On the obesity front, have you seen http://eat.ly ? It’s a very different approach to the Wii, but the aim seems to be to get people to reflect on what they eat, by committing to photograph each meal before eating it (http://eat.ly/faq#what – “Pausing for even a second to reflect on what you’re about to take-in is a simple yet powerful change to most diets… The Eat.ly technology platform is founded on the core idea that data + pictures = positive change.”)

It also allows other users to rate your meals for perceived healthiness. So there’s a kind of wisdom of crowds / social proof element, alongside the extra step of the photograph/pause and the commitment & consistency element…

Certain kinds of design fit the first quite well, in that you can see the moving parts and test it out, and learn from seeing it in operation. Finished industrial products quite frequently fit the latter, in that the design is opaque and observing the product gives little sign of how it could be recreated. In other words the enlightenment thinking expects you to reverse engineer it, try to improve on it, and find you can’t.

A “nudge” system based on the same principles would be an explicit manipulative/enabling scheme, which people could critique and offer feedback on. Now this provides an interesting divergence; if the users of the system, (ie the ones it is being used on) are to be presented with the “source code” to something they otherwise only experience subconsciously, it is an encouragement to consider themselves in an external manner, similar to how awareness of your own blindspot allows you to consider yourself as a “functioning being”. This gets everyone thinking in terms of governing people, even if one of those people is themselves, perhaps an incentive towards something like Rawl’s original position.

Of course consistently considering yourself as someone of imperfect rationality (who needs these cues) is in itself a divergence from enlightenment thinking, so we haven’t closed the loop yet; we need a view of human thinking that enables us to consider the imperfections and mechanical underpinnings of our subjective view without invalidating it’s self-purposing, which is what makes enabling meaningful!

And I think the RSA is making some good effort towards that actually, making sure there’s a good picture of the human experience behind our attempts to improve it.

I agree that there’s also a lack of clarity surrounding design, but that the misperceptions are likely to be more benign that those associated with ‘marketing’. I think currently many people assume ‘design’ is simply the discipline to which they are closest to (coming from a communications background, most of my colleagues working for the commercial sector have no reason to assume that ‘design’ is not synonymous with graphic design) and I’m hoping the surge of interest in ‘Design’ (i.e.inherently multi-disciplinary, human centred etc) driven by the rising popularity of ‘design thinking’ as a tool for driving innovation and generating value in the commercial sector, will popularise this more holistic understanding.

Needless to say, the design community itself has a large role to play in helping crystalise this emerging discipline into a form simple enough to be communicated clearly to commissioners, policy makers etc.

Many thanks for the links.

The most effective is to only pay with cash. The physical act of handing over tangible money is a big reality check compared to the usual swipe & pin.

The second is to do with identity theft, make sure you cancel/renew all your cards regularly. The longer you have the same details the greater chance that somebody can use them inappropriately.

Obviously neither is convenient.

This post touches on what I consider to be the elephant in the behaviour change room and something very close to my heart. As Creative Director of a social marketing agency I’m involved in a number of projects that are making real progress in changing behaviours around a host of complex social issues (smoking cessation, obesity, sexual health, breastfeeding initiation etc).

However, as a design thinker at heart, I’m starting to brush up against a number of issues that raise doubt as to whether ‘marketing’ is an appropriate paradigm for pro-social behaviour change.

Very briefly (I’m currently writing a longer piece around this issue which I’ll post as soon as I finish it), there are surface issues regarding the terminology (’marketing’ as the fuel for consumerist forest fire), deeper issues concerned with how the ‘meaning’ of marketing has been distorted through its ‘use’ (the notion that its about perceptions not products), but perhaps more fundamental issues relating to the conceptual foundation of the marketing paradigm (do we want persuade to initiate a value exchange or empower to enable self-realisation?).

This then raises the burning question as to whether the design paradigm is more conducive, especially with the rise of ‘design thinking’, co-creation and multidisciplinary approaches? My hunch is that a new paradigm will emerge out of the positive aspects of both and I think both communities, social marketing and design, need to open up dialogue to actively promote this hybrid, rather than wait for it to emerge passively. I’m already doing this through my work at The Hub, lectures and writing, but would encourage social designers and marketers alike to join the debate. Please get in touch with any thoughts: steven@hub-marketing.co.uk.

However, I suspect this same concept could be used to influence behaviour positivly. Thinking back to my childhood, I never concentrated my spending habits on how much I had left to spend, but rather on how much I needed to save to buy whichever toy I presently craved. I would keep a careful chart tracking how much I had saved, adding pence to it each week. This is similar to the many saving stamps schemes available. For example Post Office savings stamps, aimed at paying off household bills, or Supermarket savings stamps aimed at covering grocery bills. I would speculate that if the floating number infront of people repersented how close they were to paying off this months mobile phone bill, or grocery shopping, they’d be far more anxious to contribute the change from the bar rond, or the pound they found in the sofa to it.

Watching your bank balance figure go down, is concetrating on how little you have. Watching how much you’ve saved is concentrating on how much you have.

As a final thought, I think it is interesting how savings schemes reflect the perceived aspirations and spending habits of their target markets. Savings stamps for paying utility bills are traditionally aimed at low income customers such as pensioners. However savings schemes for higher income families are rarely focused on paying off the mortgage, or putting your children through university. Rather they are aimed at making money for you to spend, or at best, putting money aside for you to spend when you retire.

Perhaps you’re right, perhaps what we need is not a ‘i-phone app’ that tells us how much we have left to spend this month, but rather one which will show us how much extra we managed to pay off on the mortgage this month. But to be honest I suspect that the people who would use it, wold be those who are already budget concious.