communities can take on new levels of ownership and investment, moving from the more passive position of receiving solutions to becoming full participants and cocreators in their framing and development.

Designing for diversity, not averages This new hybrid discipline of behavior + design has the potential to exceed the sum of its parts as humanity-centered design, leveraging hard data about what has worked well in the past while also embracing thick insights and an openness to expanding how we tackle massive, thorny systems problems. This will mean integrating, rather than choosing between, analytic (inductive and hypothesis-driven) and synthetic (abductive and generative) models and methodologies.

Designing effectively for complexity and adaptation also requires wrestling with the question of who, and what, has traditionally been left out. People are not data points to be nudged; contextual factors that sit outside a strict definition of behavior are not noise but rather the rhythms of life that provide us with pattern and meaning. Too often, traditional data-driven methodologies succeed by overemphasizing the average at the expense of edge cases, yet individuals on the edges are often more likely to have an arsenal of adaptive competencies by virtue of traditionally being left out of solutions. Design, however, has long recognized the value of designing for the extremes: indeed, some of the most widely valued

54

T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

and consumed products and experiences today, from curb cuts to Oxo Good Grips,

Kat Holmes, Mismatch:

originated from persons with disabilities.34 By including those who are often

34

uninvited to the table, we are better able to craft adaptable and resilient solutions

(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,

for a greater diversity of people and contributions. This is precisely what wicked

2018).

How Inclusion Shapes Design

problems demand.

W ICKED B EH AVIO R A L PRO B LEM S

55

USING NUDGES AS DESIGN PRINCIPLES: MINDFUL GUIDANCE FOR BEHAVIOR CHANGE G. Mauricio Mejía “Nudge” is a concept stemming from behavioral economics, which describes how 1

Richard H. Thaler and

Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (New York: Penguin, 2009), 6 2

Katherine K. Fu, Maria

C. Yang, and Kristin L. Wood, “Design Principles: Literature Review, Analysis, and Future Directions,” Journal of Mechanical Design 138, no. 10 (August 2016): 3, doi. org/10.1115/1.4034105.

3

minor adjustments to an environment can predictably influence people’s actions while preserving their freedom of choice.1 A design principle, by contrast, is a general guideline that designers may employ to improve the outcomes of the creative process.2 Design practitioners and researchers have historically used concepts drawn from diverse disciplines, including behavioral economics, as design principles.3 Similarly, some applied behavioral economists have used design terminology to identify a field of “behavioral design,” and to propose various behavioral design principles.4 In this article, I make a clear distinction between nudges and design principles and argue that, when used as design principles for ideation, nudges must be handled carefully to avoid scientizing the design process.

See for example some

principles based in behavioral economics in William Lidwell,

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein popularized the field of behavioral economics in

Kritina Holden, and Jill

their 2008 book Nudge.5 They presented nudging as an applied behavioral econom-

Butler, Universal Principles of Design: 100 Ways to Enhance

ics practice and coined the term “choice architect” to describe those who design

Usability, Influence Perception,

the environment to influence people towards desired behaviors. The basis of

Increase Appeal, Make Better

behavioral economics is that we have two thinking systems, a reflective system that

Design Decisions, and Teach Through Design (London:

is slow and effortful and an automatic system that is fast and effortless.6 People

Rockport, 2003).

use the reflective system when they are learning something new, like how to drive

4

a car, or when they are making important decisions, like whether to buy a new car.

See, e.g., Saugato Datta

and Sendhil Mullainathan, “Behavioral Design: A New

People use the automatic system when they have already learned something, like

Approach to Development

an experienced driver taking to the road, or when making everyday decisions, like

Policy,” Review of Income

selecting lunch options from a buffet.

and Wealth 60, no. 1 (March 2014): 7-35, doi.org/10.1111/ roiw.12093.

56

T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

When used as design principles for ideation, nudges must be handled carefully to avoid scientizing the design process.

5

Thaler and Sunstein,

Nudge.

6

Daniel Kahneman, “Maps

of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for Behavioral

According to behavioral economics theory, the automatic thinking system allows

Economics,” The American Economic Review 93, no. 5

people to perform complex behaviors without overwhelming their cognitive

(2003): 1450–52.

resources. Life without the automatic system would be exhausting: imagine

7

reflecting on every word while speaking a language. However, the reduction in

Irrational: The Hidden Forces

cognitive load leads to some typical problems. Since the reflective system is relaxed during automatic action, systematic cognitive errors can occur. The psychologist Dan Ariely refers to this tendency as showing a “predictable irrationality” in human nature.7

Dan Ariely, Predictably

That Shape Our Decisions (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010).

8

Daniel Kahneman, Jack L.

Knetsch, and Richard H. Thaler, “Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias,” Journal of

FROM COGNITIVE BIASES TO NUDGES

Economic Perspectives 5, no.

Behavioral economics researchers use the concept of cognitive biases to explain these systematic errors of the automatic system. For instance, one of the salient biases is status quo bias, which refers to the tendency of people to remain with a decision made in the past or to select a default option without actively choosing 8

it. Other examples of common cognitive biases include loss aversion, optimism, endowment effect, self-commitment, and social norm. In the subfield of applied behavioral economics, nudges have become a name for the translation of cognitive biases like these into action. Nudges are ways of intentionally leveraging typical human cognitive biases, identified in experimental research, in service of desired ends.9 Applied behavioral economists or choice architects follow an experimen10

tal approach when creating interventions to nudge people. These practitioners follow a process whereby they identify opportunities or problems in choice-making

1 (March 1991): 197–99, doi. org/10.1257/jep.5.1.193.

9

This is clear in behavioral

economics publications; for example, see the paper that Kahneman presented when he received the Nobel Prize for his work in behavioral economics (Kahneman, “Maps of Bounded Rationality”).

10

See, e.g., Piyush Tantia,

“The New Science of Designing for Humans,” Stanford Social Innovation Review (Spring 2017), ssir.org/articles/entry/ the_new_science_of_design-

situations where cognitive heuristics (automatic system shortcuts) or biases may

ing_for_humans.

play a role; design interventions intended to exploit or compensate for those biases

11

in some way; and then evaluate the outcome through empirical observation.

11

One example of this

process is described in Datta and Mullainathan, “Behavioral Design,” 22–23.

Through their experimental research, practitioners have developed various sets of nudges intended to influence people towards desired behaviors. MINDSPACE, an acronym for nine nudges that can be applied in creating behavioral interventions, 12

is a particularly illuminating example. In this toolkit, intended primarily for policymakers, N stands for “norms,” presented as the idea that “we tend to do what 13

those around us are already doing.” Social norms have been applied by government officials seeking to encourage certain compliance behaviors by citizens: for example, some tax departments nudge payers by highlighting the fact that most citizens do pay their taxes when they are sent deadline reminders.

12

Paul Dolan et al.,

“Mindspace: Influencing Behaviour through Public Policy,” Institute for Government and the Cabinet Office, March 2010, instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publications/ mindspace; P. Dolan et al., “Influencing Behaviour: The Mindspace Way,” Journal of Economic Psychology 33, no. 1 (February 2012): 264–77, doi.org/10.1016/j. joep.2011.10.009.

USIN G NUD G E S A S DE SIG N PRINCIPLE S: MINDF UL GUIDA NCE F O R B EH AVIO R CH A N G E

57

13

Dolan et al., “Mindspace,”

9.

14

Lidwell, Holden, and Butler,

Choice architecture could be considered a professional design practice in a broad sense, and seen in this light, nudges might appear to be best understood as design principles. Indeed, part of the name itself, “architecture,” refers directly to a design

Universal Principles of Design,

discipline. However, there are fundamental differences between the nudges that

12.

guide choice architects (i.e. applied behavioral economists) and the design princi-

15

Molly Follette Story,

“Principles of Universal Design,” in Universal Design Handbook,

ples that guide designers. Nudges can certainly be adopted and mindfully deployed as design principles, particularly in design ideation activities. But using nudges to

ed. Wolfgang F. E. Preiser

drive ideation, or the entire design process itself, would result in an applied behav-

and Korydon Smith, 2nd ed.,

ioral economics practice that diverges from a designerly approach.

2011, 4.4. Story emphasizes that the principles educate designers and are also tools for

DESIGN PRINCIPLES: GUIDANCE FOR DESIGNERS

evaluation.

Design principles can have diverse meanings depending on the context. The field is

16

undergoing a postindustrial expansion in which designers’ aims have been chang-

Maneesh Agrawala,

Wilmot Li, and Floraine Berthouzoz, “Design Principles

ing from an exclusive focus on form and style to also include human experience,

for Visual Communication,”

strategic planning, and evidence-based proposals. In the traditional, industrial

Communications of the ACM 54,

approach to design, principles are related primarily to visual style alone (e.g. visual

no. 4 (April 2011): 62, doi.org/ 10.1145/ 1924421.1924439.

balance), while new approaches such as interaction or service design have come to

Agrawala and colleagues argue

include intangible or nonvisual principles (e.g. consistent customer experience).

that principles represent tacit knowledge of designers rather

In the past, design principles were rarely based on scientific research; instead, they

than explicit guides.

were often codified through a process of critique and discussion within profes-

17

Adream Blair-Early and

sional design communities. Designers use principles flexibly because their creative

Mike Zender, “User Interface

processes usually call for abductive logic based on intuition, a focus on ambiguous

Design Principles for Interaction Design,” Design Issues 24, no.

situations, and the coevolution of problems and solutions. Practitioners typically

3 (June 2008): 86, doi.org/

pioneer design principles, while scholars document and provide validation in

10.1162/desi. 2008.24.3.85.

multiple ways. The recent expansion of design poises scholars and practitioners

18

to adopt concepts and principles from other fields as design principles—but this

Peter H. Jones, “Systemic

Design Principles for Complex Social Systems,” in Social

should be done with caution.

Systems and Design, ed. Gary S. Metcalf (Tokyo: Springer Japan, 2014): 104, doi.org /10.1007/978-4-431-54478-4_4.

19

Eujin Pei, Ian R.

Even though explicit “design principles” have been proposed in various publications, many authors seem to use this expression with a certain looseness. In one prominent book in the field, for example, Lidwell and colleagues contextualize

Campbell, and Mark A. Evans,

their inventory of design principles by explaining that “the concepts […] broadly

“Development of a Tool for

referred to as ‘principles’ consist of laws, guidelines, human biases, and general

Building Shared Representations among Industrial Designers and Engineering Designers,” CoDesign 6, no. 3 (September 2010): 139-40, doi.org/10.1080

design considerations.”14 Table 1 is a comparison of core elements of definitions of “design principles” among four other works that propose such principles in diverse design fields. The shared element among these definitions is that design

/15710882.2010.510197.

principles provide guidelines, guidance, or assistance to practitioners during the

20 Fu, Yang, and Wood,

design process. It is clear that the principles are not understood as general rules

“Design Principles,” 5.

that can be always applied to any design process, but rather as loose references that

21

may support and guide various aspects of the design process.

Fu, Yang, and Wood,

“Design Principles,” 3.

58

T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

STORY 15

AGRAWALA AND COLLEAGUES 16

BLAIREARLY AND ZENDER 17

JONES 18

Guidelines, guidance, assistance for designers

Improve or guide comprehension or usability of artifacts

Not strict rules, but rules of thumb

Facilitate invention or improve practices

TABLE 1: Comparison of core elements of definitions of design principles.

Researchers in engineering design appear to use the concept of design principles often, typically associating the term with rules that have supporting evidence. The engineering design process centers on technical specification of products using science-based methods, in contrast to industrial design, which centers on the development of form using instinct as well as trial and error.19 In a review of the literature, Fu, Yang, and Wood reveal that engineering design researchers have used the concepts of principle, guideline, and heuristic more or less interchangeably.20 However, they argue, compared to guidelines and heuristics, principles (a) are supported either by expert designers’ experience or by research evidence; (b) are more broadly applicable or less context dependent; and (c) are prescriptive rather than descriptive, which can help designers reach successful solutions. For Fu and colleagues, a design principle is “a fundamental rule or law, derived inductively from extensive experience and/or empirical evidence, which provides design process guidance to increase the chance of reaching a successful solution.”21 While principles are used more loosely in other design fields for guidance, the approach taken in engineering design suggests that here, design principles inform decision making in a standardized and precise way.

Nudges may be adopted as design principles, but doing so requires a careful approach to design practice.

USIN G NUD G E S A S DE SIG N PRINCIPLE S: MINDF UL GUIDA NCE F O R B EH AVIO R CH A N G E

59

ARE NUDGES DESIGN PRINCIPLES? 22

Datta and Mullainathan,

“Behavioral Design,” 26.

23

Fu, Yang, and Wood,

“Design Principles,” 10.

24

Here, an “artifact” is

I argue that nudges may be adopted as design principles, but that doing so requires a careful approach to design practice. This clarification is necessary in a contemporary context where people overuse the word “design” and related buzzwords such as “design thinking” or “human-centered design.” Not surprisingly, policymakers

understood as any product of

and applied behavioral economists have coined related terms such as “choice

a design process. Among other

architecture” and “behavioral design.” Datta and Mullainathan have even proposed

things, an artifact might be an industrial product, a visual

behavioral design principles. One of them is:

communication piece, an interactive digital environ-

Remove Snags to Choosing: [T]he “default option” is disproportionately

ment, a service, or a system.

important. [….] [T]his means that program uptake and use increase dramatically when the default is changed, or when a program is re-designed to reduce the number of things people have to do to take advantage of it.22 Arguably, this “behavioral design principle” or nudge does take the form of a set of design principles according to the characteristics suggested by Fu and colleagues: •

Is stated in the grammatical imperative form.

•

Includes a prescriptive action for a designer to take.

•

Increases the likelihood of reaching a desirable consequence, which must also be explicitly articulated.

•

Is situated within a particular context and point in time.23

However, no theoretical concept should be adopted carelessly as a design principle; some considerations are appropriate to maintain a designerly mindset and approach. In the remainder of this article, I discuss the differences between nudges and traditional design principles, considering the abductive process of creating a design principle, the role of a design principle in the process of design itself, the systemic nature of design, and design’s orientation to the interaction of people and artifacts.24 Finally, I explain how a nudge can be used appropriately as a design principle.

Human-centered design principles do not focus solely on how to change people, but on how to change the interaction between people and artifacts.

Inductive nudges; abductive design principles The process of proposing a nudge is different from the process of proposing a design principle. Nudges involve “translating” cognitive biases identified inductively by behavioral science into possible behavioral interventions. Virtually all cognitive biases or behavioral heuristics can be the basis of nudge

initiatives; see Table 2 for some examples of translation from a bias to a nudge. The cognitive biases are commonly identified through extensive experimental research

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

COGNITIVE BIAS/ BEHAVIORAL HEURISTIC

NUDGE

25

Michelle Baddeley,

Behavioural Economics: A Very Short Introduction, Very Short

Defaults: “Most decisions have a default option, which is the option that will come into force if no active choice is made. Defaults exert influence as individuals regularly accept whatever the default setting is, even if it has significant consequences.”27

Norms: “Social and cultural norms are the behavioral expectations, or rules, within a society or group, or alternatively a standard, customary, or ideal form of behavior to which individuals in a social group try to conform.”29

Default rules: “Default rules may well be the most effective nudges. If people are automatically enrolled in retirement plans, their savings can increase significantly [.…] Note that unless active choosing (also a nudge) is involved, some kind of default rule is essentially inevitable.”28

Uses of social norms: “One of the most effective nudges is to inform people that most others are engaged in certain behavior [….] Use of social norms can reduce criminal behavior and also behavior that is harmful whether or not it is criminal.”30

Introductions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 4-5.

26

See, e.g., Dolan et al.,

“Mindspace”; Datta and Mullainathan, “Behavioral Design”; Lashawn RichburgHayes et al., “Behavioral Economics and Social Policy: Designing Innovative Solutions for Programs Supported by the Administration for Children and Families” (Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health

Commitment: “Many people are aware of their will-power weaknesses (such as a tendency to overspend, overeat or continue smoking) and use commitment devices to achieve long-term goals.” 31

Precommitment strategies: “If people precommit to engaging in a certain action—such as a smoking cessation program—they are more likely to act in accordance with their goals [….] Committing to a specific action at a precise future moment in time better motivates action and reduces procrastination.”32

and Human Services, April 2014), papers.ssrn.com/ abstract=2466597.

27

Dolan et al., “Influencing

Behaviour,” 269.

28

Cass R. Sunstein,

“Nudging: A Very Short Guide,” Journal of Consumer Policy 37, no. 4 (December

TABLE 2: Translation of cognitive biases into nudges.

2014): 585, doi.org/10.1007/ s10603-014-9273-1.

conducted in labs under controlled conditions.25 Nudges subsequently appear in toolkits of behavioral economics for application in policy and other fields.26 In these toolkits, the scientific explanatory narratives that describe the cognitive biases have been translated into prescriptive recommendations that can be applied in interventions.

29

Dolan et al., “Influencing

Behaviour,” 268.

30 Sunstein, “Nudging,” 586.

31

Dolan et al., “Influencing

Behaviour,” 271.

32

Sunstein, “Nudging,”

586–587.

In contrast with nudges, design principles are mainly proposed by expert designers and refined through critique and design cases. Design principles generally result from abductive reasoning, being based on unsystematic observations and proposed as the “best explanation” or “most likely inference.” For Dorst, designers begin with a particular goal in mind, then use abduction to reframe problems 33

before proposing solutions based on creative leaps. In this view, design principles are simply the educated guesses of experts, and are not grounded in scientific

33

Kees Dorst, “Frame

Creation and Design in the Expanded Field,” She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation 1, no. 1 (September 2015): 24–25, doi. org/10.1016/j.sheji.2015. 07.

003.

experimental evidence. Certainly, some design principles represent efforts to translate theory from different fields for application, but in these cases, designers apply, study, and critique the theory in order to propose the design principles. Let’s take, for example, the third “principle of universal design,” simple and intuitive use (use

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34

Story, “Principles of

Universal Design,” 4.5.

35

Jones, “Systemic Design

of the design [artifact] that is easy to understand, regardless of the user’s experience, knowledge, language skills, or current concentration level).34 The author and her team proposed this principle, but it is not a direct translation from a theoret-

Principles for Complex Social

ical concept. In the design principle, theories of cognition and psychology can be

Systems,” 104.

related; however, the study of the design issue along with the revision of cases is

36

Jones, 124.

the main origin of the principle. Design authors do not usually explain how such

37

Krippendorff pointed

principles have been translated from a particular theory. Recognition and accep-

out this difference between science and design. See Klaus Krippendorff, “Design

tance within the design community, rather than scientific experimental evidence, are what validate the principle. Jones is more explicit than most design theorists in

Research, an Oxymoron?,” in

stating that his proposed “systemic design principles” derive from systems theory,

Design Research Now: Essays

but he adds that the principles are frameworks that can be integrated with other

and Selected Projects, ed. Ralf Michel (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2007), 72.

38

concepts,35 and are offered mainly as descriptive guidelines to raise awareness of systems theory among designers.36

See for example the

methods proposed in: Datta and Mullainathan, “Behavioral

Can design principles ever be based on theoretical concepts that are supported by

Design,” 22–23; Tantia, “The

scientific evidence? They can. However, practitioners would need to review and

New Science of Designing for

critique these concepts further and evaluate them in application. Considering the

Humans,” 31–32.

39

Tantia, “The New Science

of Designing for Humans,” 30.

divergent temporal orientations of design and science can further illuminate the risk of a too-rapid assimilation of these two fields of inquiry: since nudges, for example, are based on scientific evidence, nudge practitioners in effect use the past to predict the future. Designers, on the other hand, try to break from the past to develop innovative alternative futures.37 Thus, when

Nudge practitioners use the past to predict the future; designers seek to develop innovative alternative futures.

using nudges, designers should not entrap themselves in the framing of potential solutions that the nudges themselves may suggest; doing so could limit the innovativeness of the resulting design proposals.

Nudges as hypotheses; design principles as guidelines Whereas nudge interventions become the new hypotheses of theoretical concepts that practitioners test in application, design principles are flexible guidelines that designers can incorporate or discard on an iterative basis throughout the design process. As such, nudges pose methodological conflicts for design. The methodologies of applied behavioral economics generally follow a linear process, in which a target behavior is defined, decision biases are identified, a nudge intervention is proposed and prototyped, and quantitative data is collected in order to evaluate the efficacy of the intervention.38 Tantia argues that the problem of the traditional design process is its dependency on designers’ intuition in proposing solutions.

She states that behavioral design integrates human-centered design with additional layers of scientific insights and testing, thus helping overcome the subjective bias that can affect traditional design processes.39

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It would be a significant misstep, however, if designers sought to test design outcomes by means of quantitative empirical methods alone. Such an approach would

40 Richard Buchanan, “Wicked Problems in Design

represent an attempt to scientize the design process, converting an iterative and

Thinking,” Design Issues 8,

abductive process into a linear and inductive process. Designers generally come

no. 2 (Spring 1992): 5-21,

up with multiple ideas, generate possibilities through iterative prototyping, and

doi.org/10.2307/1511637.

select solutions that are satisfactory enough because they address wicked problems that have no unique solutions.40 It would not be possible, let alone desirable, to quantitively test a large number of ideas in the context of this iterative prototyping process, since scientific research requires procedures (e.g. sampling, use of control groups, etc.) as well as time investments that are incompatible with the design process. In particular, the value of learning through rapid prototyping and early failure in service of reaching an acceptable design solution would be undercut by an attempt to assimilate the design process to the methods of scientific research.

