Enhance Experience

Researchers confirmed that nudges, including design-based nudges, can influence behavior in intended ways.  A team lead by Mertens determined via a meta-analysis that  “By making small changes in our environment, these interventions [nudges] aim to encourage changes in our behaviour, while preserving our freedom of choice. From adding informative labels to reorganising the food offer in a cafeteria, the overall effectiveness of these interventions has now been demonstrated by a scientific team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE).

Hunter and colleagues studied how neighborhood design influences resident actions.  They report that “Parents . . . with preschoolers . . . living in Edmonton, Canada were recruited from each of Edmonton’s council wards. Parents reported demographic information and the importance of several neighborhood features (destinations, design, social, safety, esthetics) for their child’s active play, their own active recreation, and their coactivity. . . . The majority of parents reported that 23 of the 32 neighborhood features were perceived as being relevant for all activity domains.

Chang and Kim studied how different sorts of background music in movies influences the thoughts of audience members.  They report that “Films in general, and background music in particular, have the capacity to create positive emotional responses with consumers. While the study centers on social enterprises, as prosocial marketing becomes increasingly important to mainstream companies, the implications of our findings can be more broadly relevant to the latter, especially those that communicate via a film. Through two experiments, this study tests whether the valence (inspiring vs.

Johnson, Zimmermann, and Bird investigated links between workplace design and employee performance via data collected at Microsoft using surveys and interviews.  They identified “factors that were considered as important for work environments: personalization, social norms and signals, room composition and atmosphere, work-related environment affordances, work area and furniture, and productivity strategies.