Episode 44 highlights – Susan & Guthrie Weinschenk podcast about Psychology, Behavioral Economics & UX:

• Psychology and UX Design
• How behavioral economics applies to UX design
• Common behavior patterns we can design for
• Design ethics and moral implications in UX design and research
• How do you decide your design, product or service is ethical or not?
• Examples of non-ethical design and marketing patterns
• Considerations to take for designing a more ethical product or service
• What UX designers and researchers need to know about psychology and behavioral economics

Links from this episode:

The Team W

The Team W – Courses

Books by Susan and Guthrie Weinschenk

Episode Transcript

(this transcript was automatically created using our very own transcription feature in Aurelius and has been minimally edited, please excuse any typos or weirdness 😀 )

+

This is the Aurelius podcast episode 44 with Susan in Guthrie Weinschenk. I’m Zack Naylor co-founder at Aurelius and your host for the Aurelius podcast where we discuss all things ux research and product. We’re back for a new season of the podcast in this time. We have Susan in Guthrie wind chink together. They make up team W behavioral scientists that do work in the ux and design World. They joined us to talk about what ux designers and researchers should know about

+

psychology and behavioral economics and how to apply it in their work this conversation naturally drifted into a discussion about the ethics and moral implications of applying known influence techniques and behavior triggers into design and marketing. They were some really great points brought up for us to all consider as we think about how we choose to apply this we’re not in the work that we do the Aurelius podcast is brought to you by Aurelius the powerful research repository and insights platform Aurelius.

+

An all-in-one space for researchers to organize notes capture insights analyze data and share outcomes with your team. We recently announced two of our biggest new features yet Aurelius now offers transcriptions and our automatic report Builder, you can add any audio or video recording and have notes created for you automatically. Then Aurelius automatically creates a report with every key insight and recommendation from your project which you can then edit design and share with anyone right from

+

Aurelius check us out at aureliuslab.com. Okay, let’s get to it you Susan they got free. Hello there. How are you? Good good. We got a sunny day today. That’s nice. You know, we have a sunny day here. I’m in Minneapolis, but that usually means when it’s very sunny and very clear. It’s also very cold and that should well, you know, we’re not far from you write your Chicago area. Is that right? Well Guthrie’s

+

Lives in Chicago, but right at this moment. He’s up here with me in Wisconsin where you are about a three-hour Drive due east of you if you was yeah Evan me apples. So I’m waving to you out the window. Okay. Well then I’ll waive this way. Okay, very good. I appreciate you both jumping on and taking the time to chat with us. I know that folks are going to be excited to hear what you all have to say. And I’m personally selfishly excited to have a conversation with you both. But before we get started typically what I’ll

+

I’ll mention to Our Guest is just you know in the event. Somebody doesn’t actually know who you are already, maybe introduce yourself talk a little bit more about the work. You do some things you’ve done what you’re passionate about to give them an idea who were chatting with today. Sure. Guess what? You want me to go first go for it. All right, so I’m Susan wine tank and Guthrie and I have a company called the team W. We do Consulting and teaching and speaking especially in the interaction between user experience.

+

And behavioral design so I have a PhD in Psychology and I’m going to let Guthrie talk about his degrees and his specialty I know all about how the brain works and why people do the crazy and weird things they do. I’ve got a long career in applying psychology to design and that’s kind of where all the user experience stuff comes in. But we love this intersection between Behavioral Science and design and Guthrie. Why don’t you

+

you talk a little bit about you know, your background your degrees and your specialty in that Behavioral Science area. Sure. My name is Guthrie. I went to the University of Wisconsin where I got my degree in economics and then University of Loyola in Chicago for my law degree. So he’s a lawyer. Yes licensed attorney in the state of Illinois. Watch out what you say. So just just kind of given that that background I sort of my intersection really is that behavioral economics side.

+

If you have a specific person with their specific preferences in a specific situation, what can we predict about what their behavior is going to be or look like so we really like that combination because I’m kind of like the psychology brain science. You know, what do all humans have in common and he’s the human behavior predictable human behavior in particular contexts and situations aside. So we combine those together. This is really a fascinating way of describing that to I mean

+

Being being aware of your work, but not having heard it described in that way and that combination is really fascinating. And so I think you know as people hear you describe that I would certainly imagine the connections between behavioral economics and psychology applied to designer obvious, but I have to ask how did you get into this? What made you say? Yeah, I’m that, you know a trained psychologist are trained behavioral Economist her or you know are very well versed in this area and I’m going to apply that to this boy.