What makes design principles useful is not their capacity to prescribe a solution, but the flexibility and

Ultimately, when nudges are used as

integrability by which they can enhance the design

design principles, they should function

process itself. When using nudges, applied behavioral

as creative guides for ideation, rather

economists try to frame problems in terms of target

than as sources of new research

behaviors that can be addressed within theoretical models. In this manner, nudges become intervention

hypotheses.

hypotheses and evaluation, generally based on the quantitative analysis of data, seeks to confirm or reject the hypotheses. Design principles, by contrast, offer guidance and inspiration to designers. Sometimes, designers even apply the principle inversely for creative or strategic purposes.

Ultimately, when nudges are used as design principles, they should function as creative guides for ideation, rather than as sources of new research hypotheses.

Nudges for specific behaviors; design principles for systemic experiences The power of behavioral economics is based on its measurable effectiveness at scale. The methodologies of applied behavioral economics emphasize the definition of a target behavior and the identification of behavioral bottlenecks. Yet this approach is reductive, since many human needs and interests are not defined by single behaviors. Behavioral interventions have indeed helped to advance many policy goals, such as securing large numbers of organ donors by changing the default option when people renew their driver’s license, or facilitating individuals’ retirement savings by automatically enrolling employees to contribute a percentage of their regular paycheck. However, many other aspects of human experience, such as the broader political or cultural context, are disregarded in these initiatives.

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41

Sarah Reid and Ruth

Schmidt, “A new model for

Designers work at a systemic level, addressing not only

integrating behavioral science

discrete behaviors but also other dimensions of human

and design,” Behavioral Scientist Special Issue:

experience such as culture, emotion, attitudes, or desires.

Nudge at 10 (September 2018), behavioralscientist. org/a-new-model-for-integrating-behavioral-sci-

By contrast, designers work at a systemic level, addressing not only discrete behav-

ence-and-design.

iors but also other dimensions of human experience such as culture, emotion,

42

attitudes, or desires, as well as contextual factors such as sustainability. In a recent

Sunstein, “Nudging,” 586.

article discussing the differences between design and behavioral science, Sarah Reid and Ruth Schmidt explain that while behavioral interventions target specific existing challenges and seek efficient outputs, design strategy confronts ambiguity in order to consider possible futures in complex contexts. They propose a model in which design can inform behavioral economics, and behavioral economics can inform design. This model offers a clever solution for collaboration, while still recognizing that each discipline has a different mindset for addressing complex problems.41 When problems are framed in terms of narrow, specific outcomes (e.g. increasing organ donation), an intervention (e.g. changing the default when renewing driver’s licenses) will often be effectively supported by behavioral nudges, such as a default rule. Conversely, for design problems or situations typically framed as systemic challenges (e.g. improving the overall service experience for organ donors), the solution may entail integrating the behaviors of multiple stakeholders: donors, service providers, family members, and others. In essence, though nudges may educate designers on how to change specific human behaviors, designers should also consider additional theories and tools to address other human factors and the wider context.

Nudges to guide personal behavior; design principles to guide personartifact behavior The right column of Table 2, above, shows three examples of nudges. All of them guide possible actions for changing people’s behaviors and all might be included in a possible intervention or designed artifact. Regarding the “uses of social norms,” for instance, Sunstein observes that one of the most effective nudges is to inform people that most others are engaged in certain behavior [….] Use of social norms can reduce criminal behavior and also behavior that is harmful whether or not it is criminal.42

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The focus here is on how people react to stimuli. Design principles, by contrast, offer possibilities to change person-artifact interactions. In particular, human-cen-

43

Blair-Early and Zender,

“User Interface Design

tered design principles do not focus solely on how to change people, but on how to

Principles for Interaction

change the interaction between people and artifacts. Adream Blair-Early and Mike

Design,” 99–100.

Zender’s software design principles are a clear example of this broader focus. Their first three principles are: 1.

Obvious start: Design an obvious starting point. A user must know how to start interaction with the content.

2.

Clear reverse: Design an obvious exit or stop. The user must know how to reverse any action, including how to exit or end the session.

3.

Consistent Logic: Design an internally consistent logic for content, actions, and effects. Within an interface, a user must be able to quickly identify a logical, rational pattern of relationships between user actions and effects.43

These principles explicitly suggest actions that designers can take to improve or change the person-artifact interaction or behavior. But more traditional design principles, such as visual balance or contrast, also prescribe actions to properly craft a design artifact, with a tacit reference to the person-artifact interaction. Therefore, when using a nudge as a design principle, designers should explore how the aspect of human cognition being investigated would play out in interactive situations, i.e. in

Despite their orientation to human behavior, nudges by themselves do not clearly indicate the characteristics

context. Despite their orientation to human behavior,

that can be developed in the design

nudges by themselves do not clearly indicate the

artifact, and in general do not support

characteristics that can be developed in the design

the process for designing the interaction

artifact, and in general do not support the process for

person-artifact.

designing the interaction person-artifact.

CONCLUSION In this article, I have briefly presented a theory of nudges and of design principles, providing four main points to explain why nudges should be used mindfully in design. First, nudges are translated from cognitive biases that have been identified inductively in experimental studies, whereas expert designers abductively propose and refine design principles through critique. While applied behavioral economists frame solutions based on evidence-based nudges, designers integrate principles within creative processes. Nudges should not limit the ability of designers to break

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44

See: Nigel Cross,

from the past in proposing innovative and alternative futures. Second, applied

Designerly Ways of Knowing

behavioral economists treat nudges as hypotheses to be tested in interventions with

(London, UK: Springer, 2006).

quantitative field studies, whereas designers use design principles for guidance in

See, e.g., Rick Poynor, No

finding satisfactory solutions that may be difficult to test quantitatively. Designers

45

More Rules: Graphic Design and Postmodernism (New

should use nudges for ideation, not for creating artifacts that function as inter-

Haven: Yale University Press,

ventions to be tested. Third, applied behavioral economists use nudges to address

2003).

problems only when a target behavior can be singled out, whereas designers integrate the complex and diverse experiences of multiple stakeholders. Designers can integrate nudges, but should also take other concepts, theories, and methods into account, considering the broader context. And fourth, nudges offer guidance for changing the behavior of people, whereas design principles offer guidance for improving or changing the interaction space between people and designed artifacts. Designers need to be attentive to the ways that nudges may perform within this interaction space, without narrowing their focus to the immediate context of the nudges themselves.

Undeniably, nudges are a rich source for ideation in design processes when behavior change and is among the intended goals. However, using nudges as design principles in a heedless or mechanical way could push designers to adopt linear behavioral methods that may limit creativity and innovativeness. Furthermore, behavioral interventions are different from designed artifacts. Behavioral interventions result from practices that look for ways to translate behavioral science into real-world contexts, generally using an inductive logical approach. Designed artifacts, by contrast, result from designerly practices, typically involving abductive logic and continuous problem definition.44 Arguably, the term “design principles” itself may mean different things to different designers. Some designers could embrace nudges as design principles without changing their systemic and designerly practices. Nudges can be reworded to accommodate the requirements of a design principle. Additionally, designers use principles in flexible ways, adapting them to problems that may have unique and unrepeatable conditions. Even doing the opposite of what a design principle suggests can be an alternative approach that is sometimes fruitful.45 Nevertheless, the critical perspective I offer in this article aims to prevent the mindless adoption of nudges that risks a scientizing of the design process. Designers are not, and should not seek to become, applied behavioral economists.

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67

NUDGING EACH OTHER: HOW DO NUDGES FIT WITHIN DEMOCRATIC DESIGN? Brian E. Butler In their book Nudge, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein offer a recommendation 1

Richard H. Thaler and

Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge:

Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness (New York: Penguin, 2009).

about government’s relation to its citizens under the label of “libertarian paternalism.” 1 Their discussion responds to aspects of human cognition revealed in recent research in the behavioral sciences that does not map easily onto the conception of rationality underpinning classical economic theory. In particular, certain “cognitive quirks” that are not fully rational under widely accepted models of rationality seem to be more or less universal in humans. Because of these quirks—biases or distortions in how most people assess alternatives and perceive risks—Thaler and Sunstein suggest that political authorities should structure citizens’ decision-making through the development of “choice architecture” that subtly influences people to select options that will benefit them, while still leaving every tolerable option open and available. As a result of this maximization of options, the better option would still appear to be freely selected by the individual doing the choosing in a given case.

This article investigates Nudge’s recommendations regarding the development of choice architecture in a democratic government’s relations to its citizenry, asking whether the vision of libertarian paternalism promoted in the book is really compatible with democracy. This question points to the implicit and, I will argue, problematic conceptual framework underlying Nudge. The recommendations advanced by Thaler and Sunstein rest on assumptions about the criteria of “rational” as opposed to “irrational” beliefs and actions, and about the corresponding appropriateness of top-down, technocratic mechanisms for the execution of public policy—assumptions that are not universally accepted. Absent this acceptance,

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Is libertarian paternalism truly compatible with democracy?

the interventions that they propose in their book might be considered incompatible with a truly democratic society. Of course, just what characteristics a society must have to be considered “truly democratic” is itself contestable. But Thaler and Sunstein’s discussions about human beings’ cognitive limitations, and the appropriate governmental response to those limitations, reveal an important nondemocratic—perhaps even antidemocratic—strain in their argument. And it is difficult to see how the research and policy agenda proposed in their book could include deliberation about the values they themselves take as given for their project.

After identifying and critiquing the potentially antidemocratic implications of Nudge, I ask the additional question: if democratic governance is not compatible with libertarian paternalism, might there nevertheless be ways to utilize nudges in democratic governance? Could democratic processes be involved in creating more inclusive, consciously chosen nudge-based choice architecture? To help answer this question, I argue that there are two contemporary areas of inquiry that can help us imagine what such processes might be like. First, in the design profession, there is a set of theorists and practitioners who are helping to develop the emerging field of “community-based design.” This field, I believe, offers some important basic groundwork for the creation of democratic nudges. Next, I offer a sketch of a democratic society that could be amenable to the inclusion of nudges, drawing on a political theory known as “democratic experimentalism.” Ultimately this article tries to identify the possibility of a stronger connection between democratic processes and deliberately designed nudges than is presented in Thaler and Sunstein’s book. Perhaps, instead of merely receiving a technocrat’s nudge, members of “we the people” could nudge one another, democratically.

NUDGES AND LIBERTARIAN PATERNALISM Thaler and Sunstein advocate for libertarian paternalism in light of the research results they disclose in their development of “nudge theory,” generally understood as a demonstration and application of behavioral economics. With some necessary but supposedly minimal assumptions, their empirical description of human decision-making processes shows that real human reasoners (as opposed to perfectly rational reasoners, whom Thaler and Sunstein call “Econs”) exhibit predicable cognitive quirks that do not align with the simple means-end conception of rationality on which they rely in advancing the argument in Nudge. If rationality is just taking the most efficient path or “means” to any given individual aim or “end,” then indeed these quirks are irrational.

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But Thaler and Sunstein do go beyond assuming that rationality in general is reducible entirely to means-end rationality. In Nudge, they also assume that governance and public policy should be driven by cost-benefit analysis. The two conceptions are complementary, but focus on different things. Whereas means-end rationality refers narrowly to the specific pursuit of individual preferences, cost-benefit analysis assesses costs and benefits within a social context.

Accordingly, this type of assessment and weighing of options is typically far more complex than evaluation of an individual’s desires in the terms of means-end rationality, since cost-benefit analysis must often account for conflicting desires among different stakeholders, ambiguous or shifting definitions of “cost,” and so on. It is true that in many cases, cost-benefit analysis remains fairly straightforward, such as when evaluating whether to use coal or natural gas as the fuel for a municipality’s main power plant. But what happens when, for example, the “cost” of mining for coal has to be measured against the “cost” of habitat loss for local plants and animals, especially over a period of years or decades? The practice of “discounting” in regulatory policy, which seeks to balance near-term financial costs with longer-term, and thus less assured, benefits whether environmental, financial, and so on—and in which small changes in the discount rate can have enormous impacts on what gets counted as a “cost” in the first place—well illustrates the complexities in which this type of evaluative analysis is frequently embroiled.

The plausibility of libertarian paternalism rests upon acceptance of means-end rationality and cost-benefit analysis as criteria of rationality as such—an acceptance which implies that there is something wrong Libertarian paternalism rests upon acceptance of means-end rationality and cost-benefit analysis as criteria of rationality as such.

or undesirable about the common cognitive quirks referenced by behavioral economists. With these presuppositions in place, it is a short step to the claim that government could do its job better by designing and implementing choice situations for citizens that anticipate and accommodate those quirks. Although

their distorted perceptions tend to steer people towards the “wrong” (i.e. irrational) choices, situations can be designed so that people’s choices instead align with what a fully rational—that is, a self-interested, utility-maximizing individual, or Econ—would choose. Well-designed choice architecture, in other words, can help people overcome their all-too-human cognitive limitations.

One might think that a government employing choice architecture to guide and shape its citizens’ decisions would be intrusive and manipulative. Not so, claim Thaler and Sunstein. First, they point out that every situation already involves structuring of some kind. That is, there are no neutral starting points that leave choice completely open and unconstrained. All choices are constrained and structured

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in some way—hence choice situations are ripe for nudges whether consciously constructed or not. Humans’ susceptibility to being nudged, whether through the

2

It will be interesting to see

how Sunstein’s current role in

intentional structuring of their choices or by more natural kinds of limitation or

President Biden’s Department

circumscription, is thus unavoidable. Second, nudges can in fact be constructed

of Homeland Security may

with the aim of guiding, but not eliminating, people’s choices. Thaler and Sunstein

provide new contexts for the development of nudges.

therefore claim that libertarian paternalism is minimally intrusive—or at least that it is no more intrusive than any other proposal for the governance of modern democratic societies. If there is a kind of manipulation inherent in nudging, then it is a “benevolent manipulation.” Choices can be presented or framed in such a way that individuals are subtly guided toward an outcome beneficial to them, but not coerced into accepting that outcome. Developing such choice situations is Thaler and Sunstein’s recommendation to choice architects of all kinds.

Nudge’s opening example of the school cafeteria is illustrative of these various points. Behavioral economics predicts that the specific ordering and presentation of the food in a cafeteria will strongly affect what patrons choose to eat there. Thus, in Thaler and Sunstein’s view, the well-meaning choice architect should order the offerings so people make healthier dietary choices, but without precluding less healthy options that some patrons may end up selecting despite the pre-structuring embedded in the cafeteria’s design. Ordering the food so as to promote patrons’ health—for example, by putting the fruits and vegetables in a more prominent location than the chips and cookies—is better than, say, ordering the food so as to maximize the cafeteria’s profits.

The argument of Nudge implies that in a democracy, it is the government’s job to guide citizens’ choices toward uncontroversially positive outcomes through the establishment of effective choice architecture—and all without eliminating any tolerable options. This type of government could be efficiently run by technocrats.

Of course, Sunstein’s tenure at the Federal Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs during the Obama administration offered him just such an opportunity, where he could focus on implementing or changing regulations using nothing but nudges.2 In many ways, this is a very attractive theory. Use of this simple conception of rationality is part of what makes classical economic analysis, and nudge theory itself, so seductive. It requires only minimal reference to values, in particular to values actually expressed though each individual’s actions, and tends to issue in clear, definitive recommendations and easy answers. Given the fractious nature of partisan politics, the calm and rational manner in which technocrats could encourage undeniably beneficial behaviors, without resorting to coercion, seems like an obvious virtue. And of course the idea that political decision-making should satisfy

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3

John Dewey, Theory of

Valuation, in John Dewey,

some kind of rational basis test is not itself a controversial idea. Where, however, is democratic choice in the picture that Thaler and Sunstein present? Was democracy

The Later Works, Vol. 13:

always just a temporary proxy for the more rational and efficient governance of

1938-1939, Jo Ann Boydston,

libertarian paternalism implemented by technocrats? Is the market perhaps where

ed. (Carbondale: Southern University Press, 1988), 219.

democracy now lives? If that is the case, an interesting version of liberalism ensues: society is divided into a “public” government of technocrats and a private consumer-driven market economy where individuals vote with their dollars. But does such an arrangement leave any room for public citizenship? For collective self-government? The nudge-inflected vision of governance may be efficient, but it elides altogether the public partici-

The nudge-inflected vision of

patory spirit that democracy seems to require.

governance may be efficient, but it elides altogether the public

Questions and concerns like those noted here make

participatory spirit that democracy

apparent that there are some fundamental challenges

seems to require.

underlying the recommendations made in Nudge.

First, the ideal of rationality that the book imports from mainstream economic theory is not so innocent.

To separate means-end thinking from the greater context of thinking throughout life yields a very narrow understanding of rationality. This understanding has been heavily criticized from multiple directions. John Dewey, for instance, identified a feedback loop in means-end rationality, showing that ends can be critiqued and altered through the very process of pursuing those ends. On this basis, he developed a distinction between the “desired” and the “desirable,” the desirable being more informed. As Dewey explains it, the experience of desire is something quite direct and unmediated. The need to seek the desirable, on the other hand, “presents itself because past experience has shown that hasty action upon uncriticized desire leads to defeat and possibly to catastrophe.” 3 Therefore, knowledge of what is truly desirable is not immediate, but is rather the product of investigation of conditions and consequences.

Cost-benefit analysis would appear to be better able to comprehend complex decision-making contexts than the simplistic means-end model of rationality, thus helping it to validate Dewey’s distinction between the desired and the desirable.

Yet there remains something very reductive about Thaler and Sunstein’s understanding of rationality as presented in these terms. Despite its greater openness to social complexity, cost-benefit analysis tends to treat stakeholders as stable constituencies with discrete goals or interests that can be factored in a relatively straightforward way into the analysis. But this still may not go far enough to capture the full range of human reasoning activities. Many other philosophers besides Dewey, including Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, John Rawls, and Jean Hampton, have noted the dynamic and evolving quality of human beings working together to meet

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their needs, advance their interests and confront challenges, occasionally arriving at a solution regarded as “reasonable,” if not necessarily in accordance with a strict definition of “rationality” per se. The conclusion of these diverse thinkers is that reasoning has very broad abilities, requirements, and contexts of application— much broader than the narrow conceptions of rationality adopted by Thaler and Sunstein can account for.

Another simple example may help clarify these points. Most of the time, a rat and a human both desiring a piece of cheese will follow different paths, the rat’s almost inevitably being more efficient. One factor here is that, as opposed to rats, most humans have many conflicting desires. Moreover, we have desires about desires, and desires about our desires about desires. Such higher-order desires make us less “efficient.” They also reveal us as inhabiting different aims, plans, and even general worldviews, all in a single given moment. A person’s desire for cheese might plausibly involve physical craving but also questions about the cheese’s nutritional value, thoughts about that evening’s dinner plans, concerns about whether the cheese was produced in a way that conforms with the person’s commitments regarding social justice or environmental sustainability, and so on.

Such complexity, and our evident ability to work within or between varying aims and desires, is a distinctive and generally positive trait of human reasoning. But the picture of means-end rationality and of cost-benefit analysis as criterial of rationality as such leaves out much of this complexity of human life. Despite the social orientation of cost-benefit analysis, it remains unclear that the nar-

Reasoning has very broad abilities,

row conception of rationality presented in Nudge can

requirements, and contexts of

fully account for this complexity—let alone explain

application—much broader than the

which of the competing values in a given case should

narrow conceptions of rationality

determine the aim written in to the architecture of a given choice situation—without falsifying the nuance, dynamism, and ambiguity that inflect human

adopted by Thaler and Sunstein can account for.

reasoning at its best.

One way that we actually acquire aims in the first place is through interaction with other humans. We reason together. And both our beliefs and commitments can be profoundly influenced by this ongoing dialogical process. Rationality, therefore, is social in a much more pervasive and profound sense than even cost-benefit analysis, with its image of self-contained and competing interests or constituencies, can really register. Again, many tools of standard economic analysis simply ignore this deeply social aspect of reasoning. Think for example of the prisoner’s dilemma—a classic analytical device employed by economists in thinking about choice situations. The dilemma results from taking social animals and separating them so

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they cannot communicate with one another. It rests on a model of choice-making that seeks to reduce a socially reasoning being (a person) to a merely individually rational one. In a similar fashion, for the modern mainstream economist, all the complex social aspects of a market are reduced to price signaling. Gone is the haggling in the market square; the “market” itself communicates values, which are determined entirely by a series of individual decisions to buy or sell. In their understanding of means-end rationality and cost-benefit analysis as essential aspects of rationality as such, Thaler and Sunstein also effectively ignore the irreducibly and deeply social nature of reasoning, instead adopting a type of methodological individualism that fails to adequately capture the full range of human reasoning activities.

