August 31, 2016
Amazon’s Dash for affordance
Amazon Dash launches today in the UK. It’s a physical button pre-programmed to have one function, and one function alone – you push it and it…
0 Comments5 Minutes
August 11, 2016
Sān rén chéng hǔx: Three men make a tiger
Qin Shihuangdi first ruled China in 221 BC. He was the first Emperor, and laid the foundations for the world’s oldest continuous political entity. However…
0 Comments6 Minutes
June 15, 2016
Feel the pain – guaranteed | Spüre den Schmerz – garantiert
We work harder to avoid loss than we do to achieve gain. This could be loss of time, or loss of social status, as well as the more obvious loss of money. This…
0 Comments5 Minutes
March 29, 2016
The ‘why’ and ‘how’ of sustainability | Das ‘Warum’ und ‘Wie’ der Nachhaltigkeit
The French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss notes that Western societies constructed distal concepts like geography and astrology before developing the…
0 Comments8 Minutes
March 14, 2016
Context, really, is everything | Kontext, wahrhaftig, ist Alles
Most of us know a bit about ‘anchoring’ – even if we don’t appreciate it as such. It’s prevalent in supermarkets: we are offered food that’s ‘75% lean’, not ‘25%……
0 Comments7 Minutes
July 27, 2015
Gold! The only Gold Retail Nudge Award won by us for DAS Legal
The only Gold Retail Nudge Award won for DAS LegalThe only Gold Retail Nudge Award in 2015 is won by The Hunting Dynasty & Partner Innovationbubble for DAS Legal Expenses…
1 Comment2 Minutes
February 20, 2014
Domestic energy efficiency – ‘buy me, for me’, and other frames
As well as explicit meaning, words carry strong implicit meaning and, as such, play a major role in how we perceive a problem. In the example above...
0 Comments4 Minutes
December 10, 2013
A way to incentivise the growing cohort of baby-boomers to reduce water consumption
In general, baby boomers (the retired empty-nesters) have older domestic infrastructure, and this is likely poor performing. Also, there are fewer of them...
0 Comments4 Minutes
February 19, 2013
The wisdom of debate
Something interesting about Any Questions question on Radio 4 – The debate was interesting for the thing it lacked, IMHO...
0 Comments5 Minutes
December 5, 2012
Driving the wrong point? UK Gov ‘Think!’ drink drive campaign
The UK Department for Transport’s airing it’s THINK! drink drive advert again. It’s good, but is it focusing on the right area?..
3 Comments3 Minutes
July 27, 2012
Finding your target market – lessons from the ‘Nigerian scam’ email
We've all seen them – poorly constructed sentences in long winding emails about diplomats, infrastructure projects, or legal bequeathes that promise...
1 Comment4 Minutes
July 20, 2012
When ‘somewhat likely’ means a lot more likely – the mere measurement effect
I saw this YouGov poll graph recently. Nice clearly defined colours. Clearly labelled axis. It tells you everything you need to know. (Sort of.) [...]
1 Comment4 Minutes
July 13, 2012
Wisdom, and crowds: bend it like Asch
If you have a jar full of marbles, you have have a lot of marbles. Also, you have an interesting phenomenon; if you ask a group of people to guess the number...
0 Comments4 Minutes
July 6, 2012
‘Dispense With A Horse’ – the problems with a high cost-of-thought
The inestimable Maria Popova (@brainpicker) drew my attention to the very first car advert in a weekly publication, first printed in 1898, through a tweet...
1 Comment9 Minutes
June 29, 2012
The point of zero distance, pensions, droughts, and TV ads
A ‘tree top’ view, versus a ‘nose pressed against the tree’ view changes the way we construct our understanding of the world. This may be no surprise...
0 Comments7 Minutes
June 22, 2012
Habits: forming them, and breaking them
Habits are nasty, and nice. Nasty, because the habit cueing mechanism – which enacts the entire sequence of behaviour – does not require the original...
4 Comments7 Minutes
June 15, 2012
You can’t fake it until you make it – disposition and more
You are at work. You walk by a meeting room and peek inside. The voices are muffled, but it’s clear they’re shouting. A ‘he’, is shouting. You look closer...
1 Comment7 Minutes
June 8, 2012
Framing choice: The effects follow us everywhere
Rarely can you avoid the situational, group, proximal and distal influences that shape our behaviour: Our world is a spaghetti-mess of behavioural...
0 Comments8 Minutes
June 1, 2012
Missing: healthy choice
The UK House of Lords Select Committee Behavioural Change Report was released on 19th July 2011. It’s an interesting read. However, more interesting is the...
0 Comments9 Minutes
May 25, 2012
Mirror mirror on the wall
Back in the mid 1930’s Kurt Lewin described behavior as a function of the situation – as something we do based on what others’ are doing. We herd. Today, on...
3 Comments3 Minutes
May 18, 2012
Bin recycling: communications
It’s all very well talking about how you can change recycling behaviour by adjusting the bins, but what if you’ve got only paid-for media space at your...
3 Comments8 Minutes
May 11, 2012
Bin recycling: behaviour
Recycling paper in offices is such an old story you’d think we’d have it nailed by now. We haven’t. In my experience recycling bins in offices create only on...
6 Comments10 Minutes
May 4, 2012
Dead norms – the media informs our choice in way they don’t realise. (And nor do we.)
Like you, I am a fair-minded, considerate, person. The news I read, the stories I engage with, the information I glean is considered, compared, and...
5 Comments5 Minutes
April 27, 2012
Channel factors and big shifts in behaviour
Context is important. In fact, it’s one of the big three (quasi-stationary equilibria, and construal being the others). One of the surprising things about co...
0 Comments6 Minutes