+

You go first and then I’ll then you’ll add on. Okay. Well for me, it happened a really long time ago and I was in graduate school and working on my PhD and really interested in cognitive psychology how people think how people learn and hadn’t thought at all about applying that to technology or computers or software or anything and I was going I was getting my PhD at Penn State and Penn State has a language requirement for grad.

+

Students but they have a weird twist because you can take a foreign language or you could take a computer language, which now that I think back on it makes no sense at all. But that’s what it was that language in the word and I was kind of I thought oh, well, you know, I’m tired of French or German or whatever. I think I’ll try this computer language thing. I had never programmed at all. And so I you know, I started taking this programming class. What happened actually was I ran my first

+

I am which was some silly thing that you know in which it would take one column of numbers and another column of numbers and do some calculation and give you an answer. And when I got what I ran my first program the answer came back and all it said was job aborted and I was like, you know, and then I had to figure out what I had done wrong, but but I remember I had this moment where I was like job aborted what the heck does that mean and what how is anyone supposed to understand what that means? And how is anyone supposed to know what to do next? And so

+

I remember that specific moment because I said this isn’t going to work. This is not the way for technology to communicate with people now, I’ll tell you this was so long ago. It was before the idea of user experience. It was before the I the word usability was ever used. I mean, we’re talking a really long time ago now I didn’t know at the time that the field did exist to apply what we know about people to technology design. It was called back then wow.

+

I started it was called man machine interaction. Then it was called human-computer interaction. So I didn’t know at the moment that this was a thing I said, well, we should apply what we know about people to design Technologies. So they will be easier to use and then I found out oh, yeah. This is a thing people earn a living at this and I became intrigued so throughout the rest of my Ph.D program. I started thinking about how to combine the two.

+

And when I got out I that’s the field I went into so that’s kind of how I started in and I’ve been doing it. Like I said for a really long time because we what do you want to add about your story in this? Yeah, so I’ll just I’ll just add a little Kota to that so fast forward a lot of years. Thank you got three you sort of got into more of the nuts and bolts of ux. I’ve just like the ux field. Yeah. Yeah. I moved I would say probably away from the actual psychology of it.

+

And what I mean, you looks always involves some psychology, but yeah and then starting out maybe about 10 years ago. Can’t you sort of had an opportunity to go back out on your own and as you did the topics that you chose to pursue and specialize in and talk about how you started to more and more and more and more Focus back back to your roots back to the psychology back to the research the rest of the field kind of moved towards you in a way. So I think maybe 10 years ago. You couldn’t do this podcast.

+

This wasn’t something you know, we you go to conferences and you’d mention, you know Common and no one would know who you’re talking about. And now it’s become so popular that it’s pretty easy for you to talk about these kind of these kind of things. Yeah. I mean the whole idea of really focusing on psychology and Behavioral Science and unconscious mental processing and the latest research on brain science and decision making and that, you know applying that to design when I started as God

+

Said it’s really true for many years. I got more into what we call traditional ux work which of course involves psychology. But then about 12 years ago. I would say I really actually read a series of books that got me very excited about the latest research in brain science and decision making and I started thinking Anew about how that applied to what we did in design. But as Guthrie said initially when I started talking about this, you know, I was like the weirdo at the

+

differences and now everybody’s right. I mean there’s a you know, you can you say ux psychology or you know, Behavioral Science and ux and you know, a lot of people at least have heard of it. If not, you know, I’ve heard many speakers on it. So yeah there I think there was this this kind of coming together of the two Fields, but you didn’t say about you God I interrupted you but in my stores it will be a lot shorter after law school. I started I started working with the team W, but I was

+

That’s time. My specialty was more an operations. So I had previously done like procurement Supply Chain management economics e sort of business he stuff and then in law school, you know, I taken you tax law, you know corporate law so, you know running the contracts and setting up the text structures and very stuff like that kind of move forward. I started to venture a little bit more into the content space here and there because people would ask like economic see questions. Mmm that you maybe didn’t know and I happen to know a little bit about

+

thing and over the years. I solely corrupt more and more and more into the content space and it’s become more popular. So I kind of feel like now I’m I think maybe behavioural economics is sort of where that behavioral Psychology was a bunch of years ago people started to hear about it. It’s a it’s a till little less known you might say the word some people maybe have an idea of what I’m talking about, which I don’t think was true a bunch of years ago. Yeah. I’ve definitely moved more and more and more into the content experts little less behind.