So the ideas underpinning libertarian paternalism are based upon a conception of rationality and value determination that is problematically narrow, reductive, and socially atomistic. The conception accordingly raises concerns about the compatibility of government nudges with the requirements of a democratic society. A population being smoothly guided toward outcomes preselected by government bureaucrats, no matter how beneficial these outcomes may be, does not conform to most people’s understanding of how a democracy should work. Thaler and Sunstein’s book nevertheless invites the further question: could the cognitive quirks and limitations on which nudge theory rests be leveraged in ways that actually encourage the active participation of citizens essential to the functioning of a democratic society? If so, then nudging might become an important part of a society that is democratic by design. Articulating a coherent understanding of “democratic design” would be a noteworthy development, in part because the field of design as a whole often exemplifies many of the top-down tendencies already discussed in relation to Nudge. Familiar understandings of the designer as expert, authority, arbiter, “demystifier” or leader are quite hierarchical, and hence subject to some of the same criticisms as libertarian paternalism. A strategy that requires a top-down process is at a minimum questionable in its democratic credentials. Even designs that are developed as a direct response to perceived market demands are arguably not truly democratic, because they treat the market as consisting of passive consumers, rather than active citizens. Democratic self-governance requires more than opportunities for passive consumer choice; it demands a different kind of choice architecture entirely.

Could the cognitive quirks and limitations on which nudge theory rests be leveraged in ways that actually encourage the active participation of citizens essential to the functioning of a democratic society?

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The next section of this article identifies several recent efforts to promote a more active form of democratic self-governance, drawing on conceptual resources from

4

Andrew Shea, Designing

for Social Change: Strategies

the design field. But first I wish to recognize that “democracy” itself is treated

for Community-Based Graphic

here as an inherently open and contested concept. As such, the term encompasses

Design (New York: Princeton

a cluster of factors that assume varying weights in different communities’ or

Architectural Press, 2012), 152-53.

societies’ pursuits of democratic governance at different times. Indeed, I think democracy is best understood as an experimental agenda aimed at constructing a government “of the people, by the people and for the people”—and nothing more specific or definite than that. Thus, even if there is one true “concept” behind words such as democracy, community, etc., these are not available a priori and must be constructed within the process of attempting to manifest these ideas in real-world contexts. Similarly, each of the following theoretical resources invokes a cluster of design-oriented concepts that I believe might be helpful in setting an experimental democratic agenda, but I do not claim to ascribe to these concepts more clarity or definiteness than is possible in a constructive project.

DEMOCRATIC DESIGN Nudge theory involves the intentional shaping of choice situations in service of a specific goal. As such, the development of nudge initiatives can be understood as a type of design—a point made explicit in Thaler and Sunstein’s reference to people involved in nudge development as “choice architects.” In light of the concerns noted above, that nudging may threaten the active participation that animates vibrant democratic communities and societies, it is worth investigating the design discipline more broadly, inquiring whether the discipline may contain other resources that could help to underpin more active participation by the citizens of a democracy. Can design actually promote democratic governance? Could there be such a thing as a “democratic design”?

Some members of the professional design community have indeed striven for a more democratic conception of design in recent years. The results are important, and worthy of consideration by other disciplines investigating what practices are necessary for a governance system to be properly thought of as democratic. In what follows I will touch briefly on a few of these developments, all of which warrant much more careful exegesis. My main purpose in noting these developments is to clarify the meaning and criteria of a genuinely democratic approach to design, and thus whether the recommendations advanced in Nudge would need to be reworked in order to promote democratic aims.

One area where designers have made important contributions to adumbrating just what “democratic design” might mean is in the sub-discipline known as community-based design. Andrew Shea’s book Designing for Social Change, for example,

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5

Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders

and Pieter Jan Stappers,

contains a wealth of community engagement strategies for the designer, making it an important resource for those interested in promoting democratic design

Convivial Toolbox: Generative

methods. In a table including the book’s chapter titles along with action-oriented

Research for the Front End

takeaways and suggestions, Shea invites the reader to

of Design (Amsterdam: BIS, 2012), 7.

6

Sanders and Stappers,

•

7

Penny Sparke and Fiona

Fisher, eds., The Routledge Companion to Design Studies (London: Routledge, 2016), 317-318.

Immerse Yourself (i.e. in the communities where the designer wishes to have an impact)

Convivial Toolbox, 8.

•

Build Trust (i.e. among the key stakeholders within those communities)

•

Promise Only What You Can Deliver

•

Prioritize Process

•

Confront Controversy

•

Identify The Community’s Strengths

•

Utilize Local Resources

•

Design With The Community’s Voice

•

Give Communities Ownership and

•

Ensure Sustained Engagement Over Time.4

Complementing Shea’s work, Elizabeth Sanders and Pieter Jan Stappers offer a somewhat different model of democratic design in Convivial Toolbox. There the authors advocate for design tools that allow each person involved to enrich the environment with his or her own vision. This is accomplished through strategies pertaining, for example, to •

End-user final fabrication

•

Platforms for creative expression of individuals

•

The means for achieving community goals

•

Methods, tools, and techniques for exploring what conviviality might look like and feel like, and

•

Scaffolds for collective creativity.5

Sanders and Stappers’ ultimate aim is to define an approach to “generative design research,” an enterprise that gives people a language with which they can imagine and express their ideas and dreams for future experience. These ideas and dreams can, in turn, inform and inspire other stakeholders in the design and development process.6 Combining these two proposals yields a substantial checklist for the designer who wishes to emphasize democratic values. Most important to note is that for these designers and theorists, the designer’s role in community contexts is to offer tools rather than solutions.

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Reference publications suggest additional directions for research and development towards democratic design. In The Routledge Companion to Design Studies, for exam-

8

Pelle Ehn, Elisabet

M. Nilsson, and Richard

ple, a section on “Socially Inclusive Design” emphasizes the imperative of insuring

Topgaard, eds., “Introduction,”

that multiple stakeholders are involved, in order to engage with “diverse insights,

Making Futures: Marginal

knowledge, and other resources in the co-definition and prioritization of specific challenges”; in the co-development and review of the designs; and in an “iterative, 7

Notes on Innovation, Design, and Democracy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014), 10

collaborative review of proposals and prototypes.” These too are strategies that

9

can contribute to the construction of a viable conception of democratic design; as

“Designing Conditions for

such they should be taken into account in any intentional application of nudges by

See, e.g., Anders Emilson,

the Social,” in Ehn, Nilsson, and Topgaard, eds., Making Futures, 19.z.

government officials in a democracy.

Finally, in their edited volume Making Futures, design theorists Pelle Ehn, Elisabet M. Nilsson, and Richard Topgaard present another perspective on democratic design. In their view, design interventions should be thought of as democratic experiments oriented toward multiple, heterogeneous, and controversial futures that are in the making, composed through the networking, the many entanglements, the ongoing thinking and infrastructuring, the patchworking and collision of intersecting rhizomes, and quite mundane design and innovation activities.8 Clearly this is a conception of the democratic potential of design that far exceeds anything that

In a democracy, one ought to design

the standard instruments of economic thought,

with rather than design for.

such as the means-end conception of rationality and cost-benefit analysis, can comprehend. The book also emphasizes the critical point that that in a democracy, one ought to design with rather than design for— another way of insisting upon a social model of design as opposed to a market model. Certain types of social practices are required to make the design process truly democratic, in particular the cultivation of long-term working relationships with key stakeholders—relationships that themselves have a democratic character. Indeed all of these authors urge designers to see themselves as working with the communities they serve, not as designing for those communities. This attitude privileges the responsive and interpersonal in cultivating the development of democratic habits in design practice and education, and in society more broadly. The approach to design that is necessary for such democratic design to flourish is more complex and demanding than a top-down, expert-driven model of the discipline can accommodate.

So, where does nudge-based choice architecture fit in, amid these complex and decentered models of community-oriented design? Do nudges even have a place at

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10

Michael C. Dorf

and Charles F. Sabel, “A

all? I have suggested that as presented by Thaler and Sunstein, nudging exemplifies a nondemocratic and perhaps an antidemocratic conception of design, thematiz-

Constitution of Democratic

ing choice architects of all kinds as agents of top-down technocracy. But to repeat:

Experimentalism,” Columbia

choice architecture cannot be avoided. Nudges are inevitable. There is no neutral

Law Review 98, no. 2 (1998): 267-473. See also Brian

starting point; the only options are to accept whatever choice architecture is already

E. Butler, The Democratic

there by happenstance, or else to consciously construct choice architecture in

Constitution: Experimentalism and Interpretation (Chicago:

service of our jointly and thoughtfully considered (i.e. desirable) aims. The first

The University of Chicago

option simply cedes control over our lives to other forces; therefore, the second is

Press, 2017).

greatly to be preferred. Read as a response to my previous claim that Thaler and

11

Dorf and Sabel, 286.

Sunstein’s account of human cognitive limitations leaves them with a position that

12

Dorf and Sabel, 287.

is too ready to bypass the social and deliberative character of most decision-mak-

13

Dorf and Sabel, 287.

ing in favor of ready-made solutions developed and implemented by experts, this

14

A basic and imperfect

brief survey of democratic design strategies helps to clarify what it would take to

current example of these prac-

democratize the use of nudges. The next section will try to make the possible uses

tices is the Federal Register’s

of nudges in service of democratic aims more explicit.

notice and comment process for proposed regulations.

DEMOCRATIC EXPERIMENTALISM The recent developments in community-based and socially inclusive design discussed above offer hope for the possibility of developing more democratic design strategies. But can nudges have a legitimate place in the development of such strategies? In the remainder of this article, I sketch a system of governance that in principle could include an appropriate role for nudges.

Legal theorists Michael Dorf and Charles Sabel have described a “Madisonian” conception of constitutionally systematized “democratic experimentalism” that would retain much of the traditional structure of the American government, while dramatically changing how its component institutions would function.10 Dorf and Sabel note that because markets “have become so differentiated and fast changing that prices can serve as only a general framework and limit on decision-making,” innovative private firms have had to “resort to a collaborative exploration of disruptive possibilities that has more in common with pragmatist ideas of social inquiry than familiar ideas of market exchange.”11 Specifically, these firms have adopted “federated” and open product development strategies the authors identify under the titles of “benchmarking,” “simultaneous engineering,” and “learning by monitoring.” Benchmarking entails a comprehensive survey of processes across organizations, identifying the most efficient Democratic experimentalism is a system of governance that could include an appropriate role for nudges.

or effective ones to consider for implementation in new contexts. Simultaneous engineering involves the “continuous adjustment of means to ends and vice versa” 12 in light of new experience. And because “the exchanges of information required to engage

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in benchmarking, simultaneous engineering, and error correction also allow the independent collaborators to monitor one another’s activities closely enough to detect performance failures and deception before these latter have disastrous consequences,” 13 this type of collaboration supports learning by monitoring. Group discussion, even among market competitors, has become central to addressing certain complex problems, perspectives, and plans. Over time, the innovative

15

Dorf and Sabel, 350.

16

Dorf and Sabel, 355.

Political theorist Mark Tushnet worries that localized deliberation, while it does allow the utilization of non-expert local knowledge, also risks

organizations involved in these types of information-sharing activities create

“domination by the articulate.”

self-reinforcing habits of inquiry and transparency.

One possible response to this concern is that at least it would be the domination of

Dorf and Sabel argue that a political system built along similar lines could bolster democratic norms. In a democratic experimentalist regime, governmental activity

the locally articulate rather than the professionally articulate. Another factor that

would be presumptively local. Congress would allow and encourage subunits to

might help avoid this type of

experiment with means and, to a lesser extent with ends. Congress would also

domination is the emphasis

ensure that information, such as the results of various experiments in governance, would be made generally available, establishing a comprehensive archive of both 14

successful and unsuccessful legal and regulatory strategies. In a full-blown experimentalist orientation to governance, administrative agencies would be

put upon benchmarking and other types of information sharing. See Mark Tushnet, The New Constitutional Order (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 168, 170.

chiefly charged with assisting subunits in addressing their needs through experimentation. These agencies could also set regulatory standards with congressional authorization, most often following “rolling best-practice rules” and encouraging effective benchmarking.15 The overarching goal would be to create a learning culture where the various subunits would be closer to the actual areas needing governance. What each subunit would actually consist of is itself part of the learning process. Some units might need to be radically local while others might be of national size and scope (an example of the first could be administration of a unique local ecological issue; an example of the latter might be banking regulations).

In this scenario, citizens would continue to evaluate their representatives through general elections, but would benefit significantly from the use of the pooled benchmarking information. Citizens could also become more active stakeholders by means of opportunities to participate in governance councils, bringing together individuals from different backgrounds to address pressing social issues.

Experimentalism in governance, in other words, links benchmarking, rulemaking, and revision so closely with operating experience that rulemakers and operating-world actors work literally side by side—but . . . in plain view of the public—and thus, largely overcome the distinction between the detached staff of honest but imperfectly informed experts and the knowledgeable but devious insiders they regulate.16

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17

Dorf and Sabel, 355.

In an experimentalist setting, the role of the courts would also undergo a change.

Courts would ensure that local governmental experiments fall within the broad aims authorized in Congressional legislation, respect the rights of citizens, and are performed in a properly transparent manner. Interested parties could also challenge governmental policies in court by pointing out alternatives revealed in other experiments in governance, or by alleging that specific rights or policies had been violated in a local governance experiment. This picture of the legal system would transform the current role of judges from static sources of ultimate authority to active collaborators in a broadly democratic and bottom-up experimentalist system—a transformation well aligned with some of the aims of community-based design presented earlier. The emphasis would be not on applying rules from above, or on policing behavior for its adherence to such rules, but rather on encouraging transparent, informed, collective responses to social issues. Indeed, review by experimentalist courts … becomes a review of the admissibility of the reasons private and political actors themselves give for their decisions, and the respect they actually accord those reasons: a review, that is, of whether the protagonists have themselves been sufficiently attentive to the legal factors that constrain the framing of alternatives and the process of choosing among them.17 Currently, courts act as if empirical questions are questions of pure reasoning, but within a democratic experimentalist regime, they would have an experimentally informed and democratically constructed record to work from. This type of collaborative role for the courts is also premised upon the understanding that both social needs and institutional solutions are constantly changing. Therefore, any legal determination must be potentially revisable, in the event that further social experimentation unearths contradictory evidence or new needs. In essence, the legal system itself would have to become an experimental and democratic enterprise.

If democracy—and law within a democratic regime—is taken as an experimental project of social construction, not a readymade system of foundational rules and essential procedures awaiting post hoc application, then democracy and law must

If democracy—and law within a democratic regime—is taken as an experimental project of social construction, not a readymade system of foundational rules and essential procedures awaiting post hoc application, then democracy and law must be understood as socially creative, comparative, and forward-looking projects.

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be understood as socially creative, comparative, and forward-looking projects. In line with the constructivist orientation maintained in this article, we only come to understand democracy and law by building or institutionalizing them through experimentation and participatory iteration.

A democratic experimentalist system, then, would encourage experimentation through its decentered and federated structure, and would pool the resulting information, promoting evolutionary learning within local venues, rather than requiring people to pin their hopes on legal precedents or other sources of top-down authority. Experimental intelligence would be encouraged, and the appeal to expertise disciplined both by the practice of benchmarking and by the constant creation of new citizen-stakeholder publics.

NUDGING EACH OTHER Clearly, the sorts of legal and political arrangements sketched above represent a radically different vision of the appropriate relation between government and a citizenry than that contained in Nudge. But this outline of democratic experimentalism does hint at some ways that behavioral economics generally, and nudges in particular, might form part of a regime that deploys nudges in a more democratic way than Thaler and Sunstein’s own examples generally appear to recommend.

Part of what is so compelling about Nudge is the clear answers it gives to many complex questions about

Democratic experimentalist contexts

how to elicit desirable behavior from citizens. But

resist reductive, one-size-fits-all

this clarity comes at a cost. As we have seen, Nudge’s

solutions—precisely what nudge theory

readers are invited to recognize a narrow picture of rationality, a consumerist understanding of citizen-

has to offer.

ship, and a technocratic picture of governance. Swap out the libertarian framework of individual people applying means-end rationality and cost-benefit analysis in the pursuit of their individual goals for a richer and more politically fraught democratic framework, and the easy answers seem to evaporate. Democratic experimentalist contexts resist such reductive, one-size-fitsall solutions—precisely what nudge theory has to offer.

If, as in this article, democracy is postulated as a primary value over top-down benevolent technocracy, we are committing to a scenario in which discussion of values will almost always involve a process that is messy, pluralistic, and socially contested. But we should not fear such a scenario: to be fully legitimate, values cannot be imposed, but must be discussed and debated before they can be accepted.

Thaler and Sunstein offer nudges to overcome our cognitive quirks because they take their presuppositions, especially regarding the nature of rationality, as

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81

18

On status quo bias and

excessive optimism, see Thaler and Sunstein, 31-35.

obvious. But as Dewey might say, their “givens” are actually not so much given as rather just taken, as unexamined presuppositions. In truth, the development and implementation of nudge initiatives is precisely where dialogue and inquiry are most essential, these being practices indispensable to reaching agreement not just on what we do desire, but on what we ought to desire. Costs seen as being equal from the narrow perspective of cost-benefit analysis might be revealed as different outside of that framework. Indeed, what the authors of Nudge categorize as bad choices stemming from irrational cognitive biases might in some contexts be quite valid choices, but ones driven by other values than those comprehensible within the terms of means-end rationality and cost-benefit analysis.

To create more democratic choice architecture, whether or not nudges are utilized, it is necessary to constrain the technocrat under basic democratic processes. Of course, there are some contexts in which decisions cannot be fully democratic for reasons of safety, efficiency, and so on; nevertheless, democratic processes rather than technocratic fixes must be prioritized where possible. So when governments do engage in nudging citizens, the nudges should aim toward promoting democratic deliberation, rather than cost-benefit calculation, as a first value.

As we have seen, Thaler and Sunstein’s assumption of means-end rationality and cost-benefit analysis as criterial of rationality as such can be questioned. Many claims about human beings’ putative irrationality put forth in Nudge may become less convincing when subjected to such questioning, although some of the quirks identified by behavioral economics would no doubt continue to be seen as irrational and unreasonable even after the critique. Importantly, we might be better protected from potentially negative consequences of these quirks in an environment that prioritizes democratic processes. For instance, think of status-quo bias, the human propensity to accept the first or default option, as opposed to exploring other alternatives, whether or not that first option is actually the best for a given individual. In a democratic experimentalist regime, choice architecture might be developed so as to nudge citizens towards experimentation, disrupting the status quo. At the same time, the experimentalist emphasis on data can also be seen as a guard against optimism bias, a widespread tendency towards excessive confidence in one’s own abilities or chances for success

In a democratic experimentalist scenario, citizens would take back some

even in the face of strong conflicting evidence.18 Under conditions of democratic experimentalism, biases like these can be anticipated and their poten-

of the power that Thaler and Sunstein

tial downsides mitigated, if not fully eliminated,

assign to the technocratic choice

through discussion, deliberation, and the continuous

architect.

accumulation of evidence. The power of “framing,” meanwhile, can be at least somewhat countered in

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a democratic process by the encouragement of experimental counter-framing. In a scenario like this, with multiple experiments yielding multiple outcomes and

19

See Susan Sontag,

“Against Interpretation,” in

suggestions for eliciting desirable behavior, citizens would take back some of

Against Interpretation, and

the power that Thaler and Sunstein assign to the technocratic choice architect. In

Other Essays (New York:

effect, different groups or constituencies might temporarily assume the role of

Picador, 2001, c1966).

choice architect, proposing and implementing structured choice situations based on the groups’ own experiences and accumulated expertise. In a robust democratic setting, in other words, citizens might make room for sharing their expertise with others who are engaged in developing or pursuing similar experiments in self-governance. In effect, therefore, under conditions of democratic experimentalism, we might come to nudge each other.

In effect, under conditions of democratic experimentalism, we might come to nudge each other.

These suggestions are admittedly not as clean or clear-cut as those offered in Nudge’s defense of libertarian paternalism, but they are not as arbitrarily narrow, either. Democratic design requires the ongoing input of all stakeholder groups, not a single top-down process underwriting a permanent policy or pattern of conduct. Values and choice architecture must be constructed in process, and in a way that remains open to new ideas, strategies, and values. Nudges can be a powerful tool for the construction of democratic habits and democratic communities. But as opposed to using them within a libertarian paternalist framework, doing so under the banner of democratic design represents a much greater challenge. Democratic experimentalism offers an example of democratic design that does not allow the process to fossilize, instead establishing an iterative and evolving collection of regulations stemming from social experiments both successful and unsuccessful. Of course, the data created through social experimentation will have to be understood and critiqued through the aims and values that are offered to justify the experiment. But these values will not necessarily be limited to a simple cost-benefit analysis or means-end model of rationality. The kinds of choice architecture that democratic experimentalism encourages would allow for values to be constructed over time. It would also allow governance structures themselves to be included in that constructive work. This system would not solve all value debates by any means, but the ongoing democratic contestation of values and process that it would instantiate might just be the best antidote to the hubris of the technocrat’s claim to know which values should be honored and promoted. Meanwhile, it may be that the seductiveness of the argument in Nudge derives in part from the psychological quest for certainty and clarity that are, as Susan Sontag might have put it, more the intellect’s revenge upon the world than true of the world.19 NUD G IN G E ACH O T HER: HOW D O NUD G E S F I T W I T HIN DEM O CR AT IC DE SIG N?

