By skyforbes 
Nov 11, 2018
In the immensely growing world that we live in, the interactions that humans have with interfaces is becoming more and more personalised. Platforms try to indulge their users, and create an experience that makes them act in a certain manner, which ultimately benefits the business of the platform.
Micro-interactions in that manner are a growing trend too. The small tiny animations that occur while users interact with the various features on the platform. But, there is one big question, can something as minute as a ‘micro’ interaction influence someone’s behaviour?
In my opinion, YES! I believe anything from a ‘micro’ interaction to a hoarding or a bill board can influence someone when projected and presented in the right manner. The idea here to create micro-interactions that can potentially influence an individual’s behaviour in a more socially responsible manner. With the help of small interactions on a mobile application (or other digital interfaces), a sense of awareness is being created to let people think about these issues, that they take for granted. Some issues are targeted directly — with character animation (for example, girl child education, women empowerment), other are dealt with abstract object animation.
But, what problem are we approaching?
How might we create micro-interactions on mobile applications that influence users (nudge them) to think responsibly for the society or act socially responsible.
Okay. But is there a need?
Understanding the need for the problem, is an integral part of understanding the approach that we need to take towards the problem.
Understood. Let’s approach the problem now.
The approach to the problem in terms of the final product is fairly simple — an interaction on a digital platform. Along with studies and interviews to understand the impact of these micro-interaction.
With the help of interviews possible iterations in the concept as well as visuals were conceptualised to understand what speaks to the user, and what an individual can easily interpret without applying much thought, a visual that is automatically understood by the user.
Micro-interactions are animated interactions between a user and their system, that improve the appeal of the interface. But, these interactions can be used for more than just appeal — to change the way people understand social problems around them. Thus an approach is to create micro-interactions that expose the viewer to a social problem being targeted.
To impact one’s behaviour, Behaviour change communication comes into play. It is a method to transform or modify one’s attitude or perception towards a particular issue. There can be various methods towards BCC, like advertisements, short movies, commercial movies, and a Nobel winning concept “Nudge”. Behaviour change itself, targets the thought process and existing mindset of an individual, and with this tries to change the way they think about any issue into a more socially responsible behaviour.
What is Behaviour Change Communication?
Behaviour Change Communication is a process of developing communication strategies to initiate a positive behaviour change in the target person and community. There is a systematic process undertaken to put the use of communication and proven model and theories. The major steps are:
- Analysis of the behaviour of the community at the ground level
- Planning a particular model of implementation
- Implementation of the model, by ‘effective’ use of communication and emotional connect
- Monitoring and evaluating the change in people
The basic feature underlying the Behaviour Change Communication is to appeal to the mindset of the people and convince them to change for the better. This whole process of teaching and convincing at an individual level requires a lot of time and effort, but it is worthwhile.
Behaviour Change Communication is very effective and is the reason the world has shifted away from Information-Education-Communication (IEC) method. The major difference between IEC and BCC is that IEC had commonly designed materials for teaching people, much like the ‘history syllabus’ taught by a school teacher which is the same for all, whereas, BCC involves strategically designed programs much like a personalised home tuition designed specifically for an individual. Both of them try to communicate the same thing, but BCC communicates it better through a more individualistic approach (though requires more effort). BCC programs fall in three broad categories,
- Mass Media
- Interpersonal Communication
- Community Mobilisation
Ever since independence India has made a lot of positive change in economic and social domain. In our work we’ll try to understand how BCC has helped to achieve an effective social change in India.
Let us understand the “nudge theory”
The “nudge” theory, as presented by Richard Thaler won the Nobel economics prize (for his contribution in behavioural economics), is a concept where people are driven to take better decisions and display a result of positive reinforcement through subtle changes in policies. As of now, it finds its importance in the field of behavioural science, political theory, and economics with an aim to propose positive reinforcement and self-initiated responses to influence decision in a group.