+

Hands, that’s sort of how I sort of slid into it and it seems to seems to be working. Okay, right on there’s so many things that I want to ask about. Both of your backgrounds there. I feel like one of the things I need to ask is what’s the most popular question you get because I can imagine that right that there’s because like I said, there’s a lot that I would personally like to ask you but what do you feel like is the thing everybody wants to ask you we know we both know what that scares me. I’m not one thing I should say is that it does it is a little audience.

+

It’s dependent, you know our most popular keynote talk / Workshop. What’s the name of it? Behavioral design? Oh, we change it a bunch of times. It used to be more complicated than that. Yeah, that’s a much better name, you know when we give that behavioral design Workshop, you know, we’re talking to sort of a mix of there’s some you know, graphic designers and some ux researchers and maybe some marketing people and it is sort of a vixen. So I definitely have an answer for that because it is, you know, the most common topic there are maybe some other talks that we give that are taught.

+

Audiences where it might be a little different like if we’re only in front of a bunch of developers or only front of a bunch of marketing people for some reason to marketing people tend to ask different questions, but the answer to your question is in the last at least two years the most popular question has been the ethics question. It’s all about. Oh, what do we do about, you know dark design, and if you if you’re designing something so that you’re encouraging people to take action.

+

Yeah, how do we know if that’s ethical or not? Ethical? Yeah, that is the most common question we get totally so this whole idea of like good hacker bad hacker thing yet dark pattern design anti-pattern. I think I’ve heard it referred to right so there’s all these different things and so I can imagine that that’s exactly what people bring you to on to talk about is how well how do we design influence behavior? Which in and of itself is a little bit of a quagmire right to even be pursuing and so then to how do you make sure you’re sort of on the right?

+

Side of that. Yeah. So now I have to ask you what’s your answer that question? How do you make sure that you are on the right side of that when you’re okay? Well, I’m gonna let for purposes of evil. Yeah, I’m gonna let Guthrie start with this because he’s the one that has spent the most time really figuring out an answer to this. Yeah, so I think I am sort of uniquely qualified to answer this question both because of my Behavioral Science Background, but also my

+

Eagle background the law is a profession that really requires a high standard of Excellence. Sorry of ethics and according to that separate test you take that’s different than the bar called the mpre and it’s only a test on ethics and I passed so the state of Illinois says I am an ethical person. It’s like an official that’s the so and there are like, there’s some like weird perks that I have never done that apparently like for some things like I don’t need a notary because lately yeah, even though the yeah. Yep.

+

Because you’re an ethical person like if I wanted to become a real estate attorney, like I don’t have to take any of the ethical real estate stuff because I’m already like through their stuff like that. I don’t quote me on that. I just remember hearing hearing other but that is not the answer to how to make sure know your whole cycle is to is to get a law degree and pass for NPR. No. No, that’s not it seems a little rigorous. Not at all. It wasn’t it wasn’t that hard which is maybe should be worse than the point is that I’m you know, I’m given a bit of thought to this.

+

This in a bunch of different ways. The first question is how do you decide if something is ethical or not? Ethical so I you know, I came up with a formula you couldn’t run and you can determine if a product or service you have is ethical or not. But as an economist, I do you know, my sort of thing is look I’m not a politician. You know, I have my own personal views on what’s ethical or not. But the whole point of Economics is that well, we’re just running the numbers like whether you decide how you know, it’s like how ethical do you want?

+

Do you as an organization want to be and of course you can say well societies may say your ethical or not. Ethical and again you can I think I can talk for a bit longer but how you run that calculation but basically, you know, you can run a very simple calculation and determine if a product or service is ethical or not. It’s sort of like on a sliding scale the example. I like to use is there’s a very simple Behavioral Science trick. That’s not very ethical that definitely goes deep to the brain stem.

+

And influences people to change their behavior. It’s called using Attractive people and sexual poses to sell stuff people have been using good-looking people to Peddle products for for like forever. I mean, it’s like the oldest marketing trick in the book. I don’t know people Society sort of has decided that that’s ethical. That’s okay. If you want to use an attractive person eating food or drinking beer doing doing whatever they’re doing selling Insurance. That’s okay for whatever.

+

Reason you are you can really get very, you know deep and wax, you know philosophical about you know, ethics there does seem to be a line somewhere and where that exact line is and how far you as an organization are willing to go there’s a little bit of debate there. I always say just in general my personal opinion most companies or organizations are really not acting very ethically and usually put money first. That’s if you have a specific ethics question, I can go into it. That is a very poorly done high-level way.

