NUDGE NUDGE, WINK WINK

Posted by Andy Rainford

I just finished reading ‘Nudge’ by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein.

There’s some interesting ideas in there about how people interact with design and, in particular, how it can influence their behaviour and decision making.

Examples of nudges include a realistic fly sticker placed in a urinal helping reduce spillage by as much as 85%, a change in the law to ‘presumed consent’ dramatically increasing organ donations and healthy eating encouraged in schools by placing fruit more prominently than chocolate.

They call it liberal paternalism, but it basically boils down to designing things with a view to assisting people in making the ‘best choice’ in a given situation while still granting them free choice.

It does go on a bit and it is fairly US-centric but there some interesting stuff in there. It’s also a little worrying if you consider the application of such subconsciously coercive techniques by big business and governments (Obama’s a fan apparently, as well as our own George Osborne).

Incidentally, there’s an interesting article offering a counter argument to the authors viewpoint here.

Posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 at 5:59 pm by Andy Rainford. Filed under WORDS. Follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.