Story
If you’re a woman and have never ventured into a public men’s restroom, you may be mercifully unaware of a design defect with wall-mounted urinals. Or perhaps the defect is with male attention span. But whatever the case, the problem, simply stated, is spillage. That is, when men use these urinals they often miss or there’s splash back which creates a mess on the floor, which creates an unpleasant experience for the next person who’s forced to stand in it. Yes it’s gross and it’s a problem that’s been around as long as there have been restrooms.
Now, you may have noticed that I refer to this as a design defect of the urinal. Why a design defect? Well, if getting and keeping urine in the urinal is a design requirement, then urinals are clearly not getting the job done. If you think this is an unfair design requirement then consider the ingenious design of the men’s restrooms at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. In the wall mounted urinals, etched into the porcelain, is an image of a black house fly near the drain. Now why, you might ask, would somebody bother to do this? According to Aad Kieboom, the man who proposed the design, it improves the aim. If a man sees a fly, he aims at it, and as crazy as that might sound, it turns out that research on spillage bears out Mr. Kieboom’s prediction. Spillage was reduced by 80% near the urinals with the fly.
Takeaway
People prefer the path of least resistance when making decisions. When the path of least resistance happens to lead to a generally favorable outcome everyone is happy. When the path of least resistance leads to a generally unfavorable outcome, however, the results are problematic. For example, when the default option for new employees is to not be registered for a basic pension program, savings rates are very low. However, when the default option is to enroll employees automatically into a basic pension plan, savings rates increase dramatically. In both cases, employees are free to join, change plans, or not join, but intelligent defaults nudge employees to make the most responsible decision The following methods are common nudging techniques:
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Defaults — Select defaults that do the least harm and most good (e.g., many lives are lost due to lack of available organ donations, a shortage that could be addressed by changing the default enrollment from opt-in to opt-out).
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Feedback — Provide visible and immediate feedback for actions and inactions (e.g., many modern automobiles have alert lights on the dashboard that stay on until the seatbelt is fastened, increasing seatbelt usage).
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Incentives — Avoid incentive conflicts and align incentives to preferred behaviors (e.g., the “Cash for Clunkers” legislation passed in the United States in 2009 provided a cash incentive for consumers to trade in older cars for new cars, boosting sales for the ailing automotive industry and reducing total energy consumption and pollution).
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Structured Choices — Provide the means to simplify and filter complexity to facilitate decision making (e.g., Netflix structures choices for customers to help them find movies, enabling them to search and browse based on titles, actors, directors, genres, and the recommendations of other customers).
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Visible Goals — Make simple performance measures clearly visible so that people can immediately assess their performance against a goal state (e.g., clearly displaying manufacturing output and goals in factories is often, by itself, sufficient to increase productivity).
Consider nudges in the design of objects and environments where behavior modification is key. Set default states that correspond to the most generally desired option, not the most conservative option. Provide clear, visible, and immediate feedback to reinforce desired actions and mildly punish undesired behaviors. Align incentives with desired behaviors, being careful to avoid incentive conflict. Simplify and structure choices when decision-making parameters are complex. Make goals and performance status clearly visible.
Learn More
- LinkedIn Learning
- Page 170 of Universal Principles of Design