+

Too long. So okay fair enough. Is it the same question for you Susan? I mean, how do you determine whether your particular technique that you’re thinking about applying in order to get someone to take action as ethical or not or doors that already mean that the most common question that yeah, is that the same question that you get as well? So is this big combo for you both that you often get this? Same question. I really think it is. I really think it is and it and the reason is that you know for instance in a typical in a typical 40.

+

Minute plus q a keynote that we give we’re talking about. We call it the top five things but you know really each one has multiple things in it. So we’re talking about 10 for instance really specific powerful things you can do to get people to take action in our one or two day workshop. We’re talking about dozens of things, right? So it’s so obvious that we are talking about the way the human brain works.

+

Works and the way people typically react there’s no way that anyone listening to that can’t at some point say is this okay and does it depend on what the action is you want them to take? And so it’s it’s pretty obvious that this it’s an important question. And yeah, so I would say it’s the most common question we get now interestingly. It didn’t used to be yeah.

+

Not used to be I used to be able to give a keynote talk or a two-day workshop and talk about this stuff. It wouldn’t come up at I mean people might have been thinking about it. Maybe some people were thinking about it. But either people weren’t comfortable asking or it what didn’t seem that important to ask and some things shifted in the last I would say a year or two, especially that now it always any Q&A.

+

We do that question is going to be there. Hmm. So you’re prepared for this and it’s interesting that that shift occurred. I think even from a behavioral economic standpoint. We’ve seen a change in Behavior as a society in which I think you can get, you know, you can put if you put your finger on the pulse of that through social media things like that that this has been discussed more often. So it makes sense that that would come up. Yeah. I also like the idea of explicitly calling out that being ethical in and of itself is a choice and so in fact it is a sliding scale is kind of like it’s kind of like throwing darts at a dartboard.

+

You know, where are you aiming? Really? I guess the question. I think that that could be a topic in and of itself but as you both were describing this one of the things I thought of is personally to ask is could you give me an example maybe of one of the things you suggest what you would consider an ethical application and perhaps an unethical application. So I’m going to do this more succinctly and less all over the place than I did before. Okay. So when you’re talking about a product or service and the question is is it ethical or not?

+

There are two factors that you need to look at. So if we think of our bell curve distribution of all the users of this product, you’re going to have the vast majority of users who are right in the middle. And the question is how much is this product or service harming their lives sort of in a normal way? Okay an example of and of this would be maybe like meth like almost all the users of meth just their lives are sort of negatively impacted and not a very good way, okay.

+

Then but it’s also important to look at you know, the last little, you know, two and a half percent on the ends, right the little standard deviation. Just right on the tips. Those are the extremes people in the extreme case. So in our meds example people on the extreme end of the Matthews also bad, so it’s the combination of those two factors. You have to pass both of those tests if you’re going to become ethical. So for example, let’s look at a mobile game and for the vast vast majority.

+

Aditi of users you have, you know, maybe they there’s some microtransactions they pay a little bit they mostly just have fun with their friends. It’s a good way to waste time and yeah, maybe they’re out a couple bucks because they wanted you know a character sketch or something. It’s no big deal. Okay, so that’s that’s fine. But for the people on the extremes and I don’t know if there’s there’s some interesting anecdotes about these companies. It’s like, you know two percent of the users. It’s like 98 percent of the revenue something crazy. They get very addictive they’re doing it hours and hours and hours.

+

And hours and hours a day and it’s really having a negative impact on their life. So I would say that if the majority of either the majority of users or the majority of people in the extremes are having pretty significant negative life consequences. It’s not making their life better. That’s probably unethical especially if you are making money at the expense of their suffering. So if you would like to in my eyes sort of regain your ethical standing what it’s not it’s really not that hard to do.

+

If you’re running this kind of app, you know, what users are basically being addicted to it. You could just look, you know, any user that’s using it over certain, you know ten hours a day six hours a day for as a day whatever it is. We’re spending, you know certain amount of money. You can put in code that for example, it says hey you use this for four hours today. We’re locking you out of the app. You can’t log in for 24 hours. You know, we are we’re purposely stopping you from becoming as addicted to this.