As defined by Thaler and Sunstein, the concept is as follows:
“A nudge, as we will use the term, is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives. To count as a mere nudge, the intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid. Nudges are not mandates. Putting fruit at eye level counts as a nudge. Banning junk food does not.”
The working of a nudge follows a defined path — By altering the environment of the user in such a manner that the cognitive processes are triggered to react in a desired outcome which is the expected choice or decision.
Information processing as by individuals can be segregated into two distinct categories –
- Fast systems — the system is fast, automatic and highly susceptible to environmental influences. These result in faster decisions and in situations where there is complex information to process, this information system comes to rescue. However, the downfall of such a system is a suboptimal decision.
- Slow systems — the system is slow, reflective and takes into account explicit goals and intentions. These systems are rather well thought after and comply with the values of an individual.
There can also be various types of “nudging”. In a way, these are various techniques that can be deployed to influence an individual’s decision regarding a situation.
- Default option — An individual is nudged to choose a given option if it is set as default.
- Social proof heuristic — The tendency of people to perform a task dependent on the decisions taken by other people, (influence by the behaviour of other people).
Increasing the salience of the desired option — Salience of a feature is when the attention of an individual is drawn towards it. Thus increasing the salience of a desired option nudges an individual to choose that option.
There are several types of nudges. What types are there?
The impact that nudges have no an individual which drives them to take better decisions, and act responsibly than before. Nudges can exist in various types and not a single type. Some of the known types are as follows
Let us now understand these types in detail.
- Mindful Nudge — A method of making people more aware about the decisions that they are taking to help them step back and re-evaluate their opinion, to avoid not-thought-over decisions, which might causes problems later.
- Mindless Nudge — An opposing force to mindful nudges, mindless nudges help individuals take decisions without being consciously aware of it, that is it present subtle changes that do not affect the individual directly, but rather affect the choices unconsciously.
- Encouraging Nudge — A method to help people take decisions driven towards a focal activity with the process of encouraging them to it. Certain sub-activities would be involved through nudges that ultimately lead the individual to take the desired decision (around the focal activity). Encouraging Nudges can be an inspiration for individuals to take responsible decisions.
- Discouraging Nudge — An opposing force to encouraging nudges, where in an individual through nudges is discouraged to strive towards an activity. Better explained, to nudge someone to move away from a focal activity, and not really towards something.
- Self-boost Nudge — Some individuals are well aware of the right path and decisions to take towards a more responsible situation. All they need is a little push to strive towards the goal, this push is achieved through the nudge. These nudges are only the last push needed to attain the goal.
- Activating Nudge — Some nudges on the other hand, require to completely motivate an individual to act in a certain way. Opposing to self-boost nudges, individuals in these cases aren’t motivated or directed at all, but rather need to be directed to work in a certain way.
- Self-imposed Nudge — Some individual who want to attain a certain stature in society, have rules laid down for themselves to follow and thus in the process impose nudges on themselves to act in the desired manner. These nudges are self-imposed, they aren’t imposed by others, but rather by the individual themselves.
- Externally-imposed Nudge — Opposing to self-imposed nudges, externally-imposed nudges are imposed by a third party — government, NGOs, or marketing companies to imposed their ideology and way of thinking on an individual so that they act in the desired manner.
A comparative study
Why do these nudges work?
A nudge works to alter the behaviour that an individual has towards a particular problem system — thus, it targets the process of behaviour change to communicate an issue, and expect an action. Understanding the shift in mindset of people when they get nudged consists of many factors:
- Care for a self-image: Every individual holds a self-image and an ideal-self, the congruence and incongruence of these images causes the state of self-actualisation (refer to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs). A self-image of an individual is a derivative what one thinks of oneself. The image is usually an outcome of either social roles or personal traits. A self-image is either formed out of what roles an individual plays in the society (thus is heavily influenced by the society) or by what their personality is (a combination of characteristics, or qualities that define a person).
