Smart Heuristics: When to Change your Summer Tyres with the Winter Ones

A few years ago, in my country of birth – Romania – a new regulation was introduced regarding the use of winter-tyres. The initial regulation stated that it was mandatory to use winter-tyres starting with November 1^st each year.

Source of photo

From a purely meteorological point of view, the November 1^st date was not accurate. Non-Romanians should know that the weather is quite tricky in the sense that in some years the first snow comes as early as October, while, in other years the weather can be fine till January. In addition, Romania is a rather large country and with a diverse landscape – mountains, fields, hills and seaside. Naturally the weather is very different across the country.

So, our legislators wanted to make a more efficient and accurate regulation. Thus, the new regulation says that winter-tyres are mandatory whenever there is snow or ice on the roads.

From a rational point of view, the new regulation is very accurate and makes perfect sense. If there is snow / ice, use winter-tyres regardless of the season, area etc.

However, a lot of people remember that they have to change the summer-tyres with the winter ones shortly before November 1^st.  The police, however, applies the law and not seldom people get fined for not having winter-tyres whenever it snows before November 1^st.

Although the existing regulation – use winter-tyres whenever there is snow or ice – is correct, it has the downside of being difficult to understand and, most importantly, it is difficult to conform to. The old regulation with a clear deadline (November 1^st) was much more “user friendly”. People simply could plan for the behaviour (going to the car-shop).

My proposition is to create a smart heuristic (at least in my view) by associating the change from summer tyres to winter ones with the change of time – from summer time to winter time.

In most of Europe, we change the time on the last weekend of October. On that magical 25 hours Sunday we can sleep more. The regulators (legislators) can use this event as a reference date for changing the summer with the winter tyres.

In the public’s mind, this event is already associated with change – we have to change the time on our clocks and watches – and it is associated with the change from summer to winter.

Change the time – change the tyres.

Two Metaphors on Applied Behavioural Science

Metaphor 1:

Behavioural Science is for Practice (business, public 

service etc.) like a Gold Mine!

However, do not expect to find in a (gold) mine gold bullions (i.e. gold bars).

What you will find is Gold Ore, which needs to be extracted, cleaned, and refined. This is not as easy as picking up a gold bar.

Metaphor 2:

Applying Behavioural Science in Practice is like
(having) Sex.

It’s fun, It’s jolly and it’s amazing.

This is true even if you are working without any specific (customer) insight on the issue that you’re aiming to improve.  

At the same time, if you have the customer insight,

Applying Behavioural Science is  

Like (having) Sex with Another Person.

For (proper) Applications of Behavioural Science in Practice Click Here

Paving the Cow-Paths for Public Urination

Without any doubt public urination is nasty. It’s icky, it stinks and, when taken to a large scale, it’s a health hazard. Yet, so many, usually men, still do it. I guess, the main “engine” of public urination is beer or other alcoholic drinks that mess with the part of the brain which controls urination.

In old city centres (though not only) there is another hazard of public urination, namely the damage brought to the historical buildings. Urine is corrosive and when thousands of litters are “poured” on 400 year old bricks, there is a slow, but sure erosion of the bricks.

Inventive, as always when it comes to managing vices, the Dutch came up with the “open air urinal”. Not particularly elegant and with very little privacy – but who cares about privacy after 20 beers – they do the job.

Open air urinal in The Hague (Den Haag) city center. Most interestingly, during the day these urinals are hidden underground and risen at night.

  

Open air urinal in The Hague (Den Haag) city center while hidden during the day.

Open air urinal in Scheveningen (beach near The Hague).

 For more cool ideas and rules on nudging bydesign take a look at the 3 days workshop Nudge Design

Paving the Cow Paths for Smokers

A few weeks ago I wrote a post on Paving the Cow Paths - helping people do what they want while minimizing the damage. Paving the Cow-Paths: The Demise of Idealism and the Pathway to Pragmatism 

Here are some nice examples of Paving the Cow Paths for smokers while minimizing the litter and keeping smoking in one place. 

These pictures were taken outside an office building in Rotterdam The Netherlands

These pictures were taken at the Train Station in Utrecht The Netherlands.

For more cool ideas and rules on nudging bydesign take a look at the 3 days workshop Nudge Design

Nudging by Repulsion: When Evolutionary Psychology Meets Nudge

A few weeks ago, my beloved wife and I received the visit of her mother, sister, brother in law and one year old nephew. As you can imagine having a small child in the house is a radical paradigm shift for someone who doesn’t have children and some things needed to be (re)moved so that the baby will not hurt himself.

Our nephew behaved himself, well, as much as a one year old boy can. 

However, the electricity sockets (plugs) were very very attractive for him. 