+

I am as maybe you otherwise would have been and you can you know, and you just you keep flushing that out with all sorts of different things. That is to me how you can have a product and service be ethical. You have to balance both the majority of the users and the people at the extremes. That’s yeah, so that’s a really really useful perspective. I think for people to take in considering whether or not their products are ethical interestingly a question that came up immediately as you even use that example is the I

+

Think that in and of itself is an Ethics decision, right it just in terms of personal freedom, right? I can imagine or at least I would hope that somebody says should we be making a decision on someone else’s behalf on whether or not to use this and then like what sort of implications are there and making that kind of decision. You know what I mean? I’m curious. Have you ever come across that and we’re somebody had to have that conversation and maybe made that decision and you know what ramifications happened as a result. No, I think most organizations. Just try to make as much money as possible.

+

I’ve seen anecdotes of various apps and companies doing this but it’s usually where they’ll like just do a notification like hey, we noticed that you’ve been scrolling for a while. Would you like to continue and that’s that’s what’s called you sort of breaking up their automatic decision-making flow and that’s fine. That’s probably better than nothing that’s different than hey. We’re actually doing this seriously, but I think if you spend so much time and effort to create a product or service that relies on people’s

+

Ian relies on their not addiction but relies on their extreme interest I suppose I’ll say, you know, you’ve designed the whole thing around this to try and get people to do behavior in a certain way to then say, okay. Well, we actually don’t want you to do behavior in this other way. I don’t I don’t see any ethical problem with that but I I have not necessarily seen an issue with all these companies are stopping people from using their products, right? Oh, no don’t pay us money. I

+

They don’t think I think we’re a ways away from that from that being too much of it. Should yeah, and here’s the reason I asked about this is because particularly so for those listening who are not, you know not here we’re based in the US as Susan and Guthrie, of course, and so even if you’re not based in the u.s. it would be surprising to hear that you had not heard about our political climate social political climate recently and just a lot of that how it has to do with actually some of these very same products like Facebook like Twitter in the influence. They’ve had and you know, our public and social discourse and I have

+

To believe the YouTube probably given a lot a great deal of thought about those things and how they influence this and decisions that could be made regarding that. Yeah, I mean definitely and as Guthrie is alluded to I we don’t see it getting better right now. They companies are not making decisions. There is there’s ancillary evidence that there is momentum perhaps in that direction maybe so I so I am there you go. There’s like a true lawyer Doris. I fucking like a true lawyer.

+

Call me cautiously considering being cautiously optimistic. Maybe I don’t know if it’s a bit. So there may be there may be some changes on that front just because mainly because of negative PR. Yeah, yes, right. Well, I think not necessarily because these companies are like, oh my goodness. We didn’t realize what we had inadvertently done. I saw it. Okay, so there are four ways in which you can have come.

+

Is become have more ethical practices? The first is like government Intervention which in the United States probably not going to happen, but maybe but probably not the second would be people really wanting that the marketplace sort of deciding. So it’s like if you like sell our user data, we won’t use our company people have seemed pretty willing to give away anything they want as long as the product is a good product for free or cheap. So maybe that shifting just a little bit but probably not the third would be

+

The companies themselves just decide out of their benevolent Goodwill to give to not make as much money because reasons probably not the fourth way. Is that the employees in the company? They’re the real Marketplace companies have to attract the best talent. And if there is a if there’s a thought among sort of their employees that they are doing Shady things especially after they spend so much time especially internally, right? We’re a good company. We’re giving to

+

Is look at all the great stuff. We do we’re down with the social causes that our employees can make the world a better place. Yes, we’re making the world a better place all that kind of self story that in a corporate culture. They’re kind of telling it telling themselves. I think a lot of the pressure is coming from from the employees that work there and they have to make those sort of corporate employees happy that I think they’re starting to see some pressure and some change on that. That’s really interesting and I think we have seen some movement in the more ethical.

+

Correction, as a result of that, you know, we’re talking about these I won’t pick specific companies and you certainly don’t need to either but I am curious if you’ve seen the sort of things that you to suggest in influencing behavior and behavioral design at another company and thought to yourself. I’m not so sure of the application there and you know the very kind of thing that that we might suggest and how you can use this and design. Oh all the time. I mean, I think that I mean there’s a variation of that question which

+

Is you know how often do our clients come to us and ask us to do things that we think are not ethical and what do we do when that happens? That doesn’t happen very often. Yeah, and I don’t know why that is actually I mean it might just be luck of the draw of who are the people who self-select and call us up and say can you help us with our design of the blah blah blah product Ira specifically

+

number two instances where we were asked to do something that where we felt it had it was crossing the line and we were going to do that one of which was you know, luckily it was very easy to talk about because what they were asking us to do is actually illegal. So that is that, you know, I’ve done work with the FTC the Federal Trade Commission and that’s a u.s. Part of the government that monitors

+

Annie’s for illegal practices for a various kinds and I’ve been an expert witness for them on you know, when they’re they’re bringing a company to court because of actually user experience interface design issues that are causing people to give away, you know, there are entire life savings and not realize that they just signed that away so and I love doing that work. That’s like some of the best work we do but you know because of doing that work, I am very familiar.