83

Thaler and Sunstein offer a very valuable insight in pointing out that there is no escaping choice architecture. This is true in democratic processes as well: they are generally structured in ways that yield an exhaustive set of choices among discrete alternatives. But one can at least demand that the structuring of choices remain in the hands of those who will have to live with the consequences of those choices, to the extent that this is possible. Further, to be truly democratic in practice, the development of nudges must offer room for a richer set of values than mere consumer preference. Above all, we should not accept easy solutions stemming from reductive conceptions of rationality. The construction of communities, civic groups, and social structures that eschew simplistic solutions to complex problems obviously goes far beyond the relatively modest recommendations Thaler and Sunstein offer in Nudge. But this constructive work is also, I contend, much more worthy of our endorsement and support.

At the end of the day, nudge theory may itself suffer from a kind of optimism bias regarding its prospects for application within democratic societies. The theory exemplifies both the seductive qualities and dangers of effective framing and, more positively, hints at some tools for structuring decision-making in a genuinely democratic society. Recent work in community-based design and democratic experimentalist political theory contains important suggestions for how to use these tools to understand and create democratic choice architecture. Democratic methods of designing with, as opposed to the more familiar technocratic designing for the end user, may be able to make use of the ideas of behavioral economics without falling prey to the conceptual limitations of Nudge’s somewhat impoverished conceptions of rationality and value creation. Nudge remains essential reading, but it is reading that must be further informed by an understanding and critique of the deep assumptions required by its own framework. To do justice to the deepest political values underpinning modern democracies, any design informed by Thaler and Sunstein’s agenda must remain aware of that agenda’s limiting assumptions.

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85

DO NO HARM: NOTES ON THE ETHICAL USE OF NUDGES Valerie Joly Chock

We are not as rational as we think. While we like to believe that our decisions are 1

Amos Tversky and Daniel

Kahneman, “Judgement Under

the result of rational reflection, the truth is that many factors we are unaware of

Uncertainty: Heuristics and

regularly influence our thinking and decision-making. Advances in cognitive and

Biases,” Science 185, no. 415

behavioral science over the past several decades show that the way options are pre-

(1974): 1124-1131.

2

Tversky and Kahneman,

“Judgement Under

sented—now commonly referred to as “choice architecture”—strongly influences our decisions: we tend to react to a particular option differently depending on how

Uncertainty,” 1124.

it is framed or positioned in relation to other options. This claim is supported by

3

the pioneering “heuristics and biases” research conducted by the psychologists

For more examples,

empirical evidence, and in-depth discussion about how these and other cognitive

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman.1 “Heuristics” refers to the rules of thumb people use to form judgments and make decisions. Although often accurate and

biases influence our decisions,

useful, heuristics can sometimes lead to systematic errors in reasoning, or cogni-

see Dan Ariely, Predictably

tive biases.2 Some examples of cognitive biases include people’s tendency to rely

Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

too heavily on initial suggestions (anchoring), to favor preselected options (default

(New York: Harper Perennial,

effect), to prefer avoiding losses over making gains (loss aversion), and to do

2010); Daniel Kahneman,

things merely because other people do them (bandwagon effect).3

Thinking Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011); Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge:

Based on this research on cognitive heuristics and biases, Richard Thaler and Cass

Improving Decisions About

Sunstein came up with the idea of a “nudge,” which they define as “any aspect of

Health, Wealth, and Happiness

the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without

(New York: Penguin, 2009).

forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives.” 4 Nudges do not change what options are presented, only how they are presented.

Simply put, nudges influence people’s choices and behaviors without limiting their options. Reminders, warnings, and suggestions are familiar examples of nudges. Bans, mandates, and threats, by contrast, are not, since they limit available

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

options. Like a GPS device in a car, which can suggest the best route but does not force the driver to take that route, a nudge can be a way of trying to influence

4

Thaler and Sunstein,

Nudge, 6. Although in their

people without coercing them. Both the driver of the car and the person being

definition of a nudge, Thaler

nudged—the “nudgee”— remain free to choose another available option.

and Sunstein refer explicitly to “economic” incentives, it has been widely accepted in the

Nudging, then, is the practice of influencing people’s decisions and behaviors in predictable but noncoercive ways by controlling the structure of a choice situation.

ensuing literature (including by them) that a more charitable definition takes

Thaler and Sunstein call a person who intentionally designs such choice situations

into account other kinds of

a “choice architect.” Although based on this definition, each of us plays the role of

incentives as well.

choice architect at one time or another, designers are particularly salient examples

5

of choice architects, as their work frequently calls on them to structure the choices

Policymakers, salespeo-

ple, doctors, waiters, and professors provide additional

or decisions that other people—potential customers, clients, or citizens, for exam-

examples of choice architects

ple—need to make.5 For instance, a simple change of default options in organ

who nudge.

donation forms can significantly impact someone’s decision to become a donor.

6

One study shows that when forms have an opt-in default (i.e. requiring explicit

Eric J. Johnson and

Daniel G. Goldstein, “Defaults and Donation Decisions,”

consent; people have to check a box if they wish to participate), less than 20% of

Transplantation 78, no. 12

people typically become donors. When forms instead have an opt-out default (i.e.

(2004): 1713-1716. For more

presuming consent; people have to check a box if they do not wish to participate) over 98% of people agree to become donors.6 This disparity is due to the default effect—our tendency to stick with what is preselected, regardless of what that is.

Similar nudges have been effectively used to increase retirement savings and recycling, and to reduce pollution and speeding, among other things.

on influencing organ donor rates, see Nina Mažar, “Behavioral Insights in Action” in this volume.

7

Thaler claims that

whenever he is asked to autograph a copy of the book he co-authored with Sunstein,

ETHICS OF NUDGING: CRITERIA

he signs with the plea: “Nudge

Designers have been intentionally influencing people’s choices and behavior for a

com/2015/11/01/upshot/

long time. However, the recent research on humans’ cognitive biases and limita-

the-power-of-nudges-for-

for Good.” See nytimes.

tions has raised the ethical stakes for all choice architects by revealing just how influential they can be in eliciting certain outcomes as opposed to others. The

good-and-bad.html.

8

Note that the conditions

of noncoerciveness and

question thus arises: when, or under what circumstances, is it ethically accept-

intended welfare promotion

able to nudge someone? Thaler and Sunstein claim that nudging can indeed be

correspond respectively to the

ethical. They acknowledge that it is possible to nudge for good or bad, and argue that nudging is ethical only when done “for good.” 7 According to them, to nudge for good requires that a nudge meet two conditions: the nudge must be (1) easy to resist and (2) aimed at increasing the welfare of those being nudged.8 According to Thaler and Sunstein, condition (1) requires that the nudge be “easy and cheap

operative terms in “libertarian paternalism,” the theoretical position Thaler and Sunstein stake out in Nudge.

9

Thaler and Sunstein,

Nudge, 6.

to avoid” 9—that is, the nudgee must be able to easily choose a different available

10

option, or none of the options presented. Condition (2) requires that the nudge be

in “‘Better Off, as Judged

10

sincerely intended to make people better off, as judged by themselves: nudgers must have nudgees’ best interests in mind. To “nudge for good,” then, is to nudge in accordance with these two conditions.

Sunstein explores the

meaning of this key phrase

by Themselves’: bounded rationality and nudging” in Riccardo Viale, ed., Routledge Handbook on Bounded Rationality (New York: Routledge, 2021), 563–569.

D O N O H A RM: N O T E S O N T HE E T HIC A L USE O F NUD G E S

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11

Brian Wansink and

A classic example of nudging for good involves food placement. Studies show that

Andrew S. Hanks, “Slim by

consumers tend to choose products depending on their placement. In the context

Design: Serving Healthy Foods

of a cafeteria buffet, over 75% of people select the first food that they see, and the

First in Buffet Lines Improves

first three foods encountered comprise 66% of everything patrons select.11 So the

Overall Meal Selection,” PLoS ONE 8, no. 10 (2013): e77055,

way different foods are ordered and presented in a cafeteria substantially impacts

doi.org/10.1371/journal.

what the cafeteria’s patrons actually eat. Combining this fact with the observation

pone.0077055.

12

For a more detailed

discussion of the cafeteria

that choices have to be presented in some specific way, even if unintentionally, Thaler and Sunstein develop an example in their book focused on the question how

example, see Thaler and

a cafeteria ought to be laid out: should the cafeteria’s designers try to organize the

Sunstein, Nudge, 1–4.

presentation of different foods (a) at random, (b) so as to maximize profits, (c) so that diners are encouraged to eat healthier foods, or (d) by eliminating unhealthy foods from the cafeteria altogether? Option (d) limits the available options, so it is not a nudge, but rather a ban. The remaining options (a-c) are all nudges because they do not make it significantly more difficult for diners to choose other available food options. However, not all are ethical nudges according to Thaler and Sunstein’s “do good” criterion: options (a) and (b) are not ethical. Option (a) fails because arranging the food at random does not take the diners’ best interests into account; option (b) would likely fail both conditions,

A concern with Thaler and Sunstein’s “nudge for good” approach is that it may exclude some nudges that would be considered ethically permissible by most people.

leaving patrons nutritionally and financially worse off than they might otherwise be. Therefore, among this set of options, only (c) is ethically justified. 12 A concern with Thaler and Sunstein’s “nudge for good” approach is that it may not always be feasible to meet their two proposed conditions in practice.

Specifically, condition (2) may exclude some nudges that would be considered ethically permissible by most people, in particular nudges that do not make the nudgees better off, but do not make them worse off either. A random distribution of food items in a cafeteria, not intentionally guiding patrons toward any particular items over any others, would appear to exhibit this sort of ethical neutrality. Of course, cafeterias and food markets more typically place products with the goal of maximizing profits. In doing so, they are by definition not nudging for good, but they are not necessarily nudging for bad, either. It is wrong for business owners to nudge merely for profit while ignoring their customers’ welfare. But is there anything wrong with their aiming to increase profits while also being conscious of their customers’ welfare and making sure, at a minimum, that their welfare is not being harmed or undermined in any way? A store or cafeteria stocked with food items that are both highly nutritious and that support large profit margins is clearly a logical possibility. Based on such a possible scenario, I believe that a more reasonable and realistic standard for the assessment of nudges is that nudges must be expected not to produce any significant harm for the nudgees—that is, nudges must not make nudgees worse off, as judged by themselves.

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

This is a lower ethical standard than that proposed by Thaler and Sunstein, since not making nudgees worse off can happen without necessarily making them better

13

The standard I propose

here is not dependent on any

off. Modifying the account advanced in Nudge, I now propose that to be ethical,

particular view of “harm,”

a nudge must meet the following two conditions: the nudge must (1) be easy

just as Thaler and Sunstein’s

to resist and (2) produce no significant harm for the nudgee.13 Condition (1) is shared between Thaler and Sunstein’s account and the account proposed here. The difference between my proposed “no harm” standard and Thaler and Sunstein’s

standard does not depend on any specific view of “welfare.”

These two terms are complex and difficult to define, and it may be that there is no single

“do good” standard is that my condition (2) is less limiting. It allows for nudges

definition for either of them,

that are intuitively ethical and broadly accepted—but not permissible under Thaler

as varying circumstances

and Sunstein’s more stringent criterion—to be implemented, and thus expands the extent to which nudging can be ethically integrated as a strategy within design practice.14

might lead to different factors being weighted more or less heavily. In any case, establishing precise definitions of these terms is outside the scope of this article.

Before proceeding, it is important to clarify that it is possible for various criteria for

14

the ethical use of nudges to coexist. The goal of proposing the “no harm” criterion

this argument advancing a

is not to reject Thaler and Sunstein’s “do good” criterion out of hand. Instead the

For an earlier version of

similar criterion, see Valerie Joly Chock, “The Ethics and

goal is to suggest that a more attainable standard for the ethical use of nudges is

Applications of Nudges,”

needed in order to account for the full range of actual and possible initiatives that

PANDION: The Osprey Journal

would be considered ethically acceptable by most people, and to propose such a

of Research and Ideas 1, no. 2, article 5 (2020).

standard. Both criteria might coexist, supporting an understanding of different

15

kinds of nudges as being ethically permissible in different ways or contexts. My

in which context influences

specific claim here is that the “no harm” criterion is the lowest bar that a nudge

what criterion is appropriately

must meet in order to be ethical.15 But nudges that meet the “do good” criterion will, a fortiori, meet the “no harm” criterion too. Again, the criterion recommended here is intended to account for intuitively ethical nudges that the “do

There may be instances

regarded as the lowest bar. As a logical matter, there could be contexts in which doing no harm to the nudgee is not good enough, and doing good

good” criterion excludes. In the remainder of this article, I propose three types of

is necessary for the nudge to

such nudges.

be ethical. There could also be contexts in which doing good is necessary but not

APPLYING THE CRITERIA: EXAMPLES OF “NO HARM”

sufficient—that is, contexts

NUDGES

in which an even higher bar

A “no harm” nudge is one that does not increase nudgees’ welfare but does not

ethical.

must be met for a nudge to be

harm them either: it makes the nudgee neither better off nor worse off. There are at least three types of “no harm” nudges, which I will refer to as: (1) Choice Architect nudges, (2) Third Party nudges, and (3) “Meh” nudges. Here I explain more about each type and offer some examples.

The “no harm” criterion is the lowest bar that a nudge must meet in order to be ethical.

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89

16

See the application at tfl.

gov.uk/transport-accessibil-

Choice Architect Nudges These nudges are intended to make the choice architect better off. They aim to

ity/please-offer-me-a-seat,

increase the welfare of the choice architect while not significantly affecting the

and pictures of the badge at

welfare of the nudgee.

flickr.com/photos/tflpress/ albums/72157665969592277.

17

See the “Looking Out for

1.

Please Offer Me a Seat

Other Commuters” section

Transport for London, the UK government agency that supervises public

at lta.gov.sg/content/lta-

transportation in the nation’s capital, designed “Please offer me a seat”

gov/en/getting_around/ public_transport/a_better_pub-

badges to make traveling easier for people with a range of conditions that

lic_transport_experience/

make it difficult for them to stand. Free to users on request, without the need

an_inclusive_public_trans-

to disclose any medical history in the application,16 the badges nudge seated

port_system.html.

commuters (nudgees) to give up their seats to badge wearers (choice architects). “Please offer me a seat” badges are a Choice Architect nudge because the person benefitting is the one doing the nudging, as wearing the badge not only increases their chances of obtaining a seat, but is also intended to reduce the discomfort associated with asking strangers to give up their seats. This nudge meets the “no harm” criterion’s conditions (1) because it is easy for nudgees not to give up their seat if they choose not to do so, and (2) because nudgees are not significantly harmed by the nudge, since giving up their seat and standing up is not difficult for them.

FIGURES 1–7: Singapore’s Land Transport Authority has followed Transport for

London’s lead and implemented their own “May I have a seat please?” initiative, which includes a sticker for people with short-terms conditions (such as those on a one-day medical leave), as well as lanyards and cards for those with long-term conditions. Photos: Land Transport Authority, Singapore.

90

17

Reprinted by permission.

T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

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18

See businessinsider.com/

2.

This nudge consists of a transparent resealable plastic bag designed with

anti-theft-lunch-bags-2014-6.

19

Antitheft Lunch Bags irregular green spots on both sides, to make freshly prepared food look as

The dueling jars technique

though it has gone moldy.18 Users of these bags (choice architects) nudge

has been shown to increase tips by over 100%. A “cats

would-be lunch thieves (nudgees) away from stealing their food. Antitheft

vs. dogs” duel more than

lunch bags are a Choice Architect nudge because the beneficiaries are the bag

doubled (136% higher) the amount in tips collected in a

users, who get to keep their lunch. This nudge meets the “no harm” crite-

North Carolina coffee shop,

rion’s conditions (1) because it would be easy for nudgees to steal the food

compared to a single unlabeled tip jar. See Jacqueline

anyway, and (2) because nudgees are not harmed or made worse off by not

R. Rifkin, Katherine M. Du,

stealing the bag user’s lunch.

and Jonah Berger, “Penny for Your Preferences: Leveraging Self-Expression to Encourage

3.

Small Prosocial Gifts,” Journal

Tip Jars People are more prone to tip when the act of tipping is perceived as a social

of Marketing 85, no. 3 (2020): 204-219. For a collection of

norm. This is due to what is called social proofing: a type of conformity

dueling tip jar images, see

whereby people copy what they perceive to be other people’s actions. Clear,

Astoria Coffee’s gallery: asto-

half-filled jars placed on the counter at a coffee shop, for example, send the

riacoffeeny.com/duelingtipjars

message that tipping is the normal and common thing to do, thereby nudging

20 See donationboxes.co.uk for examples of interactive

customers (nudgees) to tip their baristas (choice architects). Some coffee

donation boxes.

shops go even further by setting up “dueling jars” to increase tipping: in this scenario, two jars with competing alternatives (e.g. cats vs. dogs, Batman vs. Superman, chocolate vs. vanilla, etc.) are placed next to each other so that people can express their preference, “voting” for their favorite option by placing a tip in one or the other jar.19 Tip jars are a Choice Architect nudge because the baristas are the ones who benefit by getting more tips. This nudge meets the “no harm” criterion’s conditions (1) because it is easy for nudgees not to tip if they choose not to do so, and (2) because nudgees are not significantly harmed by tipping, as the financial impact is minimal.

4.

Interactive Donation Boxes A familiar example of this nudge is the “coin vortex” donation boxes often found in science museums. Compared to plain standard donation boxes, interactive ones that “gamify” the donation experience are more engaging, which nudges visitors (nudgees) to support charities and museums (choice architects).20 Interactive donation boxes are a Choice Architect nudge because the one benefitting is the charity, museum, or other organization that owns the box. This nudge meets the “no harm” criterion’s conditions (1) because it is easy for nudgees to ignore the box and not donate, and (2) because nudgees who donate are not significantly harmed by the modest donations of pocket change that the boxes solicit.

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

FIGURES 8–9: Example of donation boxes. Photos: Donation Boxes.co.uk Limited.

Reprinted by permission.

D O N O H A RM: N O T E S O N T HE E T HIC A L USE O F NUD G E S

93

FIGURE 10: The donation box at London’s Barbican Centre. Photo: Valerie Joly Chock.

21

See psd.gov.sg/

Third Party Nudges

challenge/ideas/feature/

These nudges are intended to make a third party—i.e. neither the choice architect

chope-a-seat-with-cheer.

nor the nudgee—better off while not significantly affecting the welfare of the nudgee or the choice architect.

1.

Reserved Seats Singapore’s Land Transport Authority introduced striking reserved seat designs on their trains to signal clearly what seats are intended for commuters with special mobility needs.21 The colorful designs, which incorporate phrases like “Show you care” and “Be good” make reserved seats look different from the other seats, which in turn nudges passengers who don’t need them to be more conscious and think twice before taking those seats. Eyecatching reserved seats are a Third Party nudge because the people benefitting are neither the choice architect (the Transport Authority) nor the nudgees (passengers who choose not to occupy the reserved seat), but the people who get to sit on them. This nudge meets the “no harm” criterion’s conditions (1) because it is easy for nudgees to sit on the reserved seats anyway, and (2) because nudgees are not significantly harmed by not occupying the seats, as standing is not a challenge for them.

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

2.

Donations Legacies are an important source of income for charities. In England, however, while 35% of people indicate a willingness to leave a donation in 22

their will, only 6. 3% of people actually do so. With this fact in mind, the UK’s Behavioural Insights Team, a social purpose organization focused on public-sector nudge development, conducted a series of randomized trials involving social norms, which were invoked as triggers to nudge people into leaving money for charity in their wills. The social norm-based strategy consisted in reminding people that many others leave charitable legacies, followed by asking the people if they would like to do the same. The organiza-

22

Michael Sanders, Sarah

Smith, Bibi Groot, and David Nolan, “Legacy Giving and Behavioural Insights,” report published by the Behavioural Insights Team (2016), bi.team/ publications/legacy-giving-and-behavioural-insights.

23

The Behavioural Insights

Team, “Legacy Giving and Behavioural Insights.”

24

Another third party,

tion found that first-time will writers went on to donate roughly 40% more in

donation-related nudge is

the social norm condition than in the control condition.23 Legacy donations

the “rounding up” technique

triggered by social norms are a Third Party nudge because the entity benefitting is neither the choice architect (solicitor) nor the nudgee (will writer), but the charity that receives the legacy donation. This nudge meets the “no harm”

used by some retailers and restaurants to nudge clients to donate to a good cause.