Although I am all in favour of letting kids explore and nurturing their inherent curiosity, I am totally freaked out when a child approaches an electric socket. Whereas touching the cooking stove can result in a nasty burn, sticking one’s small fingers in a socket results in certain death.

A couple of weeks after our guests went (to their) home, I was reading about evolutionary psychology, particularly about beauty and sexual attraction and an idea struck. It wasn’t about sex, but about how babies and small children can be nudged to avoid electric sockets.

Here are some very rough prototypes.

The logic is that (almost) all humans are hard-wired to feel repulsion and avoid things like spiders, rats and snakes. 

We do not need to learn to fear and avoid them. On the other hand, electric sockets aren’t repulsive and we need to teach small children to avoid them.

By placing the pictures with naturally (evolutionary) repulsive things on dangerous novel things, it will / would be natural for children to avoid them.

This is an idea that needs to be tested, so this is not an advice!

I’m looking for some partners to test this idea in a scientifically proper manner. Volunteers please leave a comment.   

For more cool ideas and rules on nudging bydesign take a look at the 3 days workshop Nudge Design

Later edit:

An early adopter in France (Claudiu) sent this photo :)

Even Later edit:

Early evidence does not support the Hypothesis. Though this is a sample of one and the spider was more sketchy than vivid. Thank you  Claudiu for this photo :)

Further research is needed (at least to have a larger sample). 

Dear reader(s), DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!

In this post I proposed a hypothesis. Although the theory supports it, this is not an empirically proven fact. 

So, if you want to experiment with this, make sure that you are not using sockets connected to electricity.

If you are a researcher with access to a proper lab and you are willing to test this hypothesis, please get in touch with me :)

Pain (of Paying) at Design for Conversion Amsterdam September 26th

Last Friday (September 26^th) I made the participants at the last Design for Conversion conference suffer! Starting low with a gentle flick, I’ve encouraged the members of the audience to inflict pain on each-other. We’ve reached the level of “slap on the wrist” in only a few minutes.

Luckily for them, this was not a Stanley Milgram experiment so we stopped and hugged to wash away any negative emotions.

This brief and apparently absurd exercise was meant to help me present the phenomenon of Pain of Paying and how it can be used in designing payments. 

And to make the presentation even more fun, I’ve used Jars and Beer to illustrate mental accounting and its implications in the level of pain of paying we experience when making purchases that involve more than one payment. Thank you Liviu Taloi for the help :)

Judging by the feedback I received and by the (low) number of people avoiding me after the talk, I believe the audience liked it, even enjoyed it.

Thank you and congratulations Arjan Haring and Chemel Benali for a very nice event.

P.S. I had the honour of announcing the winner of the DfC competition ;) 

Ask Simple Questions – The Beauty of Raspberry Tart

I got old again and this year it so happed that I’m spending my birthday in Bucharest – the city I called home for about 21 years. Being here, I remembered one of my previous visits to my favourite restaurant – La Casa (if you ever go to Bucharest, it’s a must go… the special thing about this place is that it has nothing special – everything is as it should be).

After having dinner, the waiter came and asked:

“Would you like some raspberry tart?”

We answered “Yes”, even if we didn’t plan to have desert and we were quite full.

There is a special kind of beauty in the waiter’s question, and not the intrinsic beauty of raspberry tart :)

Usually waiters ask “would you like some desert”. And usually the answer is “No”. The thing is that “desert” is a rather abstract term, it has few (no) visual associations (desert can be anything from fruit salad to raspberry tart and to chocolate cake) and it has almost zero emotional load. Moreover, when asking someone: “Would you like some desert?” the respondent realizes that if he answers “yes”, he’ll have to make a subsequent choice between delicious things.

  

Making a choice is often difficult, so when asked “would you like some desert?” the client of the restaurant will go with the default option which is “No”. Just to be clear, one portion of food for dinner in Romania is usually enough to feed two French-men and beer and wine are relatively cheap, so we drink a lot.

However, when asking “would you like some raspberry tart?”, the client immediately imagines the tart which looks delicious. Moreover, raspberry tart can and usually has emotional associations. Now it is less likely that he will refuse it.

This approach could be used in an area in which Romania lags behind most EU countries (not that it doesn’t lag at most things) – namely bank-card payments. Most people in urban areas have bankcards, yet quite few use them for payments – most people withdraw cash from ATMs and use it.

A very simple nudge would be for the cashier (or whoever takes the money) to simply ask “would you like to pay by bankcard?”. This can be used in on-line shops as well, considering that about two thirds of online purchases are done with cash (yes, that is possible – people pay the delivery guy).

It will not bring miracles, but it will be a step forward. And a very beautiful one!

A simple question can lead to beautiful results.  

I’m off to “La Casa” http://www.restaurantcasa.ro/ to enjoy my first real beer in 6 months. Happy birthday to me :)