+

Miller with the things that are legal in the things that are illegal and the things that are great area, you know, there are just some things that you cannot do at your website or with your product. It’s illegal. So there I we did have a case once where someone had shown us this prototype and said, you know, what do you think and I said, well actually do you realize that this is illegal and they looked at each other kind of I was in person with them at the time. They looked at each other kind of surprised and dismayed. I think they didn’t know it was really cool Shawn besides being unethical but

+

We’ve had one other case where someone asked us to do something that wasn’t illegal, but we thought was crossing a line. And so, you know, we just address that trying to encourage them not to do that and we certainly weren’t going to help them and figure out the best way to do that is their company but I think in general, you know, not from our clients, you know, we see things all the time. I mean, I remember got three we were at a conference a couple of years ago. This is that, you know, you mentioned about how people are employees are getting

+

No more awake to this and and speaking out more. This was before that because I remember there’s a company that I won’t call them out by name but there was one of the people was making a presentation of this conference and she was just going on and on and on about how goal of the company and the intention of the company was to make the world a better place and I remember you and I kind of looked at each other just and and I said I said, that’s not the goal the goal of that company very well-known company is to make a heck of a

+

The money would you like to say the city that they’re based in now? They’re in California house that you know very well known company, but it was like does she really believe this? Does anybody else in the audience believe this because really that you know, that’s not the goal of the come. That’s not why they’re doing what they’re doing. You know, I do think that that’s changing. I think some of the people would have a harder time standing up at a conference and saying that now I’ll give one quick example and I will use them by name. I don’t like

+

like this State Farm ads. Okay State Farm TV advertisements. I don’t know if it’s State Farm or their marketizing agency or so. They are not the only ones they kind of did at first and now it’s being definitely been I mean, it’s not I don’t want to say copied but it’s rampant. So there’s a lot of ads where there’s like the fake Chris Paul. I don’t know if you’re familiar with these ads. I was watching a lot of Pascal’s. I’ve got a lot of these crystallized it’s the same ones they had with James Harden Chris Paul. It’s all the same ad there is something

+

Very scary that happens and they purposely use very scary noises. There’s usually something that breaks shatters flies towards the screen. Someone yells. They often use someone looking at the screen very creepily and it’s all to get attention. It’s just a blatant jumpscare. We’re just trying to grab your attention. So you look at the screen and then they couch it in a joke. Ha ha ha it was isn’t that we funny that he’s being so weird about the whole thing. It’s like he tried to you know, shoot

+

Basketball but it hit the window sill and in the glass cracked and it fell through a truck and the whole thing just was a giant disaster. Oh whoopsie daisies and you know to me it’s just very obvious that they know that there’s pretty reliable research that what you do that you don’t need if you’re going to have an ad that’s effective. You just need the attention well, and it’s actually it’s even yeah, it’s more than the attention because when it’s scary like that and with the loud noise and something shattering

+

Invokes what’s called an arousal response, which means your heart rate increases your respiration increases and then what we know is whatever comes right after that will be remembered longer because it’s tied to a fear arousal emotional response and that’s why they’re doing it so that you will remember the name State Farm now interestingly, you know, is that a positive?

+

Ation, you know, I got scared and it was safe on that doesn’t matter the research shows. It doesn’t matter. They you will remember it and then shop for insurance and three months when State Farm comes up, you know, you’ll be more likely to automatically at least check them out check out furniture and it’s going to come up as State Farm just as a memory trigger. I don’t know. Is that a good thing or bad? Yeah. I’m not a big fan of that. Do one thing I will say is that I do wonder if there is a it’s not an absolute measurement but a relative measurement

+

So if everyone is doing ads like that do we get does it take away years, but eventually do are we do we adapt to it and then it’s not as effective because it’s the same as everything else way. Maybe we have with like Attractive people in ads where it’s still effective. But imagine if everyone was just using like regular scrubs and then like one ad company was using like gorgeous people all the time that might be really effective. But because everyone in all the ads and made this very pretty active in me.