This nudge involves cashiers, during checkout, inviting cus-

criterion’s conditions (1) because it is easy for nudgees to decline leaving

tomers to increase their bills

money to charity, and (2) because nudgees are not significantly harmed by

to the next round number and

donating, as they will no longer be alive for the consequences of this nudge to affect them in any way.24

donate the difference. Here, the cashier is the choice architect, and the customer is the nudgee; the entity benefitted from the nudge is the charity

3.

System Defaults at Hospitals

that receives the donations.

Generic medications are less expensive and just as effective as name-brand

For more on the psychology

medications. However, many physicians tend to prescribe name-brand medications as a matter of course. Penn Medicine’s Nudge Unit, a behavioral design team embedded within the University of Pennsylvania’s academic

behind this nudge, see Katie Kelting, Stefanie Robinson, and Richard J. Lutz, “‘Would You Like to Round Up and Donate the Difference?’ Roundup

medical center, changed the display defaults in the data system used by the

Requests Reduce the Perceived

center’s physicians, so that generic medications would appear before name-

Pain of Donating,” Journal of

brand medications in the system’s dropdown menus. This change to the system immediately increased generic medication prescription rates from around 75% to 98. 4%.25 This nudge is a Third Party nudge because the people benefitting are neither the choice architect (the Nudge Unit) nor the nudgee (physician), but the patients who save money on medications. This nudge meets the “no harm” criterion’s conditions (1) because it is easy for nudg-

Consumer Psychology, 29, no.

1 (2018): 70–78.

25

See nudgeunit.upenn.edu/

projects/using-default-options-increase-generic-medication-prescribing-rates.

26

The Nudge Unit at Penn

Medicine has also used

ees to disregard the default and select a brand-name medication from the

default options to decrease

dropdown menu instead, and (2) because nudgees are not harmed in any way,

the duration of opioid

as the outcome of the nudge impacts the patients’ personal finances, not the physicians’ finances.26

prescriptions—another Third Party nudge. See nudgeunit. upenn.edu/projects/using-default-options-decrease-opioid-prescribing-durations.

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95

27

For details about the

study and an image of the

4.

We are Watching You A team from Newcastle University in England tested the theory that people

sign used, see Daniel Nettle,

tend to behave better when they believe they are being watched. The team was

Kenneth Nott, and Melissa

able to show that signs featuring watching eyes and including the message

Bateson, “‘Cycle Thieves, We Are Watching You’: Impact of

“Cycle thieves, we are watching you” nudge would-be bicycle thieves not to

a Simple Signage Intervention

steal from locations where the signs are placed. Bicycle thefts decreased by

against Bicycle Theft,” PLoS ONE 7, no. 12 (2012): e51738,

62% in the areas of campus were the signs were located.27 “We are watching

doi.org/10.1371/journal.

you” signs are a Third Party nudge because the person benefitting is neither

pone.0051738.

the choice architect (Newcastle University, in this case)28 nor the nudgee

28

(potential bicycle thief ), but bike owners, as they avoid having their bikes

This nudge has also been

implemented by the Heathrow Airport Police, in associa-

stolen. This nudge meets the “no harm” criterion’s conditions (1) because it is

tion with the UK’s national

easy for nudgees to ignore the signs and steal anyway, and (2) because nudg-

bicycle database, BikeRegister:

ees who are deterred from stealing are not harmed by the nudge.29

twitter.com/mpsheathrow/ status/1238127347758497795.

29

One may think that this

nudge actually makes the nudgees better off because by not stealing, they avoid the potential punishments that might otherwise result.

However, this does not appear to be the case. The study concluded that the signs led to a displacement, as opposed to an absolute reduction, of the offending behavior: bicycle thefts increased in control locations in almost equal proportion to the decrease in experimental locations, suggesting that the nudge effectively deters nudgees from stealing only in a particular location, not from stealing altogether.

FIGURE 11: A BikeRegister warning sign at Heathrow

Airport. Source: Heathrow’s Aviation Policing Twitter account; photo modified by Valerie Joly Chock.

Reprinted by permission.

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

So far, I have proposed two types of “no harm” nudges: Choice Architect nudges and Third Party nudges. There is an additional class of nudge that exists as a

30 This kind of nudge could be categorized as a sub-type

combination of these two. Nudges intended to make both the choice architect and

of either Choice Architect

a third party better off while not significantly affecting the welfare of the nudgee

nudges or Third Party nudges.

30

are also ethical under my proposed “no harm” criterion. As an example, we have another bike-related nudge:

Conceivably, it could also be categorized as a fourth and separate type of “no-harm” nudge. For simplicity’s sake, I’ve decided to avoid further

5.

Bicycle Boxes

categorization; I mention the

When “handle with care” and “fragile” package labels were not enough to

following example just to

induce their shipping partners to take proper care of their products during transit, the Dutch electric bicycle company VanMoof came up with an imaginative solution: printing images of flatscreen TVs on their boxes. This clever packaging design led to 70–80% fewer bicycles arriving to their destinations 31

with damage, thanks to the fact that handlers tend to be a lot more careful with electronic items like TVs than they are with bikes. The package redesign benefits both the choice architect (VanMoof ) and a third party (new bike owner). It makes the former better off by reducing their delivery damage

bring attention to the fact that there are nudges that make all parties involved except the nudgees better off, and that these nudges can also be ethical according to the “no harm” standard advanced in this article.

31

Claimed in a company

blog post: vanmoof.com/blog/ en/tv-bike-box.

rate along with the corresponding expenses for returns, replacements, and refunds. It makes the latter better off by increasing the chances that they will receive a product in perfect condition. This nudge meets the “no harm” criterion’s conditions (1) because it is easy for nudgees to keep mishandling the packages if they choose to, and (2) because nudgees are not harmed by the package redesign, as the new box does not make handling logistics any more complicated or expensive.

FIGURE 12: VanMoof’s shipping box. Source: VanMoof company blog post. Reprinted by permission.

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32

One may think that

choosing a default ringtone

“Meh” nudges Finally, there are some nudges that are not intended to have any significant impact,

for all phones makes the cell-

good or bad, on the welfare of choice architects, nudgees, or third parties. No one

phone manufacturer better off

is made better off or worse off than they were before the nudge.

because this is more practical than having to personalize each phone. However, the relevant options for a man-

1.

Ringtones Cellphone manufacturers set a default ringtone in all the phones they

ufacturer engaged in mass production of cell phones are

produce. As defaults, these ringtones nudge people to stick with them, even

not default ringtone versus

though users are allowed to change them if they want to personalize their

personalized ringtone. They are default ringtone 1 versus

phones. Ringtone defaults are “Meh” nudges because neither the choice

default ringtone 2, where

architect (cellphone manufacturer) nor the nudgee (user) end up better off or

choosing one over the other

worse off as a result of the nudge.32 This nudge meets the “no harm” criteri-

has no significant impact on the manufacturer’s bottom

on’s conditions (1) because it is easy for nudgees to change their ringtones if

line.

they choose to, and (2) because nudgees are not harmed by sticking with the

33

Of course, many stores do

defaults provided by manufacturers.

design their layouts with the express goal of maximizing profits. As long as they do not harm nudgees, these layouts would constitute

2.

Store Layouts and Displays Suppose that the interior of a clothing store is designed so that the shirts

Choice Architect nudges.

are located near the entrance, the pants are in the middle of the store, and

However, if these stores

the shoe section is in the back, along with the checkout counter. This layout

design their layouts with only their profit in mind, harming

nudges customers to explore the store in that order: shirts first, pants second,

their customers in the process

and shoes last. Store layout nudges like this one are “Meh” nudges as long as

(e.g. by subtly encouraging

the overall layout has no significant impact on the store’s revenues or profits,

them to spend more money than they had intended), then

because neither the choice architect (store) nor the nudgees (customers) end

the layouts would consti-

up better off or worse off as a result of the layout.33 This nudge meets the “no

tute unethical nudges. The example given here could

harm” criterion’s conditions (1) because nudgees are free to disregard the

be seen as analogous to a

store layout and explore the store in any order they want, and (2) the nudgees

random placement of food

are not harmed by exploring the store following its layout, regardless of what

items in a cafeteria, which is not ethical under Thaler and

items are at the front, middle, and back of the store.

Sunstein’s “do good” criterion, but ethically permissible under my proposed “no harm”

All the instances of “no harm” nudges described in this section would be consid-

criterion.proportion to the

ered unethical according to Thaler and Sunstein’s “do good” criterion, because

decrease in experimental

they are not aimed at increasing nudgees’ welfare, and thus fail to meet Thaler and

locations, suggesting that the nudge effectively deters

Sunstein’s proposed condition (2). However, they are permissible under the “no

nudgees from stealing only in

harm” criterion proposed in this article because they do not harm nudgees, and

a particular location, not from stealing altogether.

98

therefore meet my proposed alternative condition (2).

T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

CONCLUSION Recent findings in behavioral science are of particular interest for designers, since

34

The author wishes to

thank Jon Matheson for help-

those findings show that the way options are organized, framed, or presented—

ful comments on an earlier

one of the main responsibilities of designers—influences people’s choices and

version of this article.

behaviors. The scientific findings reveal the great power that designers have in their role as choice architects. But as the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. Designers must be empathetic toward the users for whom they are designing, and aware of how everything they design has the potential to nudge people’s choices and behaviors. Anyone using persuasive strategies such as nudging must understand that implementing nudges in their design practice can have great consequences, and that it is imperative to design and implement nudges in a way that is ethical.

In this article, I have argued that any standard which aims to categorize nudges from an ethical standpoint, offering a complete accounting of these interventions in accordance with broadly accepted ethical norms, must include nudges that do not harm nudgees, but do not necessarily make them better off, either. For this purpose, I have proposed a criterion for the ethical use of nudges that coexists with Thaler and Sunstein’s “do good” criterion, but that greatly expands the domain for the ethical application of nudges. My “no harm” criterion states that for a nudge to be ethical, it must meet these two conditions: (1) the nudge must be easy to resist, and (2) it must cause no significant harm for the nudgee. I have argued that “no harm” nudging is the minimum threshold that a nudge strategy must clear in order to be ethical. As an alternative to Thaler and Sunstein’s “do good” nudging, lowering the bar in the way proposed here allows for nudges that are both intuitively permissible and broadly accepted to be implemented in practice. In this article, I have offered examples of three types of such nudges: Choice Architect nudges, Third Party nudges, and “Meh” nudges.34

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NUDGING FOR WELFARE AND FREEDOM: AN EXPLORATION OF ETHICS FOR UX DESIGNERS Laura Valis INTRODUCTION 1

Richard H. Thaler and

Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge:

Historically, behavioral science has been a specialized academic field and the

Improving Decisions about

possible application of its findings to other disciplines such as design has not been

Health, Wealth and Happiness

widely explored. That started to change with the publication of Nudge by Richard

(New York: Penguin, 2009).

2

Cass Sunstein and

Richard Thaler, “Libertarian

Thaler and Cass Sunstein, which introduced to a broad readership evidence about human cognitive limitations and biases, and a range of behavioral techniques

Paternalism,” American

for leveraging those biases to influence choice and alter the probability of cer-

Economic Review 175, (2003):

tain outcomes, including those involving the making of decisions.1 Thaler and

93.

Sunstein’s book made the relevance of behavioral science to the design fields explicit. In doing so, the book challenged two widely-shared assumptions: first, the assumption that people always or generally do make choices in their own best interest; second, the assumption that paternalism always involves coercion.2 The implication for designers was that in many contexts people could benefit greatly from the sort of structuring and ordering that design is able to bring to a complex situation. Moreover, Nudge argued, such design-led guidance can occur without the need to impose bans, mandates, or other top-down policies that restrict individual freedoms. Referring provocatively to their original position as “libertarian paternalism,” Thaler and Sunstein sought to affirm both the potential benefits of supporting people’s decision-making through the deployment of nudges; and the imperative, deeply embedded in Western moral and political traditions, to respect individual freedoms, acknowledging the user’s autonomy in making final decisions about what to do.

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Subsequent developments in the design disciplines have indeed taken the relevance of behavioral science into account. For example, in the field of digital interface design—broadly referred to as UX in this article—opportunities for the application of behavioral science findings abound. The result is a world of digital environments, online and offline, that is rich in “nudges,” the intentional framing, layout, or ordering of information in order to subtly guide the users of UX environments to make particular choices or behave in predictable ways. The new opportunities

The new opportunities for employing

for employing science to influence human behavior

science to influence human behavior

have contributed to the increasing sophistication of

have contributed to the increasing

the UX field. However, those same developments also

sophistication of the UX field.

raise serious ethical questions for professionals work-

However, those same developments

ing in the field.

also raise serious ethical questions for professionals working in the field.

In this article I consider the implications for UX design of the emerging science of human behavior, and the broader “attention economy” of which nudge-based interface design has become an important part. I then assess the ethical challenge facing UX designers, and Thaler and Sunstein’s own account of the ethics of nudging. Finally, I briefly describe a recent initiative of the UK government that makes use of nudges but which avoids the ethical concerns that other nudge-based UX designs have sometimes invited.

UX DESIGN AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE Since the late 1990s, digital communication technologies, most obviously the internet, have facilitated the generation, categorization, and storage of gigantic quantities of information. Early websites often presented content to users in confusing ways, accessible only through poorly-designed navigational interfaces.

Coincident with the ever-increasing amounts of data to sort through, the nascent field of interface design has undergone a period of rapid development. UX drew on other current design theories and practices where progress had already been made.

For example, interaction design, focused originally on effective physical interfaces and environments, and user-centered design as exemplified in modern usability testing methods, both became important resources for early interface designers.

UX applies interaction design principles in focusing not only on the layout and surface appearance of a system, but also on the kinds and amounts of feedback, control, productivity, creativity, communication, learning, and adaptability that the system can support. In order to assess these diverse elements, UX designers apply usability testing during the design process—again drawing on methods originally developed in more traditional design contexts, but now expanding the meaning

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3

Thaler and Sunstein,

Nudge, 11–13, 85–89.

of “usability” to encompass digital interfaces, services, and experiences. Usability testing is typically conducted many times throughout the process of developing an interface, until the desired outcomes are reached—a key aim typically being to make a design as intuitive and effortless to use as possible. For example, a UX team might be tasked with simplifying and streamlining the process of renting a car through an online platform: the ideal would be a rental experience that feels smooth and seamless, but does not undermine customers’ ability to fully understand what they are committing to at each stage in the rental process.

An important device for achieving this sense of seamlessness in UX environments is the strategic use of “default” settings and options. A default option is a preset course of action that takes effect if no alternative is specified by the user or decision-maker.3 And this is where behavioral science and its application in “nudge theory” come in. For this field has now produced a great deal of research into the ways that default or automatic settings can facilitate the emergence of certain outcomes. A sophisticated grasp of common cognitive biases, such as the tendency for people to select the default option whatever it may be, informs the design of myriad processes today, including within the UX field.

In referring to their position as libertarian paternalism, Thaler and Sunstein effectively endorse a certain kind of relationship between experts—whether government bureaucrats or private sector actors such as corporations—and end users of such experts’ work (e.g., citizens, clients, or customers), that can arise through the strategic application of nudge tools such as default settings. Professional designers can reliably, albeit subtly and imperfectly,

Professional designers can reliably, albeit subtly and

guide people toward

imperfectly, guide people toward certain choices or outcomes

certain choices or out-

over others, and can do so while leaving all possible choices

comes over others, and

available. This is why Thaler and Sunstein believe it is possible

can do so while leaving

for private and public agents to encourage better choices

all possible choices

while still respecting individual freedom of choice.

available. This is why Thaler and Sunstein believe it is possible for

private and public agents to encourage better choices while still respecting individual freedom of choice. More specifically, for Thaler and Sunstein, the default settings more or less universally deployed in interface design constitute a category of nudges, exhibiting an element of paternalistic influence over choice-making contexts, while allowing the user the freedom to make the final choice. Designers can bring great benefits to members of modern societies by acknowledging the limitations of human rationality and proceeding to work around those limitations

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to redeem human decision-making through effective “choice architecture,” the intentional structuring of a decision or set of options so as to elicit a certain result.

This is Thaler and Sunstein’s essential point as it bears on the design profession.

So UX has among its sources interaction design, usability testing, and now, nudge theory. Drawing on these resources has greatly increased the sophistication of the UX field. But the field now also contributes to larger trends in the culture that are generally seen as problematic. This is the subject of the next section.

UX IN THE ATTENTION ECONOMY The previous reference to “seamlessness” as a goal of contemporary interface design points to a central ethical challenge facing UX designers today: how to avoid using their skills in ways that make the digital

UX designers’ use of behavioral science findings to inform the design of digital environments invites ethical scrutiny.

environments they design “too easy” to use—hustling users on toward an outcome they might not have arrived at independently. It is not surprising that the sophistication of contemporary UX, especially its use of behavioral science findings to inform the design of digital environments, invites ethical scrutiny. A decision procedure embedded in a digital platform—e.g. an e-commerce website—can be expected to strive for “seamless” customer experience in ways that contemporary individuals and societies might prefer to limit or even exclude (for example, the design might incorporate features that subtly encourage shoppers to spend more money than they had intended). So it would appear that UX is involved in a basic tension: on one hand, incorporating behavioral techniques makes their designs better, i.e. more effective; but on the other, using the techniques tends to involve altering or bypassing the rational basis of the designer’s relation to the user. Recognizing the inescapably hierarchical or top-down structure of the interaction between “choice architects” of all kinds and end users, nudge theory positions designers as experts, whose training lets them know best how to bring about a certain type of outcome.

A consequence is that UX designers find themselves at constant risk of violating widely-shared ethical norms—against manipulation and infantilization, for example. More concretely, UX designers may find themselves in a conflict of interest, for instance between business owners or government officials seeking to produce a certain kind of behavior, and customers or citizens who may have independent grounds for disavowing such behavior, not to mention a general aversion to feeling manipulated. The stakes of this potentially conflictual position occupied by UX are only sharpened by the additional consideration that most nudges are intentionally designed to operate below the threshold of the subject’s rational consciousness.

That we may be unconsciously guided toward certain choices or options over others raises real ethical concerns.

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The previous references to manipulation and infantilization help to further clarify 4

Herbert A. Simon,

“Designing Organizations for

the central concern pertaining to nudge-informed UX: could the “seamless”

an Information-Rich World,”

interfaces and experiences that the UX profession can deliver on behalf of industry

in Martin Greenberger,

and government actually deprive human users of their agency in certain contexts?

Computers, Communication, and the Public Interest,

As noted previously, nudge theory endorses the top-down relationship between

(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins

expert choice architects and clients (customers, citizens, etc.) whose real, rational

Press, 1971), 40–41.

5

Tim Wu, The Attention

Merchants: The Epic Scramble

interests are promoted by the choice architects. And by explicitly combining the paternalism inherent in the designer-user relation with the stipulation that ethical

to Get Inside Our Heads (New

nudges preserve the freedom for clients to make their own choices among a full

York: Vintage, 2016), 11–15.

range of options, Thaler and Sunstein suggest that they regard the production of “seamless” user experiences as a legitimate and unproblematically positive goal of choice architects operating in the UX field. For them, as long as an interface does not actually foreclose any legitimate options, and allows users to choose options other than the default, nudging in UX contexts is ethically sound. But notwithstanding their optimism about the upside potential of well-designed nudges, concerns about the ethical risks of promoting seamless interface design in UX environments would appear to be well-founded. It is obvious that corporations, for example, have a prima facie incentive to deploy behavioral science-based techniques, in contexts ranging from product development to marketing, and in service of their own aims: increasing market share, revenues and profits. It is also obvious that design today is

The tools of UX—tools for the design

often deployed in ways intended to nudge people to

of interfaces, environments, and

adopt behaviors—opting in to, or failing to opt out

experiences—have become part of what

of, a purchase, subscription, or other commercial

is called the “attention economy.”

commitment, for example—that they would not otherwise choose.

In other words, the tools of UX—tools for the design of interfaces, environments, and experiences—have become part of what is called the “attention economy.” The concept of the attention economy was first formulated by the economist Herbert Simon: In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth is something else; a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes.

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.4

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The legal theorist and author Tim Wu credits Benjamin Day, the 19th-century founder of the newspaper The New York Sun, with engineering an important moment

6

See, e.g., Nir Eyal with

Ryan Hoover, Hooked: How to

in the emergence of the attention economy. Day realized that his newspaper could

Build Habit-Forming Products

rely on advertising, rather than individual subscriptions, to generate profits—in

(New York: Penguin, 2014). A

other words, Day had the important insight that advertisers were his company’s true customers, and the readers were, in fact, the product, whose attention he was offering to sell to the advertisers. To maximize the amount of attention he was able

more recent book by the same author does address some ethical risks of applying behavioral science to product development, in particular the

to offer advertisers, Day lowered the price of the newspaper to just a penny per

tendency of the resulting

copy, in comparison to competitors that cost five or six cents apiece.5 The business

products to colonize users'

took off, becoming a model that has since expanded to many other kinds of media, most obviously including the gigantic social media platforms that profit by monetizing personal data which the platforms’ users voluntarily share as a condition of

attention. See Nir Eyal with Julie Li, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life (Dallas: BenBella Books, 2019).

