In May, Richard Thaler, a professor of economics and behavioral science at the University of Chicago’s business school, wrote an article for the New York Times that clearly lays out how much of our behavior, which we’d like to think is rationally driven, simply is not. It’s titled, “Unless You Are Spock, Irrelevant Things Matter in Economic Behavior,” and available at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/upshot/unless-you-are-spock-irrelevant-things-matter-in-economic-behavior.html?_r=0.
In the article, Thaler details the significant effect that supposedly irrelevant factors (SIFs) have on decisions that we make. Accepting the validity of SIFs is key to really understanding human behavior. People do not necessarily act in a logical way because consciously or unconsciously they let SIFs determine what they do. When they’re making a decision, all sorts of things they should ignore steer the actions they take.
Thaler provides this concise example of overcoming the SIFs that prevent people from saving for their retirement: “Knowledgeable employers have incorporated three SIFs in their [retirement] plan design: they automatically enroll employees (who can opt out), they automatically increase the saving rate every year, and they offer a sensible default investment choice like a target date fund. These features significantly improve the outcomes of plan participants.”
This plan of action recognizes the SIFs that keep people from initially enrolling in retirement programs (such as feeling too busy to fill out the forms), saving an appropriate amount over time, and knowing how to manage their retirement funds.
Designers need to consider SIFs when they’re creating spaces and planning to make desired outcomes likely. For example, people designing workplaces should make sure that employees can do their job well at their primary workspace and not need to travel to some other available location that’s “perfectly” suited to that work to do so. There are many reasons people may not decide to simply pick up and move themselves. If someone adds the most value to their firm through focused work done alone, then their assigned, primary home workspace should support just that.
Want people to be in better shape and save natural resources by walking up the stairs? Make the stairs obvious and use discrete signs to direct people to elevators. To make it more likely that people reap the benefits of their sit-stand desks, have those desks move automatically into a standing position every few hours—but give users an opportunity to override that change if they desire. Want people to take a break at lunchtime everyday and casually mix with colleagues in the cafeteria? Make sure delicious cooking smells subtly linger in HVAC currents around noon.
No workplace amenity or feature can separate itself from the silent, unspoken messages it carries; SIFs are powerful. If a quiet space meant for focus work is seen by employees as the place where misfits who can’t concentrate go to try to get some work done to avoid getting fired, no one will venture there, no matter how appropriate its design.
These nudges toward desired actions don’t determine behaviors, but they do make some more likely. Space users always retain their autonomy; they can choose to walk to a different workspace or bring a lunch from home and eat at their desk, for example.
Places that people have to be taught how to use – new electronic tools, etc. found there, excluded – are often doomed to failure. Spaces that require “education” are, generally, places where SIFs have been ignored.
Design that recognizes SIFs seems logical and obvious, but often it isn’t what gets built. Lots of SIFs are organization and user group specific; only research brings them to light. SIFs are powerful, and if understood, compelling ways to achieve desired objectives, by design.
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.