+

So I’m not sure if the effectiveness will decrease as everyone’s doing it, but that’s one in particular that annoys me greatly that makes total sense. I think with marketing tactics advertising tactics in general. We see that right like we’re something somebody stumbles across something that works and then everybody does it and then I think a combination of two things happens one, it becomes saturated. So it’s no longer novel and to as you’ve suggested we kind of adapt to that. I think the interesting thing is not that we have time to get into but maybe I thought for everybody listening to it.

+

 Clear Formatting

Is that still ethical because it then becomes normalized is an interesting question to consider but you know, one of the things that I want to ask with that so that’s a good example and questionably ethical is what I’m gathering from you right maybe your opinion on that. I’m curious. Is there a way to use something like that in an ethical way, right? So if that was if that’s the edge of the cliff right just as metaphor. How do we take a few steps back and use something like that for more ethical or more appropriate behavioral design? Well, I mean if you’re making a horror movie, it’s very ethical.

+

That’s like a perfect place for it, you know video games that kind of stuff sure. There are many places where I think the ethical lines are really blurry. Yeah, and this is one of them. Yeah, you know, so like, you know, when you’re doing behavioral design a bit a big part of it might be grabbing attention, right? I mean, we said a lot of times we’re doing behavioral design in tour in order to encourage people to take action or to take a specific action. Well if you want to encourage them to take action you first

+

To get their attention this that is one of the attention-getting techniques. Is that ethical is that ethical? I think it’s a I think it’s a blurry line like to get someone’s heart racing a little bit more than usual. Is that a bad thing? Is that okay? I don’t know that I have a clearance or not. And don’t forget that that’s the cost that you’re paying to watch a basketball game on TV for free, right? So there is a bit of a transaction, you know, you you don’t have to watch ads but if you want to watch this

+

Sent then your have to watch ads and what those ads are or aren’t I mean there aren’t a whole lot of rules. One thing I will say when we do talk about this is that the timeframe for ethics and for changes in Behavior as an economist? You see it. That’s maybe broader. They’re really long, you know, you got to look at 10 20 30 year time frames to really see changes in what society’s find ethical or for sort of dislike. There are a lot of examples

+

In the past where things that would never be shown on screen because that was just very that was not ethical at all. And it’s not like within two years suddenly everything changed and their every show had like an interracial relationship and it wasn’t a big deal. I mean that took it takes a very very long long time. And so it’s possible that the behaviors of especially tech companies but a lot of companies in maybe doing practices that people dislike but are not outraged because you know,

+

No, it’s not like that. You said this was annoying to it’s annoying. It’s sort of On The Fringe like, you know, they keep sending me notifications on my phone trying to keep me to do stuff. We keep looking for these fast changes in two or three years. And what’s the trend? What’s this trend? And I, you know, I encourage people to think on the 20 30 year time scale. So 30 years from now are people going to sort of accept these practices. It takes a really long time for things to change and organizations and institutions, especially companies, you know for new bosses who have different mindsets.

+

It’s to come in these things can take a long time and that’s not something that we’re very good at in technology right work so quickly and we’re so focused on how we can do things faster and more efficiently that I think it’s probably very difficult for people to adopt that frame of mind, especially if you want if you are on the side where hey I really want things to be more ethical. Let’s go go. Go go go being like well, maybe you need to wait 30 years is not an answer sure the shoe water here.

+

Here sure. Sure. Okay. So I want to ask one question. That’s kind of been in the back of my mind even since we started this. I’m just curious what should be what do people need to know about psychology behavioral economics, you know in in the 60-second version what do designers need to know about that most important things that people need to know are about some of the latest research on decision-making like the role that confidence plays in decision-making the role that emotions and feelings play in decision-making. I

+

That newest research is really important. I think the what we now know about I mean we’ve known for a long time that people are very social animals, but the implication of that to design that people just have the psychological biological need to be connected to other people and the role that plays and then the third thing I would say is some of the latest research on Vision some of the things we know about

+

what grabs visual attention things about the you know, the special part of the brain that recognizes faces special part of the brain that’s very attuned to simple changes like something being a different color and how that all works and how that plays into grabbing attention. I think those are those three things the vision decisions and social are really important and Guthrie you usually you know, we give these keynote talks on like the top five things you need.