“free access.” Wu’s analysis highlights Day’s prescience in anticipating now-widespread practices within the attention economy.

What does all this mean for UX? It is clear that the attention economy poses special strategic opportunities, as well as new and extraordinary ethical risks, for UX designers. In this more specific disciplinary context, too, concerns about the way many professional designers think about their relation to end users would appear to be well-founded. Mainstream, well-known authors working and writing about UX have tended to focus on the application of behavioral techniques in commercial contexts—an instrumental orientation to the field that may not exclude, but also does not emphasize, ethical considerations.6 UX as a field faces intrinsic ethical challenges inasmuch as its goals can be realized in ways that are ethically problematic. The challenge is to minimize bad uses while leveraging and utilizing the power of behavioral science-supported design for good purposes. But how can designers even think about “the good” they are supposed to help realize? That’s the topic of the next section of this article.

ETHICS FOR UX DESIGNERS Western philosophers have developed various frameworks or paradigms for evaluating behavior from a moral point of view. Two of the most important in modern times have been utilitarianism and deontology. In utilitarianism, the consequences of an action, its impact on the happiness or welfare of all those affected by the action, is the measure by which its rightness or wrongness is determined. Additive and extensive in approach, utilitarianism identifies the “greatest good for the greatest number” as the criterion of morally right action. Deontological ethics, by contrast, seeks out universal rules or imperatives, the application of which in

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concrete contexts is the essence of the moral life. In emphasizing rule-following as the foundation of ethical behavior—the injunction not to lie, for example, regardless of the context or consequences—deontology focuses on an action’s underlying motives, not its eventual outcomes, in determining whether the action is good. It is primarily the deontological tradition that underpins the individual rights and liberties enshrined in contemporary constitutions and legal codes worldwide.

One way to understand the appeal of nudge theory is that it appears to honor both of these major ethical traditions at once. Indeed, Thaler and Sunstein’s slogan “libertarian paternalism” seems to signal their simultaneous alignment with deontological (liberty-preserving) and utilitarian (welfare-promoting) moral principles in a particularly direct, even blatant, way. Even so—or perhaps precisely because of this claimed dual alignment—the position laid out in Nudge has been heavily criticized, for instance by advocates of more “pure” versions of political libertarianism and of progressive welfare-state economic policies frequently defended along utilitarian lines. After all, Thaler and Sunstein, following the behavioral science, do not, in point of fact, trust individuals to make their own best decisions in many cases—so “real” libertarians, rejecting or questioning the research on limits to human rationality, will feel justified in their suspicion of nudges, with their compensatory paternalism toward end users. Meanwhile, many nudges can be said to increase general welfare only in relatively superficial, minor ways—a circumstance that can sometimes make it more difficult to advance broader discussions about public policy and the kind of world people want to live in. So the deployment of nudge initiatives does not automatically yield utilitarian victories, either. Of course, the phrase “libertarian paternalism” is deliberately contradictory-sounding; but it may be that the divergent commitments encompassed in that phrase cannot, in the end, be tied together into a single coherent position.

Nudge does call out something important in noting Nudge does call out something

and defending the hierarchy between designers and

important in noting and defending the

users. But that hierarchy is precisely what makes

hierarchy between designers and users.

design, including UX design, an unavoidably ethical

But that hierarchy is precisely what

discipline. What the difference between design-

makes design, including UX design, an unavoidably ethical discipline.

ers and users actually shows is the importance of employing design research methods to understand the behaviors and goals of the people using the end product. In turn, this research will allow designers to

address real needs and real problems, as opposed to creating new needs and problems, along with their corresponding “solutions.” Above all, actively researching user needs will help UX design contribute constructively to the attention economy, instead of uncritically adding to its worst tendencies.

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So, drawing on the previous discussion of ethical paradigms, as well as the special ethical risks facing UX designers, I propose the following ethical standard for the design professions: design should strive to give people the means for better understanding their own needs and addressing their own problems, instead of pushing prepackaged “solutions,” on users—and should do so while maintaining users’ freedom of choice. Here I go beyond the minimal Hippocratic injunction against causing harm, stipulating that design professionals have an obligation to seek positively good outcomes through their work.

It is true that Thaler and Sunstein also stipulate that nudges must be beneficial to—i.e. endorsed by—their subjects. That is, “nudgees” must agree, at least retrospectively, that a given nudge initiative has helped them and they are comfortable being (having been) subjected to it. But despite this stipulation, significant ethical concerns remain in regard to the appropriate relation of design experts to end users, as that relation is envisioned within nudge theory.

In promoting a shift in focus, from “solutions” to “means,” I seek to overcome concerns about manipulation and infantilization that can arise from nudge theory’s endorsement of paternalism. Sustaining a truly ethical design practice in the context of the attention economy would mean respecting both prospective users’ freedom to choose or reject a particular option, but also would mean respecting users enough to have the competence to identify and address their own problems. This, I maintain, would be a more appropriate way to honor both utilitarian and deontological principles in a single ethical orientation for design professionals. This proposal combines the dual ethical criteria of respect for individual freedoms, and of commitment to welfare maximization, in a more viable way than that represented in most mainstream discussions of nudge theory. Encouraging designers, including UX designers, to focus on developing tools that end-users can actively deploy in service of their shifting needs, as opposed to developing prefabricated solutions, especially those that position users as passive consumers, can help to maintain some of Thaler and Sunstein’s key insights, while avoiding or mitigating some of the problematic implications of their own understanding of a nudge-informed design enterprise.

For example, Thaler and Sunstein propose that employers set up automatic retirement savings plans for their employees, a policy shift that would probably increase overall savings (hence, overall welfare). This “Save More Tomorrow” program has been criticized from a deontological standpoint, for depriving individuals of the responsibility to plan for their own futures. An alternative intervention, in which design expertise is used to make different savings and investment scenarios easy for nonexperts to comprehend and compare, thereby allowing more informed choices about retirement planning by individual employees, would be an example of substituting a tool for a top-down solution. In the final section I discuss another recent example of UX design used to develop tools that can help individual users meet their own commitments.

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PUBLIC HEALTH ENGLAND 7

See gov.uk/govern-

ment/organisations/public-

The UX field is inextricably ethical: the way its products are developed and

health-england/about.

deployed materially impacts the domain of the users’ free choice and also their

8

overall welfare. Moral evaluation from both deontological and utilitarian per-

“Behaviour change

technique taxonomy version 1 from University College London,” University College,

spectives is a natural, indeed predictable, result of the sophisticated nudge-based methods informing contemporary UX design practice, given that UX can apply its

London, 2018, ucl.ac.uk/pals/

tools for developing “seamless” user interactions in service of ethically good ends

research/clinical-education-

as well as of ethically questionable ones. In the previous section, I suggested that

al-and-health-psychology/ research-groups/behaviour-

UX design should focus on offering tools to users—which users can then apply to

change-techniques/resources/

advance their own ends—as a possible way to align professional design practice

bcttv1-publications.

with mainstream ethical norms associated with the utilitarian and deontological traditions. The following represents an example of such a constructive application of contemporary UX design expertise.

Public Health England

The UX field is inextricably ethical: the way its products are

(PHE) is a British

developed and deployed materially impacts the domain of the

governmental health

users’ free choice and also their overall welfare.

organization set up to “protect and improve the nation’s health and

wellbeing and reduce health inequalities.” 7 It produces a number of public-facing preventative health campaigns every year, addressing a wide range of issues from smoking cessation to reducing childhood obesity. These public communication campaigns often rely on marketing as their primary mechanism for changing behavior, with carefully constructed brands, messaging frameworks, and advertising distributed across a variety of platforms. In the last several years, PHE has developed a series of supporting digital services to augment their ongoing campaign work. They have created a variety of apps to support people who want to get more active, reduce their alcohol intake, or improve their family’s diet, among other health-related goals. These tools go beyond mere sharing of health information and advice, providing users with proactive support for changing their behavior. The apps were created by a small multidisciplinary team that combined an understanding of user needs with behavioral science insights and service design development methods. The team also utilized several recently developed behavioral change tools created at University College London.8 The apps the team developed as part of its alcohol reduction initiative reflect current British government policies and health recommendations regarding alcohol consumption. Among those recommendations is that people should take one or more days off between drinking sessions. The design team used this “days off ” advice as the starting point to create a new service designed to reduce individual

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alcohol consumption. The team conducted ethnographic research to understand how people drank over a week and what the function of each drinking occasion

9

“Drink Free Days,” Apple

inc., 2018, apps.apple.com/gb/

was. It became apparent that it would be hard to alter some drinking occasions,

app/one-you-drink-free-days/

particularly those where alcohol plays its familiar role as a social lubricant. Alcohol

id1196694906.

was so ingrained in various social rituals that intervening in them would have meant challenging the entire culture of drinking in the UK. There were, however, some in-home, midweek drinking occasions that the team thought might be easier to change: respondents reported having a drink after work to unwind, a glass of wine while making dinner, another with dinner, and so on. The participants described having these drinks out of habit, identifying them as less important and as bringing little joy.

Once these midweek, in-home drinking occasions had been identified, the design team settled on a number of behavioral change techniques to integrate into the service, including: •

Goal setting: users were prompted to identify in advance the days of the week they intended not to drink

•

Self-monitoring: users were prompted to tell the service every morning if they had drunk the night before, and could track the days they drank in a calendar

•

Reminders: users were sent notifications about drink-free days at preselected times

•

Rewards: users were sent congratulation messages upon achieving specific goals

These nudge-based design criteria were used to inform development of an app that citizens looking for help in moderating their alcohol intake across the week could download. That is, the team developed a tool for helping British citizens who are dealing with this particular challenge in their lives.9 The approach was tested in a randomized control trial to understand if it worked.

Initial indications showed promise and a fully working product was created to test at wider scale. This beta version of the app also underwent extensive usability testing to ensure that not only did the underlying behavioral change techniques work, but the service was easy to engage with. Released in 2018, the Drink Free Days app is still available today, with an average user rating of 4. 6 out of 5 on Apple’s App Store and more than 50,000 downloads from Google Play. In sum, PHE’s personal drinking management app has been a success both in terms of its impact in the market and, I claim, in the way it upholds the moral obligations that UX designers have to users.

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CONCLUSION 10

The author wishes to

acknowledge the contribution

The combination of behavioral science and design yields very powerful tools for

of Rupert Tebb, who provided

the eliciting of specific behaviors and behavioral patterns. Choices can be struc-

source materials for the Public

tured for our own benefit, or for someone else’s. Designed interactions can register

Health England case example.

moral norms such as respect for rational personhood, or can bypass the rational person in favor of, among other things, a “seamless” customer journey culminating in a sale. In this article, I have discussed some of the ethical challenges facing practitioners in the UX field—a domain of design practice that has grown rapidly in sophistication, especially following the incorporation of nudge techniques— and proposed that UX can best align its practices with prevailing ethical norms if designers focus their efforts on developing the means for users to understand their options and make informed decisions, as opposed to offering prefabricated “solutions” purporting to remove or eliminate problems altogether. Focusing on means or tools as opposed to solutions helps to overcome the ethical concerns associated with libertarian paternalism. The best way to honor mainstream ethical norms, including those stemming from the utilitarian and deontological traditions, would be to develop products that retain a maximum of choice, while seeking to enlist and engage end users in addressing their own challenges and meeting their own goals. A design practice that met these criteria might take different forms in different contexts. In a public-sector environment such as the PHE drinking reduction initiative, for example, the design team could focus entirely on the end user in developing its free app, and on which design features would best help users stick to their stated plans and considered goals. When, by contrast, designers’ work is circumscribed by commercial imperatives, designers may find that the best way to uphold commitments to liberty and welfare at once may actually require slowing down a decision proce-

Choices can be structured for our own

dure that might otherwise be too seamless—that is,

benefit, or for someone else’s.

too quick to bypass the rational person on the other end of the designed interface.10

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111

THEORY-STORMING IN THE URBAN REALM: USING NUDGE THEORY TO INFORM THE DESIGN OF HEALTHPROMOTING PLACES Evonne Miller and Debra Flanders Cushing Urban designers, landscape architects, planners, architects, and policymakers are 1

Aaron Antonovsky,

“The salutogenic model as

redesigning the urban realm—streets, parks, plazas, and neighborhood cen-

a theory to guide health

ters—to promote health and well-being and enable people of all ages to engage

promotion,” Health Promotion

in healthier lifestyles. Often associated with the “salutogenic model” of health

International 11, no. 1 (1996): 11–18.

2

Ottawa Charter for

promotion,1 designing for health takes a proactive rather than reactive approach in seeking to enable people to engage in activities that support their well-being.

Health Promotion, who.int/

When applied to public space, the resulting environments can be innovative,

teams/health-promotion/

engaging, and exciting, rather than bland and utilitarian. The emerging health-ori-

enhanced-well-being/ first-global-conference/

ented focus on the physical environment also aligns with a “settings approach” to

actions.

health promotion, which argues that “health is created and lived by people within

3

the settings of their everyday life; where they learn, work, play, and love.” 2 Yet it

Benjamin Ewert,

“Promoting health in schools: Theoretical reflections on the settings approach versus nudge tactics,” Social Theory & Health 15, no. 4 (2017): 430–447.

does not ignore psychological or behavioral factors, since individual, cultural, and group characteristics are also important influences on people’s everyday choices.3 That an environment does not directly cause sickness or ill health does not necessarily mean that it enables or leads people to be healthy, either. Indeed, while salutogenic environments accommodate daily opportunities for physical activity, access to nature, and social connections, it is imperative that they also provide directive cues to those opportunities, or nudges, so people can take full advantage of them. The application of behavioral science known as “nudge theory” includes important insights for the development of such directive design cues that can guide healthy choices.

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Nudge theory argues that people can be subtly influenced to make better decisions, including about their health and well-being, through the introduction of simple,

4

Richard H. Thaler and

Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge:

noncoercive changes in the environment called “nudges.” Richard Thaler and Cass

Improving Decisions about

Sunstein outlined this concept in their book Nudge. Describing their position as

Health, Wealth and Happiness

“libertarian paternalism,” Thaler and Sunstein argue that people must have the freedom to make their own decisions, but that it is also possible to “steer people’s choices in directions that will improve their lives.” 4 Drawing on research in behavioral economics and psychology and on language from the design disciplines, Thaler and Sunstein define a nudge as “any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives.” 5 For example, making healthy food more visually prominent than junk food is an oft-cited example of a nudge

(New York: Penguin, 2009), 5.

5

Thaler and Sunstein,

Nudge, 6.

6

Richard Thaler, Cass

Sunstein, and John Balz, “Choice Architecture,” in The Behavioural Foundations of Public Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 428–439.

towards healthy eating. Thaler and Sunstein describe how this small intervention has been proven to increase the consumption of fruits and vegetables in places like school cafeterias, even as it preserves access to the lower-quality foods. These types of simple low-cost changes have the power to transform people’s behaviors in many other ways as well.

Thaler and Sunstein provide several examples of nudges in the urban context. To address the problem of too many drivers speeding around the dangerous S curves on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive, the city painted white stripes across the road, narrowing the distance between the stripes in the areas closer to the curves; this intervention gives drivers the perception of increasing speed as they approach the dangerous curves, thus inducing them to hit the brakes. This tiny nudge reduced crashes by 36% compared to the same six-month period in the previous year.6 Similarly, visitors to London will notice the words “Look Right” painted on the roads near crosswalks, a nudge for people who are accustomed to traffic coming from the left to look the other way.

Multiple nudges often work together, reinforcing healthy behaviors in one setting. For example, the

Multiple nudges often work together,

design of one building within an affordable housing

reinforcing healthy behaviors in one

development in the South Bronx, New York, incorpo-

setting.

rated several nudges to promote healthy living and encourage physical activity. The apartment building features central, wide, and well-lit stairwells, with artwork, background music, and point-of-decision prompts encouraging their use. The building’s elevators, by contrast, are in a less prominent location, and do not travel particularly fast between floors. The building also includes an indoor gym and outdoor exercise circuit. As a result of these design features, the residents reported a significant increase in stair use and a decline in body mass index, compared to a control group living in a

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113

7

Elizabeth Garland et al.,

“Active design in affordable housing: a public health

similar building in the same neighborhood that lacks these features. The inclusion of these health-promoting nudges earned this building a LEED Innovation in Design (ID) Credit for Design for Health through Increased Physical Activity.7

nudge,” Preventive Medicine Reports 10 (2018): 9–14.

8

See healthystreets.com.

9

Alice Woodruff, Applying

nudge theory to walking:

Thaler and Sunstein address many of their recommendations to people involved in government and public policy; and policymakers have indeed made effective use of nudge principles in various urban planning contexts. For example, the City of

Designing behavioural inter-

London Transport Strategy has embraced the concept of “healthy streets,” devel-

ventions to promote walking,

oping guidelines to determine if a street enables healthy behaviors—one of the

(Melbourne: Victoria Walks, 2017).

10

Behavioural Insights Ltd.,

key indicators being whether people choose to walk, cycle, or use public transport in getting themselves from place to place. These guidelines involve important

EAST: Four Simple Ways to

parameters such as adequate street widths for simultaneous cycling and walking,

Apply Behavioural Insights,

sufficient bicycle parking, and limited walking distances between resting points.8

2014, bi.team/publications/ east-four-simple-ways-to-ap-

Basic yet important design elements such as these provide opportunities for phys-

ply-behavioural-insights.

ical activity, and can be considered built environment nudges that promote healthy

11

choices.

VicHealth, “Behavioural

insights and healthier lives,” Promotion Foundation, Melbourne, 2016.

In Australia, the “health promotion foundation” VicHealth (sponsored by the state of Victoria) specifically applied nudge theory to promote walking and other healthy behaviors within urban areas.9 For example, the City of Port Phillip adjusted the local context to make it easier to walk by increasing the timing of pedestrian signal crossings, thus removing a barrier for those unable to cross within shorter time frames. Their program also recognizes the importance of intrinsic motivation on the part of individuals to change their longer-term behavior, since a nudge may only be effective when experienced in certain situations, or for a single instance.

And because people still have a choice between the healthy behavior and unhealthy behaviors (a key criterion of a nudge), they need to be motivated to make the healthy choice. Drawing on research by the Behavioral Insights Team in the UK, VicHealth sought to ensure that any nudge intervention incorporates four characteristics: Easy, Attractive, Social, and Timely (EAST) 10—the assumption being that people will be more motivated to make healthy lifestyle choices on a daily basis if the choices presented have these characteristics. Walking was made more social in Darebin, a suburb of Melbourne, through the development of a children’s walking treasure map with associated signage on the footpath. Routes were given catchy names and signs indicated the number of remaining minutes on the commute, while chicken feet painted on paths helped with wayfinding. A project in another Melbourne suburb, the Yarra Ranges, sought to make walking more attractive by encouraging children and parents to reimagine their own adventure of walking to school, while another nudge initiative make drinking water easier to access by installing 60 water fountains across Melbourne’s central business district.11 Policies such as these are very important in supporting and encouraging

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health-promoting interventions, with the actual design of spaces also playing a critical role in determining the outcomes.

12

Douglas Gordon, The

Help Yourself City: Inequality and Legitimacy in DIY

Complementing the actions of public officials charged with encouraging healthy behaviors, the last few decades have seen a significant increase in citizen-led, participatory, DIY, and bottom-up urbanism, whereby residents actively redesign 12

their own urban locales. From self-built benches at bus stops to street libraries and urban gardens,13 local residents are bringing “innovation and agility to urban

Urbanism, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).

Gordon documents the individualization of democratic responsibility, reflecting on inequality, citizenship, and contemporary urban political

design practices that are typically constrained by context, convention, regulation,

economy.

high cost, long timelines and complex stakeholder roles and needs.” 14 In the

13

school street example discussed below, we purposely include and discuss urban

Doina Petrescu, “A

Feminine Reinvention of the Commons,” Journal of Design

design choices and interventions that vary in scale and scope—from expensive

Strategies 9, no. 1 (2017):

large-scale urban design investments to smaller-scale initiatives, what Kurt Iveson

38–51. In this inspiring discus-

labels “micro-spatial urban practices,” that are within the power of concerned local residents to enact.15

sion of how her architectural practice supports residents to occupy and manage disused urban spaces, Petrescu documents how a temporary

Critics of nudge theory sometimes raise ethical objections to guiding people into 16

prescribed actions, questioning how the “preferred” choices are determined.