An ideal self on the other hand is the portrayal of what one sees oneself to be. Usually, an ideal self consists of qualities and characteristics that an individual appreciated about others, and wants the same in themselves.
Every individual cares deeply about their self-image, because that defines their roles in the society, their position and overall status. When nudges display a characteristic that an individual should have to be socially more acceptable, responsible and sensitive, then that individual reflects upon self, and tries to overlap the updated ideal self (that contains the characteristic nudged) and their self-image, and create overlap, to stay satisfied. Thus, to maintain a calm within, the individual gets nudged and actually shows change in behaviour and acts accordingly. - Follow the crowd (Herd mentality): A herd mentality, or mob/gang mentality is defined as the influence that a group has on our decisions. Thorstein Veblen, a sociologist and economist depicts in one of his books — how individuals tend to behave in the manner that others in their group behave, who are socially at a higher status than them. Thus, it can be derived that individuals consider a person, (in a group) as the leader and tend to follow them without thinking much from their end.
One of the greatest examples, of understanding herd mentality is — Fashion. There is always an individual who is considered the fashion icon and more or less everyone tries to follow their fashion sense, and style. There are multi-faceted reasons why people follow a crowd and do not wish to display their own thoughts. Fear of being alone, usually people feel that if they stand alone, they come across as someone who holds a wrong notion, and weak. It is sometimes considered as a more comfortable position if they follow someone, as then they don’t have to make themselves “acceptable” to the society, but are automatically “accepted”. They sometimes just believe the fact that — “if everyone is doing something, then they must be right’, without taking into consideration their own opinions. Some others experience the feeling of FOMO — Fear Of Missing Out. A fear that they might miss out on something important and thus follow the masses believing that being a part of a large mass would let them be updated with everything and not missing out anything at all. Thus a nudge works if the leader of a crowd follows the nudge, then his followers automatically get nudged. Sometimes, this is how nudges truly work, seeing someone else getting influenced by a nudge, an individual follows the crowd and gets nudged himself. - Default thought: A human usually has two kinds of thinking — automatic (default) or reflexive. When there is application of functions of the mind (for example, during calculations, strategy planning, etc.) then the mind thinks in a reflexive mode, where it needs to react according to the situation give. However, there are situations when the mind does not have to apply any kind of function at all — in this case the default or automatic thinking is applied.
Nudges work when a person’s automatic thinking is put into use, that is, he/she doesn’t have to put a lot of effort in understanding and it naturally comes to the user to understand it. Thus, if a nudge approaches through our default thinking and works around our innate understanding, it will be successful. - Values and belief systems: Values and belief systems are two different terms that help an individual perform better judgements. From the experiences of being a human, we derive our values, these are not circumstantial but universal. Moreover, values directly relate to our needs, and they change according to our psychological and physical growth. Belief systems however are contextual and based on our past experiences. Thus, together they form the basis of decisions that we take in our day to day lives.
Nudges while working, try to target either someone’s belief system or values, and thus cut through and let the person relate to the situation and get influenced to take desired decisions. - Universal drives: The desires that help an individual take better and informed decisions, that benefit them. There are a total of 16 drives — Acceptance, Curiosity, Eating, Family, Honour, Idealism, Independence, Order, Physical Activity, Power, Saving, Social contact, Status, Tranquility and Vengeance. These desires affect our decisions and a nudge that targets one of these drives would be considered a successful nudge. These drives are one of the most powerful tools to influence an individual as they exist in everyone, but not all are aware of the existence, thus a subtle target can be a success. Let us understand these drives in greater detail.
What are universal drives?
Each of us are different and a million ways, how we look, how we dress, what we eat, how we lives, but there are some desires that keep all of us united even among the vast differences that we have. These innate desires drive how we live our lives, the decisions we take and the quality of those decisions. These are based upon the goal-oriented behaviour, that affect most of our lifestyle.