+

Now do you want to add in one or two of the more behavioral economic ones? I’ll just added one broad point that when humans are making are calculating things, you know, if they’re like trying to weigh which decision to make a lot of people think that they are calculating the way a pro like a computer program to calculate or that’s how they think of it and I just want to say humans calculate by feel. It’s a very emotional emotional process and that gives you all sorts of weird outcomes. He cookie that one sentence your

+

working on a new yes course and that’s a that’s an entire course. Yeah, isn’t it too? Yeah. Yeah two courses part 1 and part 2. So he said that in one sentence, but there’s a lot of examples he gets into on that right? Awesome. Okay. So if I were to summarize a little bit of that part of my job in doing this knows taking you to is to say, you know things you ought to know about are some of the again as you mentioned some of the most recent research on how people make decisions how we get their attention the role confidence place.

+

That it’s important to be aware of and tying this back to our conversation prior applying that ethically and that’s something you kind of need to figure out on your own with context. And then remember that they are not doing these things when you are influencing the very their behavior. They’re not doing these things in a cold calculated way. They’re very they’re very emotionally driven. It’s very it’s very touchy-feely and not the way that we might imagine. It’s happening. Yep. That was for summary. That was good day. All right. Well, I’ve done my job pretty well. I realized that

+

we were coming up at the end of our time and I want to be respectful of that for you too. So, I guess one of things I like to ask at the end of each episode is you know, if somebody if somebody was listening got hit on the head forgot everything we talked about and said what can you just can you just tell me what that episode is about? What do you think that people should take away from our conversation? Thanks a lot about ethics. Here’s what I would say people should take away. Is that the work in the field of Behavioral Science so psychology + behavioral economics, there’s just

+

So much great stuff in this body of knowledge and you have to apply it really carefully but it can also be really interesting and fascinating and useful and relevant to anyone who’s designing a product designing a service designing the a user experience go find out about it Go learn about it and think carefully and deeply about what you want to use and what you might not want to use. That’s what I would say. What would you say?

+

That’s the oh great. Okay. All right. Perfect. This has been a very fascinating chat for me in the pretty philosophical which I appreciate and I think the people who listen to those do too because it’s not service level. Here’s the top five things you need to do to make a better landing page or whatever, right? So that’s been really great. I’m curious. Is there anything that you want to share with folks that we didn’t talk about today? Yeah, and you want me to do the reveal? Yeah. I’m not sure what the deal is. But go ahead. I got I got three spiels. All right, they’re all the same Spiel. So if you have any questions, especially

+

If you want to like hire us and give us a boatloads of money, you can email info at the team do.com. We have a bunch of online video courses that we’ve done many of which are free so you can go to courses that the team w.com and just sign up for the free ones about ux and science of brain payroll signs. Yeah, and lastly. I’ve been the last couple of months in sort of covid pandemic fun times. I’ve been working on recording my first certificate which is going to be behavioral economics certificate. Hmm. So that’s going to be hours and hours of

+

Videos and it’ll be fun and yeah awesome and all that great stuff. So that’s obviously not out yet, but they’re probably be out in a couple months. Yeah, I would add one more thing. You would just we’ve both written books while got through he always says I’ve written one book you’ve written many. Yeah. So either the two of us, we’ve really many look. But anyway, we have books if people like reading and they want to read more about these topics they can they can check out some of our books Guthrie’s book on behavioral economics is called I Love You Now read this book. It’s

+

Read a great book all about behavioral economics and then probably my book. That’s the most relevant to what we’re talking about. Here is a hundred things. Every designer needs to know about people and there’s a second edition of that. I would Point people to so awesome. Well, I’m pretty sure I probably read the first edition so I have not been appraised of the second edition. So that’s awesome. We can add make sure we have links to all that stuff in the show notes was you’re listening to this go ahead to our site where we have it on our blog and we’ll have links to all those things you can check out, but I just want to say thanks again to you both for taking the time to come on.

+

And chat with us and even slightly wax poetic as Guthrie said which I think was fun for me. And so appreciate having you on yeah. Thanks so much for having a lot of fun. Thank you. All right, cool. Well, thanks again. I hope everybody enjoyed it and we will see you next time. This podcast is brought to you by Aurelius the research and insights tool that helps you analyze search and share all your research in one place. So you can go from data to insights to action faster and easier check out Aurelius for yourself with a 30-day trial.

+

By going to aureliuslab.com. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean a lot. If you would give us a review on iTunes let others know what you think. You can catch all-new episodes of the Aurelius podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts like iTunes Spotify and more stay up to date with new episodes come out by signing up for email updates on our website.

+