Who decides which behaviors or choices are better than others, and on whose

garden in Paris has grown to include a kitchen, library, DIY workshop and media lab, promoting civic responsibility and

behalf ? After all, causal relationships between actions and health outcomes are

connectivity at a local level.

rarely simple, and typically involve many variables. Moreover, recommendations

14

can change frequently based on new research findings and current trends. Healthy

Kim Dovey, “Pop-ups and

eating is particularly susceptible to these sorts of changes, as anyone who tries to follow a healthy diet according to the latest science knows. Eggs, dairy products, gluten, carbohydrates, fat, and sugar have each been the focus of conflicting evi-

Quentin Stevens and

Public Interests: Agile Public Space in the Neoliberal City,” in M. Arefi and C. Kickert, eds., The Palgrave Handbook of Bottom-Up Urbanism

dence and recommendations in recent years. Yet many intended outcomes of nudge

(London: Palgrave Macmillan,

initiatives are not themselves controversial: for example, it is widely accepted that

2019): 323. This chapter, and

increasing physical exercise would make most people healthier and happier; therefore, a key factor in designing the urban environment to promote healthy living will involve enabling this choice. Unfortunately, in many urban contexts the opposite is true: unhealthy options are heavily promoted through the design of environments that actually encourage physical inactivity, consumption of fast food, and social isolation. Nudge theory can be instrumental both in analyzing unhealthy design factors like these, and in developing healthier alternative designs.

in fact the whole Handbook, is a wonderful overview of how non-traditional stakeholders are increasingly shaping our urban environment.

15

Kurt Iveson, “Cities

Within the City: Do-It-Yourself Urbanism and the Right to the City,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37, no. 3 (2013): 941–956.

PROMOTING SALUTOGENIC DESIGN THROUGH THEORY-STORMING

16

Ewert, “Promoting health

in schools.”

Nudge theory—whether applied by urban design professionals, public policy makers, or citizen activists—can contribute significantly to urban planning oriented toward health promotion. Yet its effectiveness, we argue, can be greatly enhanced by combining nudges with design ideas stemming from other

T HEO RY-S T O RMIN G IN T HE URBA N RE A LM

115

17

Debra Cushing and

theoretical perspectives and orientations. To design or redesign the urban

Evonne Miller, Creating Great

environment in ways that promote healthy behaviors, designers should actively

Places: Evidence-based Urban

engage with other key design theories supported by evidence, in a process we label

Design for Health and Well-

“theory-storming.” 17

being (New York: Routledge, 2019).

18

Edward de Bono, Six

Theory-storming encourages thinking about design solutions through multiple

Thinking Hats: An Essential

theoretical lenses at once. As a natural extension of the design thinking process,

Approach to Business

theory-storming seeks to maintain an openness to various inputs and factors,

Management (New York: Little, Brown & Company, 2007).

encouraging new ideas and possibilities with an explicit directive to consider

19

different theoretical perspectives. Our methodological approach also draws

Thaler and Sunstein,

Nudge, 255.

inspiration from Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats metaphor, in which the conceptual “wearing” of different colored hats (i.e. adoption of different perspectives) is intended to help enable critical and creative thinking about how to approach a problem.18 For example, in de Bono’s conceptualization, when wearing the “black hat,” the focus is on being practical and realistic, whereas the “red hat” emphasizes intuition, the “green hat” creativity, and the “yellow hat” optimism. In a similar vein, theory-storming encourages thinking about design solutions through multiple theoretical lenses. In addition to nudge theory, several other influential design theories can offer valuable perspectives on the development of health-promoting urban spaces, including affordance theory, biophilic design, gamification and playable design, and the discussion, within landscape architecture, of prospect/refuge theory. Consciously giving space to each of these theoretical orientations while analyzing a single design situation or problem can be an explicit strategy for stimulat-

Applying different theoretical lenses

ing generative thinking and improving practice. In

can be a powerful tool for fostering the

the next section, we consider how applying these

creative redesign of urban spaces, such

different theoretical lenses can be a powerful tool for

as streets, to be more salutogenic.

fostering the creative redesign of urban spaces, such as streets, to be more salutogenic.

THEORY-STORMING A SALUTOGENIC SCHOOL STREET Responding to Thaler and Sunstein’s hope that “an understanding of choice architecture, and the power of nudges, will lead others to think of creative ways to improve human lives in other domains,” 19 we focus specifically on one important and very common location: the city street. Designing and thinking with nudge theory, as part of the holistic theory-storming process, can foster solutions to promote social interaction and physical activity while benefiting people’s overall health. In the urban context, this approach involves developing more effective streets—streets that make it easier to pursue healthy lifestyle behaviors. Several examples will help to highlight how we can use theory-storming to envision healthy street environments for everyone.

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

Consider a typical streetscape surrounding a local school, such as those situated in countless neighborhoods in countries worldwide. Typically designed for the

20 Avani Parikh and Prashant Parikh, Choice

automobile, this type of environment is not often compact or pedestrian-friendly.

Architecture: A New Approach

Yet we now have more awareness of the importance of daily healthy activities such

to Behavior, Design and

as walking or cycling. And to their credit, many schools are working towards active travel policies that encourage physical activity in commuting to and from school.

Wellness, (New York: Routledge, 2018), 6.

21

Stephen Clune, “Design

and Behavioral Design,” The

In their book on choice architecture, co-authors Parikh and Parikh describe the overall opportunity and challenge for designers, arguing that our built environment has the potential to provide a framework that enables us to flourish, rather than merely exist. Introducing a protagonist, Phil, Parikh and Parikh reflect on how

Journal of Design Strategies 4, (2010): 68–75. While he focuses on industrial design and sustainability, Clune reminds us that designers must share both failures and

elements in ordinary person’s urban environment either positively or negatively

successes, and the importance

impacts his health, physical activity, happiness, and social interactions:

of remaining attuned to societal norms.

Let’s say Phil is about to set off to work on a spring morning. He can either walk or take the bus. [ … ] What might induce him to walk, which is obviously better for his health but takes more time and effort? Many things could influence him: whether he is late for work or it is raining, whether he plans to go to the gym later in the day, and so on. But all designers and architects are likely to concur that if there are no extraneous factors, a more inviting walking experience would nudge him toward walking.20 Parikh and Parikh argue that nudging Phil, and all of us, to walk—which for most people is a healthier option—requires a “cheerful street.” If Phil is charmed by his local street, he will be more likely to walk; if it is a depressing (or dangerous) street, he will be more likely to take the bus or to drive. The challenge, therefore, is to design and advocate for streets that are cheerful and can nudge positive health behaviors. Reiterating the point made previously, nudges designed to promote healthy choices in regard to physical exercise must be easy, attractive, social, and timely.

SCHOOL STREETS THAT NUDGE PHYSICAL ACTVITY AND SOCIAL CONNECTIONS Many urban design strategies are used to encourage physical activity by making streets more cheerful, including widening streets, reducing the speed of cars, and providing bike paths. Initiatives like these have had varying degrees of impact, in part because people’s behaviors are often inconsistent and irrational, but also because urban planners usually have only a limited understanding of the unique experiences and needs of a particular local population. Critical reflection and open sharing of both successes and failures is necessary to increase our knowledge about what works and why, and thus to truly improve our urban environment.21

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117

22

Agnes Van den Berg,

Sander Koole, and Nickie Van

When we think of school street spaces, therefore, it is helpful to think more broadly about additional innovative health-promoting nudges. For example, in

der Wulp, “Environmental

addition to fostering physical activity, nudges might also simultaneously foster

Preferences and Restoration:

social interactions (for example, parent-child connections and the child’s inter-

(How) Are They Related?”

Journal of Environmental

actions with peers) or contact with nature. People are more likely to walk or cycle

Psychology 23, (2003):

to work or school, for example, if the streets are lined with trees.22 Therefore,

135–146.

23

Ruth Hunter et al.,

“International Inter-School

recognizing humans’ inherent affinity for nature and prioritizing it in the urban environment—the essence of “biophilic” urban design—is one possible solu-

Competition to Encourage

tion. To significantly increase the numbers of kids and parents who walk, cycle,

Children to Walk to School:

skate, or scoot to school, however, requires thoughtful and holistic urban design

A Mixed Methods Feasibility Study,” BMC Res. Notes 8, no.

1 (2015): 19.

interventions that go beyond adding trees, but also introduce creative, playful, and aesthetically attractive solutions.

Imagine, for example, if other nudges incorporated gamification, the use of game design elements in nongame contexts. In the Beat the Street initiative, residents are given a smartcard to touch on sensors (”Beat Boxes,” installed on local lampposts) and awarded points for doing so, thereby setting up a simple competition to see who walks the most each month.23 Adults participate for a prize drawing, while children receive points for their school to buy books. Originally prototyped in Reading, England, and later implemented internationally across neighborhoods in New York, London, Shanghai, and Vancouver, Beat the Street yielded mixed results.

While the program increased the number of children walking to and from school during the week-long intervention in Reading, the rate declined from 29% in week 1 to 12% in week 4. This outcome suggests that successful interventions may need more than novelty and fun to be successful; they likely also require a well-designed context that provides a space conducive to cultivating healthy behaviors over the long term.

From an urban design perspective, we can imagine a different intervention that focuses on the setting as well as the technology, taking an integrative approach to address both dimensions more fully and make the walk to school delightful, not stressful. Table 1 summarizes some of these ideas, illustrating the theory-storming approach to seeding diverse creative design ideas that can help nudge healthy behaviors.

TABLE 1: Using theory-storming to foster innovative

evidence-based urban design in support of healthy school streets.

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THEORY/CONCEPT

Nudge Theory the use of directive cues to guide people toward specific outcomes

POTENTIAL DESIGN INTERVENTIONS FOR A SCHOOL STREET Nudges that encourage walking can include repainting a sidewalk to suggest a specific journey, or providing seating that prompts collaborative creativity, communication, game playing, or creative writing.24 Redesigning the street to slow traffic could be accomplished with traditional best-practice devices like speed bumps and crosswalks, or novel ideas to help nudge drivers to slow down, like trompe-l’oeil techniques.25

24

See playablecity.com/

projects.

25

The transverse stripes

painted across lake Shore Drive have been mentioned; see also qz.com/1113713/asmall-town-in-iceland-created-a-levitating-crosswalk-toslow-traffic.

26

Sebastian Deterding

et al., “Gamification: Using

Gamification Theory26 the use of game design elements in nongame contexts

Gamification could turn the walk to school into a game. For example, a history trail, with information about the history and development of local landmarks and benches for reading and reflection; or the walk could reinforce student learning by publishing vocabulary words, arithmetic problems, etc. on screens.

Game Design Elements in Non-Gaming Contexts,” Proceedings of CHI, 2011.

27

Anton Nijholt, Making

Smart Cities More Playable: Exploring Playable Cities (Springer, 2020).

27

Playable Design treating everyday experiences as opportunities for play

29

Affordance Theory the facilitation of specific outcomes through the structuring of spaces and interactions

Playful street design could involve a series of beautiful interactive physical installations, such as sculptures set into the landscape that move in the wind, or trees that include hidden fairies and animal sculptures that constantly change to create an interactive game of “I spy.” Children and parents could also stop to create a melody on musical swings.28 Erasable boards could feature vocabulary words or a riddle of the day, etc.

Affordances for cycling and walking along a street can include wide paths, bike racks, shaded routes, and safe crossings. Cues to these affordances can take the form of crossing guards hired to help children cross safely, marked crossings, stop lights with extra-long crossing signals for slow-moving children, and child-friendly bike racks located near school entrances.

28

See dailytouslesjours.

com/project/the-swings.

29

James J. Gibson, The

Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (East Sussex: Psychology Press, 1986); Donald A. Norman, “Affordance, conventions, and design,” Interactions 6, no. 3 (1986): 38–43.

30 Stephen Kellert and Edward Wilson, The Biophilia Hypothesis (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1993).

31

Jay Appleton, The

Experience of Landscape (New

Biophilic Design Theory30 the attempt to design our built environments to foster connections with natural systems and processes

Connecting people with nature is a powerful mechanism to foster well-being, and the walk to school could become a biophilic adventure. Imagine passing under a waterfall, stopping to look at a stream of fish from a semi-hidden cave, and then sitting at a bus stop or on a public bench built into a large tree that also forms part of an urban garden. The seat not only provides shade and visual amenities, as well as access to seasonal fruits or berries, etc.

Prospect/Refuge Theory31 the concept that people generally prefer spaces that allow them to observe what is happening around them (prospect), while also feeling protected (refuge)

A sense of refuge can be enhanced through bench design (armrests and higher seats) and placement (facing outward with the bench back along a wall).

The provision of more quiet resting places could also benefit older people and those with sensory processing issues. Prospects could be enhanced through the provision of spaces that enable a good vantage point from which to pause and easily observe street activity.

T HEO RY-S T O RMIN G IN T HE URBA N RE A LM

Jersey: Wiley and Sons, 1975).

119

Figures 1 and 2 show several examples of innovative street designs from across the globe, including colorful murals, crossings, a bike bump that makes cycling more fun, and a log bike rack. Of course, none of these creative ideas negate the real challenges faced by busy, time-pressed families in our hectic modern world. But they do highlight how, if we think broadly and creatively, we can use urban design decisions to nudge people towards more active, healthier choices like walking to local destinations such as schools.

FIGURE 1: Creative interventions

to nudge active travel to and from school. Photos: bike bump by Paul Kreuger (Creative Commons BY-SA 2.0), Flickr; Rainbow Painted Crossing by Shannon Kringen (Creative Commons BY-SA 2.0), Flickr; Log Bike Rack in Rotorua, New Zealand by Evonne Miller.

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

FIGURE 2: Creative interventions to nudge active school commutes: a fun and color-

ful mural. Source: Photo by Tom Woodward (Creative Commons BY-SA 2.0), Flickr.

Affording healthy lifestyle choices, through thoughtful theorydriven design backed up by research, can help address global health challenges.

CONCLUSION

32

“Active Design: Planning

Affording healthy lifestyle choices, through thoughtful theory-driven design

for health and well-being

backed up by research, can help address global health challenges. As the gov-

through sport and activ-

ernmental initiative Sport England states in its Active Design guidelines, “Good design should contribute positively to making places better for people, to create environments that make the active choice the easy and attractive choice for people and communities.” 32 Designers, policymakers, urban planners, and citizens have

ity,” Sport England, 2015, healthystreetscom.files. wordpress.com/2017/01/ spe003-active-design-published-october-2015-email-2. pdf.

a responsibility to advocate for positive changes in how we design the urban realm and to help ensure that the places we live, work, and play are health-promoting.

Engaging with nudge theory, especially in conjunction with processes such as theory-storming, can help us think more creatively about urban design and to foster creative experimentation and bold innovation.

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121

NUDGING “THE MAN ON THE CLAPHAM OMNIBUS”: DESIGNING BEHAVIOR IN CAPTIVE ENVIRONMENTS Nyein Chan Aung and Robbie Napper

INTRODUCTION 1

“McQuire v. Western

Morning News Co., Ltd.

In 1903, an actor and theater manager named T. C. McQuire sued a regional

(C.A.),” McQuire v. Western

English newspaper called the Western Morning News for defamation, based on a

Morning News Company,

negative review the paper had published of his play, The Major. The paper wrote,

Limited, United Settlement Church, uniset.ca/other/

“Although it may be described as a play, ‘The Major’ is composed of nothing but

cs3/19032KB100.html.

nonsense of a not very humorous character, whilst the music is far from attractive.

2

John McCaughran,

This comedy would be very much improved had it a substantial plot, and were a

“Implied Terms: The Journey

good deal of the sorry stuff taken out of it which lowers both the players and the

of the Man on the Clapham Omnibus,” Cambridge Law Journal 70, no. 3 (2011): 607-622, doi.org/10.1017/ S0008197311000870.

play.” 1 The plaintiff argued that the review was excessively unfair and in fact constituted libel against him. What at first seemed like a relatively simple dispute quickly grew to include a broad examination of the idea of “fairness” in civil cases. It was during the ensuing arguments that the defendant’s lawyer, Lord Charles Bowen, famously invoked a fictitious person, the “Man on the Clapham Omnibus.” 2 This “man” represents an ordinary person of adequate intelligence and an average level of education, but lacking any distinctive characteristics. Lord Bowen argued that if this ideally average “man” would have had the same assessment of the show as the newspaper, then the newspaper’s opinion could be considered “fair comment.”

Bowen successfully convinced the jury to dismiss the case and, since then, it has been generally accepted in English legal contexts that a fair comment—an expression of one’s honest opinion on a creative work—does not constitute libel, even if a jury does not agree with the substance of the critique.

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

Over the succeeding decades, the Man on the Clapham Omnibus has been called upon in countless civil cases when it is necessary to decide whether a party has acted

5

See, e.g., Kristina

Niedderer, Stephen Clune,

reasonably. Similar figures are still invoked as a standard of behavior in various

Geke Ludden, eds., Design for

legal contexts: in Melbourne, Australia, for example, this person is known as “the

Behaviour Change: Theories

man on the Bourke Street tram,” while in Hong Kong he becomes “the man on 3

the Shaukiwan Tram.” Related personae have also played an important role in

and Practices of Designing for Change (London: Routledge, 2017).

the development of patent law, where a “person having ordinary skill in the art” is sometimes summoned to help determine whether an invention is truly original and worthy of patent protection. If this legally fictitious “person” might plausibly have come up with the same invention on the basis of generally available knowledge, then the particular invention is considered not patentable.4 In this article, we will also call upon “the man.” But our interest is not legal but design-related: we wish to inquire more deeply what it means for his behavior on an omnibus (i.e. on an ordinary public transit vehicle) to represent a standard of “reasonable” conduct in the public domain. We will suggest that many everyday behaviors generally considered acceptable or praiseworthy are themselves the product of design decisions, including decisions involved in the development and specification of publicly shared equipment such as mass transit vehicles. We will suggest further that the reference to an “omnibus” in this famous definition of reasonableness in modern life is not incidental, but reveals the profound influence of design in shaping not just the physical infrastructure

A typical public transport bus reveals the profound influence of design in shaping not just the physical infrastructure of contemporary society, but the behaviors of the people who make use of that infrastructure as they go about their daily lives.

of contemporary society, but the behaviors of the people who make use of that infrastructure as they go about their daily lives. Based on close observation of these behaviors, this article reflects on the nature of nudges in public transport vehicles, and describes how particular elements of those vehicles create unique nudge situations. After a general discussion of design nudges in the next section, we describe the specific context of transport, and identify important ways that design features including nudges are used in mass transit vehicles, before concluding with several observations about the reciprocal relationship between designers and users’ behavior.

DESIGN NUDGES It is nearly impossible to imagine an activity of contemporary living that has not been an object or focus of design in some capacity. One particularly important aspect of design in the context of this article is its ability to impact human behavior: through such ubiquitous design features as affordances, constraints, and signifiers, designed objects can enable or hinder particular behaviors, encouraging appropriate conduct as well as facilitating desirable or needed changes in conduct.5 NUD G IN G “ T HE M A N O N T HE CL A PH A M O MNIBUS”: DE SIG NIN G B EH AVIO R IN C A P T IVE ENVIRO NMEN T S

123

The rapid development of scientific research into the causes of human behav6

Richard H. Thaler and

Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge:

ior over the past several decades has given new depth and refinement to design

Improving Decisions about

focused on eliciting specific behaviors or reactions. Today, a main application of

Health, Wealth and Happiness

the science of human behavior is a type of design intervention commonly referred

(New York: Penguin, 2009), 6.

7

M. G. Caris et al.,

“Nudging to Improve Hand

to as a “nudge.” Generally speaking, nudges are features of a designed space or situation that neither restrict nor critically alter the choices available to people

Hygiene,” Journal of Hospital

in a given situation, yet are effective at eliciting specific outcomes. In the words

Infection 98, no. 4 (2018):

of Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, who first popularized this term, a nudge

352-358, doi.org/10.1016/j. jhin.2017.09.023.

8

Sherry Jueyu Wu and

Elizabeth Levy Paluck, “Designing Nudges for the Context: Golden Coin Decals

involves the structuring of options or choices in a way that “alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives.” 6 Nudge strategies have been successfully deployed in many different contexts. Displaying fruits and vegetables in more visible areas

Nudge Workplace Behavior

within a cafeteria, while putting unhealthy foods in less prominent locations, is a

in China,” Organizational

classic and well-known design nudge, implemented around the world. Researchers

Behavior and Human Decision Processes 163, (2018):

at the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam investigated whether the nudge

43-50, doi.org/10.1016/j.

statements incorporated into prototype posters and placed next to alcohol-based

obhdp.2018.10.002.

hand sanitizers could increase the use of such sanitizers by hospital staff, report-

9

ing positive results from a small trial.7 Researchers in China designed a nudge in

See, e.g., Matthias

Lehner, Oksana Mont, and Eva Heiskanen, “Nudging—A

the form of gold coin decals pasted onto factory floors, in an effort to encourage

Promising Tool for Sustainable

cleanliness. Given the common local belief that gold coins are an omen for good

Consumption Behavior?”

fortune and luck, the researchers argued, the factory workers were motivated

Journal of Cleaner Production 134, Part A (2016): 166-

to keep these graphic embellishments clean and waste on the floor was thereby

77, doi.org/10.1016/j.

reduced by over 20%.8 The potential for design to make strategic use of nudges in

jclepro.2015.11.086.

service of important long-term goals, such as those connected to environmental sustainability, has also been extensively explored in recent years.9 Significant outstanding questions, for instance about whether a given nudge’s effectiveness may diminish over time, are a source of ongoing research.