Introduced by Dr. Steven Reiss, universal drives are a set of desires that help individuals take better decisions. Many psychologists have tried to compile a list of universal drives starting from McDougall, a social psychologist at Harvard University 1908. Reiss believes that — “Logically, only goals that are desired for their own sake can serve as the end of a purposeful explanation of human acts”. According to Reiss every desire has an instrumental goal and an end goal.
In an experiment conducted by Dr. Reiss, he tried to understand what drives an individual to be “happy”, and with answers from about 6,000 participants he created an exhaustive list of 16 universal drives, which motivates an individual to lead a happy life.
According to Reiss, one can create a “Reiss profile” of any individual based on the importance of the drives in their lives. He asked another set of participants in a separate study to reveal if a drive was highly striving for them, low striving or depending on the situation, and coloured each of the drive, green, red and yellow respectively. This resulted in the “Reiss profile” of that individual.
Behavioural Psychology and conditioning
Behavioural Psychology is a branch of psychology based on the concept of behaviourism which behaviour and learning is based on the relationship of stimuli-response. It also supports that all behaviours are obtained based on conditioning.
Behaviourists believe that any individual can be trained to act in a desired manner based on the conditioning that they are subjected to. There are two major categories of conditioning:
- Classical conditioning: Involves a neutral stimuli comes in sequence with a naturally occurring stimuli, which the subject is familiar with (by default knows it). Over a period of repeated exposure, the subject becomes used to the neutral stimuli and this becomes naturally conditioned even without the natural stimuli now. The stimuli is thus called the conditioned stimuli and the response — a conditioned response.
- Operant conditioning: Involves a response based on reinforcement or punishment. It is based on action and consequence learning. An individual learns the consequences that a certain action has caused and either reduces or increases the occurrence of the action.
A nudge in terms of a micro-interaction could be a conditioned stimuli, and the desired change of behaviour or desired action is the conditioned response. Nudges work on stimuli-response basis as well.
Let us consider a case, where an individual visits an e-commerce website on a regular basis to purchase some item or the other. At the end of every purchase, during the payment stage, he gets an option of choosing the payment method, and owing to his knowledge of paying through cash, he will choose that same (natural) stimuli to pay through cash (response). Now consider a scenario where there is a micro-interaction that includes the positives of paying through digital modes — PayTM, and others, thus over time, the viewer gets nudged to try out the method once, since every time the animation comes, over a period of time it unconsciously registers in his mind. Thus the micro-interaction acts as a neutral stimuli (a conditioned stimuli) to nudge him to pay through digital modes (conditioned response).
The use of nudge can be explicitly present to improve the choice of an individual or help them take better, smarter choices.
- Situational-bias: Create scenarios around the current situation of a viewer and nudge them to act in the desired manner. For example, using the birth date information of employees to nudge them about financial solutions, thus nudging them to relate their age and the financial options they should deploy.
- Confidence-bias: Build onto the confidence of the viewer, give them appreciation quotes and notices of their action so that they repeat the behaviour.
- Rewarding-bias: An incentive based nudge, that incentivises them to continue the behaviour that they are displaying currently.
A scenario based study
To understand the impact, causes and cases of impact of a micro-interaction revolving around a social issue, a number of interviews were conducted of the age group 22 years to 26 years. The interview involved questions about their interests and causes they support or care for. Understanding the interests and causes, a mapping was done between being socially responsible and interest in food. Considering a platform that lets rural women prepare home-made food and drink and sell them, as a reference, the interviews were directed towards supporting a social cause, women empowerment, women entrepreneurship and hygienic food.
Some findings from the interviews are as follows –
Majority of them felt the need to be socially responsible and support a social cause.
Being from the fresh employee category, they were concerned about the budget they assign for food, drinks and other miscellaneous needs.
A need to maintain a self-image for the society was inferred directly or indirectly based on the interview.
Hygiene concerns with food and drinks were a concern for majority.