THE CONTEXT OF TRANSPORT AND MOBILITY Understood as a means of facilitating mobility, a modern transportation system comprises three main elements: vehicles, ports, and ways. Human mobility is, on the whole, made possible by combinations of these elements, and the overall experience of mobility consists in how users interact with these elements and their various touchpoints. Journeys can range from a few minutes to many hours, two typical respective examples being a short bus trip and a long-haul intercontinental flight. Ports provide the transport system’s interface with the world, and may be located at or near travelers’ actual origins and destinations (e.g., a school with a bus stop right outside); ports can also be places where travelers change transit modes (e.g., an airport that adjoins a railway station). Ways range from physical infrastructure such as road and rail networks to intangible but tightly regulated

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T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S

airline routes. Particular characteristics of ways—for example, the quality of a road surface or the presence of turbulence—can substantially impact the passenger experience of a journey.

Passengers tend to select a transport service based on factors including accessibility, cost, and the manner in which the mobility is provided. Cost differences can be extreme, which in many cases leads to no real choice at all: often the cheapest means of transport is effectively the only means. Transport is also a time-bound service, and differences in total trip duration can also determine a single reasonable or feasible choice. For example, traveling on a ship across an ocean is generally still possible, but the time required for such a journey tends to result in most potential passengers selecting air travel as a more viable mode.

The divergent demands for service providers to ensure the safety, comfort, and on-time arrival of passen-

In the context of mass transit, the

gers can result in transit systems of vast complexity,

designer’s task is to make travelers’

as is the case with airline and railway operators.

journeys as pleasant as possible, while

The smooth operation of such a system’s various

also ensuring that passenger behavior,

elements often depends on getting users to behave in

both individual and collective, enables

certain ways. For example, if passengers are allowed to alight from a busy train before new passengers board, the entire process will take significantly less

the successful operation of the transport system as a whole.

time than otherwise: an important gain in efficiency.

Meanwhile, the behavior of passengers during transit is also critically important to successful operations. As a mass transit vehicle plies its way between ports, the passengers are effectively held captive inside, with no direct control over the vehicle’s exact route or schedule. Particularly in regard to this captivity, the designer’s task is to make travelers’ journeys as pleasant as possible, while also ensuring that passenger behavior, both individual and collective, enables the successful operation of the transport system as a whole. Within the cabins of mass transit vehicles, nudges are one of the designer’s most useful tools.

With a general operational understanding of transport and mobility, and the respective roles of the vehicle designer, the system manager, and the passenger identified, we return to the notion of the Man on the Clapham Omnibus. Any number of things could influence his behavior on that bus, from personal circumstances to his general regard for his fellow human beings or for broadly accepted norms of civility. In the following pages, however, we will focus on this average rider’s response to the vehicle’s interior design.

NUD G IN G “ T HE M A N O N T HE CL A PH A M O MNIBUS”: DE SIG NIN G B EH AVIO R IN C A P T IVE ENVIRO NMEN T S

125

NUDGES IN CABIN DESIGN 10

Selby Coxon, Tom

Chandler, and Elliott Wilson,

Public transportation systems provide a unique setting for studying and shaping

“Testing the Efficacy of

human behavior. Elements that affect this behavior range from the macro level—

Platform and Train Passenger

such as the prevailing culture of the place in which a transit system operates, the

Boarding, Alighting and Dispersal Through Innovative

vehicle types, time of day, and day of the week—down to micro-level design details,

3D Agent-Based Modelling

where most nudges operate. Consider, for example, how an aircraft meal trolley

Techniques,” Urban Rail Transit 1, no. 2 (2015):

actively discourages passengers from accessing lavatories during meal services, or

87-94, doi.org/10.1007/

how the design of seats on a modern metro railway car determines socially accept-

s40864-015-0010-0.

able ranges of personal proximity. In the way that they encourage, but do not force, appropriate behavior, the specifications of the airline’s trolley and the train car’s seating serve as examples of design nudges. That these design features are part of the captive environment of a mass transit vehicle means that many people will be exposed to them: an important factor that greatly increases the leverage of the designer seeking to maximize efficiency within a controlled context like a railway car or aircraft.

Nudges frequently operate alongside more traditional design features to elicit desirable behavior. An example can be seen in a study conducted by researchers from Australia’s Monash University, which explored whether the design of train cars could have an influence on passenger ingress and egress times. The researchers used sophisticated modelling software to test a possible redesign of a train car, focusing on two innovative features. First, in the digital model, clusters of seats were mounted centrally along the cabin interior. This arrangement created two corridors at the edges of the car, allowing for a dual flow of passenger movement while also encouraging riders, upon entering the car, to move away from the doors, thus further facilitating movement near these high-traffic areas. While not completely determining users’ behavior, the central seat clusters sought to encourage a desirable behavior on the part of the riders—keeping the doorways clear—by making it the easiest or most attractive option: an essential hallmark of a design nudge.

The second feature tested in the digital model, meanwhile, consisted of two extra doors that would become operational at certain times of day when extra boarding and alighting capacity was needed. Folding seats were located in front of these “peak doors” for use during off-peak times; when the extra doors were activated during peak hours, the seats folded into the door framework, reducing the number of available seats but considerably increasing standing room. When this layout was assessed in a virtual simulation program, the design consistently decreased passenger ingress and egress times in comparison to current designs.10 Although the number, location, and availability of train car doors is not in itself a nudge so much as a “hard” design feature, setting strict parameters for use that users themselves cannot control, this example well illustrates how cabin design can be used to elicit desirable behaviors. In the case of a metropolitan rail transport system, design

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interventions like these could form part of a comprehensive strategy for improving the system’s operations. In particular, the combination of central seating clusters with peak doors in this example indicates how a strategic use of nudges can enhance more traditional industrial design methods, improving the performance of a complex product-service system like an urban railway by focusing on user behavior in conjunction with ordinary design features such as the size, shape, and number of exit doors in the rail system’s cars.

Being part of a group also affects the way people behave. We can view captive passengers inside a bus

A strategic use of nudges can enhance more traditional industrial design methods, improving the performance of a complex product-service system like an urban railway.

cabin as members of a group with particular characteristics. First, although the members of this group may be traveling “alone,” without any direct companions, the other people inside the cabin naturally become companions of sorts. Whether for a few minutes, or for many hours, these people share this space and part of their journey with one another, and indeed they have little choice in doing so. Observations show that individual travelers tend to modify their behavior slightly to ease the journey, common practices including the construction of barriers using things like headphones and newspapers to preserve some personal space. A second characteristic of the ad hoc group inside the cabin is that in general, the behaviors of the individual and group tend to register and support their common goal, namely, arriving smoothly and safely at their respective destinations. Tendencies of reasonable people in such a context include moving out of the way of foot traffic, making room for others by removing baggage from seats, or leaving aisle seats available to enable others to sit down quickly.

Thus we can observe that on public transport vehicles, where a passenger is part of a temporary, shifting, yet more or less stable group of people, reasonable behavior is generally shaped by the idea that passengers act as they would wish others to act.

Conceivably, the actions of a person in a captive environment such as a bus cabin may be more reasonable than that same person’s actions outside that environment.

Of course, just as cabin design can influence the behavior of vehicle passengers, it is also, and obviously, true that passenger behavior also influences cabin design. A primary role of the designer in this context, after all, is to observe how passengers behave, modifying the interior design so as to maximize the passengers’ comfort.

In maintaining a user-centered focus, design follows the needs of the user to as great an extent as possible, within a project’s boundaries of cost, time, and so on.

Still, a close analysis of the environment within a mass transit vehicle reveals that design features based on nudges actually involve a two-way process. The designer can nudge the passenger, whose resulting observed behavior can then allow the designer to make further modifications to the cabin environment.

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This last point deserves special emphasis. In general, the interior design of a mass transit vehicle like a bus or train is intended to serve the passenger. Within the scope of means available to the designer, the cabins of these public-use vehicles are designed to provide comfortable, safe, and efficient journeys. Their design responds to the needs of the user. But at the same time and conversely, the passengers also take As the fictious figure of the Clapham

instruction from the cabin, in the form of subtle

Omnibus rider makes manifest,

nudges as well as hard features such as the size

expected behaviors of passengers

and location of doors. If the Man on the Clapham

on public transport vehicles have

Omnibus is an index of reasonableness, then we will

become a kind of benchmark for what

expect to observe him exhibiting generally courteous

is considered “reasonable” conduct. In

behaviors while on board. But how many of these

turn, inherited understandings of what

behaviors are inherent to his disposition, and how

constitutes reasonable behavior inform

many he has been nudged into, is not something that

the design of public vehicles, and the kinds of user behaviors that their design in effect anticipates.

can be directly inferred or read off from his behavior as such. Indeed, in the complex interplay of the designed cabin interior and the traveler’s experience (and hence behavior), we can discern a specific sort of feedback loop. Again, as the fictious figure of the

Clapham Omnibus rider makes manifest, expected behaviors of passengers on public transport vehicles have become a kind of benchmark for what is considered “reasonable” conduct. In turn, inherited understandings of what constitutes reasonable behavior inform the design of public vehicles, and the kinds of user behaviors that their design in effect anticipates. Comparing the different configurations of vehicle cabins from different transit systems can illustrate concretely how the behavior of passengers may be nudged in specific ways, and how the feedback loop between designer and passenger can yield arrangements benefitting all stakeholders in such a system.

NUDGES IN BUS CABIN DESIGN: EXAMPLES Many modern public buses require that passengers touch or “tap” a special terminal using a smart card as they prepare to alight, so that the transit system can charge the correct fare. This tapping-off process is brief for any given individual, but during peak times it can quickly lead to bottlenecks at the bus’s exit doors. In Melbourne, Australia’s bus system, for example, bus passengers alight via the rear doors of the city’s two-door buses. Frequent users of these buses often look for seats close to the rear door, standing up to tap off their smart cards while the bus is still in motion but approaching their bus stop. Taking seats near the smartcard terminal results in these passengers’ being able to alight more quickly, reducing their travel time slightly and allowing them to avoid the unpleasant process of queueing at the door. But despite the logical location of the terminal near the rear doors, and

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notwithstanding the ad hoc behavioral adjustments some riders have learned to make, the disembarkation process slows considerably during peak hours, because of the requirement that every rider tap off their smart card before alighting.

11

In the past few years,

Melbourne has also redesigned some of its public buses to create additional

Contrast this arrangement with the one in the city-state of Singapore, where the clever application of a nudge has improved the functioning of the bus system.

Owing to a range of demographic and policy differences, bus use in Singapore is

standing room near the rear door. Passengers’ behavior has accordingly moved closer to that of bus riders in Singapore.

higher and the vehicles generally carry more passengers at any given time than in Melbourne. Bus fares in Singapore are also calculated in a precise way, which incentivizes accurate tapping-off behavior (if a passenger forgets or declines to tap off, they are charged the maximum possible fare). Because of these factors, the potential for serious bottlenecks at the exit doors of Singapore’s buses is perhaps even greater than with Melbourne’s buses. But the Singapore buses are designed with an important feature that the Melbourne buses lack: there is additional standing room provided near the rear door. Passengers are alerted when the bus enters a particular fare calculation zone, so that those wishing to get off at the next stop can stand up, move toward the rear door, and tap their cards at the terminal—all while the bus is still in motion. By the time the bus has arrived at the next stop, most passengers preparing to get off are already standing at the door; when the bus stops and the door opens, passengers alight immediately, without having to pause at the smart card terminal. Through the facilitation of this “pre-tapping” procedure, then, these riders have effectively been nudged to adopt a behavior that is operationally efficient and that makes the transit experience more pleasant not only for every passenger, but also for nearby residents, other commuters, and bystanders, all of whom benefit from faster bus stops with reduced idling times. Rider behavior serves the needs of the transport system, which can then better serve the needs of the passengers while minimizing externalities like the system’s impacts on other stakeholders. The pre-tapping behavior of the passengers on these buses is reasonable, of course—but that very reasonableness is itself a product of the way the bus’s interior has been designed. In particular, the Singapore bus’s design elicits a desirable behavior from its users by making the desirable (i.e. reasonable) behavior easy to perform.11 In their use of nudges, designers must be aware of the feedback loop they help to bring into being. If design can influence the behavior of individuals, then a given designer’s expectations about how people are likely to behave in a given situation may be colored by the outcomes of previous design interventions. In particular, the reasonableness of the Man on the Clapham Omnibus’s behavior may itself be a product of a multiplicity of prior design decisions—decisions whose own aim was not a mere response to the “Man’s” (i.e. to a prospective rider’s) presumed reasonableness, but the active eliciting of behaviors whose reasonableness all parties are

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likely to recognize. Figure 1, shown below, illustrates this feedback loop between nudge-deploying designers and the user behaviors they seek to elicit.

N.B. The next generation of nudge builds on the first.

Design Nudge

Observation

Behavior Not “natural,” but shaped by captive cabin environment and by group dynamics

FIGURE 1: Design nudge feedback loop.

It is evident both that observed passenger behavior can (and does) lead to modifications in the design of public transport products, systems, and services—and that design features including nudges can themselves modify that observed behavior.

Again, it is important to recognize that in public transportation contexts, many behavior-modifying design features are the result not of intentional nudge initiatives per se, but of the necessity to balance goals of cost effectiveness and comfort against limitations of space, project timelines, and competing budgetary priorities.

Nevertheless, the examples from Melbourne and Singapore show that thoughtful use of nudge strategies can improve the overall design of complex environments such as mass transit bus cabins, yielding outcomes that benefit all stakeholders— in this case, transit system operators and users alike.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION The fundamental purpose of modern transportation systems—providing mobility to thousands of customers per day—strongly favors the intentional development of behavioral nudges, in order for such systems to operate as efficiently as possible.

On board a mass transit vehicle such as a bus, train, or aircraft, passengers are held captive along with other users of the vehicle. We cannot assume that the reasonable

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or appropriate behavior that most riders display in such a captive environment is simply a reflection of their innate good nature. Indeed, as this article has shown, users of mass transit vehicles like trains or buses can be subtly guided to adopt appropriate behaviors through the strategic deployment of design nudges in conjunction with standard techniques of industrial design. To make the most effective use of nudges, designers of captive environments like bus cabins must take the following considerations into account: 1.

The likelihood of a passenger being exposed to a nudge is much higher in comparison with non-captive environments, increasing the leverage of the designer and hence the potential effectiveness of the nudge.

2.

Public transport design tends to exhibit myriad nudges, but in many cases these may be unintended results of technology and policy limitations.

Ongoing scientific research into human behavior is providing new opportunities to employ design nudges more intentionally, to encourage positive behaviors in all modes of public transport.

3.

In addition to the nudges in public transport, passenger behavior is also modified by the dynamics of artificial social groupings, generally in pro-social ways.

4.

Passengers may be exposed to the same nudge multiple times in one journey, or on a regular commute, raising questions about its continued efficacy over time—questions that call for additional research.

The feedback loop describing the relation between designers and the behavior of end users implies that socially accepted criteria of “reasonable” conduct are themselves constructed to a certain extent—and designers need to keep this constructed character firmly in mind at all times. In particular, if people’s behavior is partly a result of previous nudges or other design factors, the designer will have to be especially careful when taking that resulting behavior as a baseline for further intervention, since any

The ability to nudge people into appropriate conduct is a testament both to the power of design, and to its limits.

additional modification of the cabin might change the behavior that the designer had been treating as a baseline. Thus, the ability to nudge people into appropriate conduct is a testament both to the power of design, and to its limits. In truth, we know very little about how the Man on the Clapham Omnibus will behave once he alights. It may be that the perceived reasonableness of passengers’ behavior while they move through mass transit systems is conditioned by the design features of those systems, and hence is only temporary.

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Contributors

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NYEIN CHAN AUNG is an industrial designer, design researcher and sessional

lecturer with Monash Art Design and Architecture. Nyein has given himself a life mission to make "cool stuff." Nyein recently completed a PhD in industrial design where he was engaged in a practice-based design research that looked into improving the in-flight sleep of economy class passengers through the design of the aircraft cabin. The research was undertaken in partnership with TEAGUE and a global aerospace company.

BRIAN BUTLER is professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina,

Asheville. He has served as chair or co-chair of the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center for over ten years. The educational legacy of John Dewey and Black Mountain College has served as an inspiration for his research in the relationship between art, design, and democracy. He is the editor of Democratic Experimentalism (Rodopi, 2012) and coeditor of The Real Metaphysical Club: All the Philosophers, Their Debates, and Selected Writings from 1868 to 1885 (SUNY Press, 2019). His book The Democratic Constitution (University of Chicago Press, 2017) develops a democratic theory of constitutional interpretation based upon philosophical pragmatism and democratic experimentalism.

VALERIE JOLY CHOCK graduated with a graphic design BFA and a philosophy

BA from the University of North Florida in Spring 2020. She is currently pursuing an MA in ethics and society at Fordham University. Her design practice focuses on social design and her research interests include topics in applied ethics, such as media ethics and the ethics of nudging.

DEBRA FLANDERS CUSHING is associate professor in landscape architecture

within the School of Design at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. With expertise in landscape architecture and community planning, Debra worked as a design practitioner before focusing on teaching and research in academia. Debra is passionate about promoting evidence-based design within multidisciplinary initiatives to create parks and urban environments that better support health and wellbeing for all people, especially children and youth.

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NINA MAŽAR is professor of marketing at Boston University’s Questrom

School of Business, where she also codirects the Susilo Institute for Ethics in the Global Economy. Her research in the field of behavioral economics explores how expectations, emotions, peers, and random cues in the environment affect how we think about products, money, investments, and morality, and the implications of our choices for welfare, development, and public policy. Her research has been published in leading academic journals including the Journal of Marketing Research, Psychological Sciences, Review of Economic Studies, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Popular accounts of Professor Mažar's work have appeared in The New York Times, Financial Times, Wired, The Harvard Business Review, on NPR and the BBC, and in best-selling books by authors including Dan Ariely and Daniel Pink. Professor Mažar is the cofounder and chief scientific advisor of BEWorks, a consultancy focused on application of behavioral economics insights to real-world challenges.

G. MAURICIO MEJÍA is a design educator, practitioner, and researcher. He is an

assistant professor of design at Arizona State University. His practice and research work focus on how design methods can be used in strategic goals such as better human experiences, the transformation of lifestyles, and social change. He has collaborated in diverse projects that include areas such as engineering, psychology, public health, sustainability, and business. Dr. Mejía has published works in visual communication, transdisciplinary collaboration, and design for behavior change. He has more than twelve years of experience in teaching in design programs in Colombia and the USA. He received a PhD in design from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and a master of design degree from the University of Cincinnati.

EVONNE MILLER is professor and director of the QUT Design Lab in the Creative

Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.

Her expertise is in environmental and design psychology, focused on designing environments (built, technical, sociocultural, and natural) that better engage and support all users, especially older people in residential care facilities. She has published widely in the fields of population aging, health and well-being, urban design, climate change, and sustainability.

CON T RIBU T ORS

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ROBBIE NAPPER is an industrial designer, researcher and senior lecturer

with the Department of Design at Monash University, and deputy director of the Mobility DesignLab. Since joining Monash in 2007, he has developed expertise in the design and manufacture of public transport vehicles, especially examining themes of modularity, mass customization, user experience, and user-centered design in public transport. From 2011–2013, he led the design and development of Australia’s most widely adopted route bus, the VolgrenOptimus.

SARAH REID is a leader at Doblin Toronto, Deloitte’s design-led innovation

practice. She fuses human-centered design and behavioral insights to help organizations find, frame, and design compelling and behaviorally sticky experiences.

Recent projects include an ongoing engagement to amplify the internal innovation capability of one of Canada’s largest public sector mortgage and housing organizations, reimagining the experience of employment insurance benefits delivery, and helping one of Canada’s oldest family-owned retailers launch a new business outside of their core business. Prior to her work at Deloitte, Sarah helped to establish Canada’s first regulatory “nudge unit” at the Ontario Securities Commission.

She earned a PhD in sociology at the University of Toronto and held a postdoc at Rutgers School of Management. Her work is published in Harvard Business Review, Behavioral Scientist, the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, and Work & Occupations.

RUTH SCHMIDT is associate professor at the Institute of Design in Chicago,

where she focuses on the intersection of behavioral economics and humanity-centered design. Prior to this she was a senior leader at the innovation consultancy Doblin|Deloitte, where she developed applied behavioral design methodologies to both inform innovation solutions and help clients embed innovation processes more effectively within their organizations across healthcare, financial services, education, and civic domains. She has a master’s in design strategy from the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

LAURA VALIS is a design researcher who holds a degree in integrated design

from the Köln International School of Design in Germany. She has worked in design studios in Germany and the UK. She currently works at Genomics England, where she collaborates with NHS clinicians and doctors to provide genomic diagnosis, treatment, and prevent illnesses. Her research interests include sociology and technology in relation to healthcare, the ethics of technology, and artificial intelligence.

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