Design Seminar

A collection of articles written by Politecnico di Milano students of the Design Seminar class 2020

[polimi-designseminar2020]

Nudging experiment: put the phone away from the bed

The problem: 1/ I have problems getting up early every morning. Since I place my phone on the desk beside the bed every night, I would easily press it off once the alarm sound and then continue sleeping. This problem used to cause me to be late for an important appointment and it is kept bothering me. 2/ As I mentioned above, I put my phone on the bedside table before going to bed every night, which brings another problem. That is: I continue to play with my phone until I stay up late. And then it lends to the problem 1, which forms a vicious circle.

The nudge: I realize that the root cause of these two problems comes from the mobile phone. Therefore, I tried to move the mobile phone charger from the bedside table to a farther position. I predict this will affect my behavior in two ways: the first is I have to take my phone far away to charge before going to bed, which makes my chances of picking up my phone again greatly reduced. The second is this force me to leave the bed in the morning to turn off the alarm.

The process: Day 1/ On the night of the first day, I lay in bed and played with my phone as usual. But around twelve o'clock, my mobile phone is almost dead. So, I had to find a charger to charge. At this time, I found that I had put the mobile phone charger on the table opposite the bed. And I noticed that it was late, so I put the phone there to charge and then went to bed. In summary, the change on the first day was that I stopped charging while playing with my phone, and I slept earlier than before.

Day 2/ The next morning, as I thought, the moment I heard the alarm clock, I couldn't wait to turn it off. But I suddenly realized that it was not within my reach. Therefore, I had to get out of bed and walked to the opposite table. In the process, I felt awake. Then I checked the information I received on my phone. Through reading, I was completely awake. In summary, this method makes me get up quickly.

Day3/ To make this small change one step further, before going to bed last night, I put a glass of water next to the phone charger. Therefore, in the morning of the third day, in addition to reading information, I became awake by drinking cold water. In summary, I think after adding this small change, it becomes easier for me to get up in the morning.

Conclusion: I was shocked by the effectiveness of this small change. Although it has only been implemented for three days, I have been able to feel the changes it has brought to my behavior. On the third night, I already tended to put my phone on the table opposite the bed by the light of nature. 

Finally, I have two thoughts about this experiment. One is if you want to change a certain behavior or form a new habit, you need an opportunity to change. This opportunity is often a very small change, but it is often very useful. The other is: this change should not cause excessive behavioral difficulties. In fact, I think if I put the phone further away, maybe this experiment will not be so successful. Since if I choose to place it farther, maybe it will be difficult for me to put it to charge before going to bed, then there is no next change. Also, I will be furious when I wake up the next morning and find that my phone is out of power. 

----Nudging experiment by Li Sikun

[polimi-designseminar2020]

Nudging Experiment from Chuhan Cheng

 

Preface——

Two summers ago, I watched a father coaxing his daughter to jump into the pool. It brought back memories of me being in the same thing with my dad years before. I was adamantly refusing to leap. He was frustrated. And then something happened. He sweetened the offer with a promise of an ice cream. Splash! I was in the water cause I really wanted that ice cream. Now after getting to know about nudging theory, I realized that little incentive was a nudge. Motivation at its best.

Motivation——

What I want to try to change in this nudging experiment is my roommate's drinking habit. Because my roommate drinks little water at home and prefers to drink coke, which has a bad effect on her health.

Be Principles——

After observation, I found that there are two main reasons that may affect my roommate's drinking habits.

First of all, my roommate is very busy at work and spends most of the time at the attic of our apartment which is our workroom. But during the whole working time, she drinks few water. In China, for most of the situations we are used to boiling water and drinking. There is an electric teakettle in the attic, but there is no faucet to get water. So if we want to drink water, we have to go downstairs to receive water with the teakettle and then take it to the second floor to boil.She thought this would interrupt her thoughts and was reluctant to do so. Before I went to Italy, usually I boiled water and reminded her to drink. But this time when I got back China and back in our apartment, I found that the teakettle in workroom has been covered with ashes...

It was obvious that she had not boiled water for a long time. Also she really drink few water. Last weekends, for example, on Saturday she went upstairs to work with a bottle of water. And she spent two evenings (about 10 hours) in the attic working. On Monday morning I found there’s still half of bottle left. Secondly, there is a small drink bar in the workroom in the attic. It has coke, juice and so on.  It is very convenient for my roommate to grab a coke. Again, last weekends as an example, I saw three empty Coke cans in the garbage on Monday.

Nudging Implication——

What I do was, first of all, before my roommate coming back home, I fill the teakettle with water and put it next to our key bowl with a post-it note.

Because the first thing my roommate does when she comes home every day is put in her keys in our key bowl – wear her home slippers -- and go upstairs to the workroom. This allows her to see the teakettle at a glance, has time to read the post-it notes while she changes her slippers, and is handy for carrying a kettle full of water. Second, I put the coke in the drink bar in the innermost and least accessible place.

 

Situation now——

For the next three days, my roommate came home after dinner and go straight upstairs to work as usual. But on the first and third day she brought the teakettle with her, and she boiled and drank a jug and a half. So in the same time period(around 10 hours), she drank as 3 times more than before! As for coke, I noticed that in three days, only one can of coke was missing from the drink bar! The amount of carbonated drinks consumed during the same period was a third of what it had been before!

[polimi-designseminar2020]

Toilet thingy 

[polimi-designseminar2020]

My nudging experiment in the bathroom

I chose my boyfriend to nudge. We were living together. I was always annoyed when he let the toilet lid up, and it didn’t help tell him to put it down. I was thinking about what is the best way to nudge him. Maybe some button on the cover of the toilet, so it pushes the lid slightly back to its right position. I found it like a handle for towels that you could quickly put on smooth surfaces because a suction cup fixes it. It was a superveasy way to start my nudging experiment.

Day 1: On day 1, my boyfriend was super confused about the handle on the toilet. I just told him that this is an experiment and that it. He knew that I don’t like it if he lets the toilet lid up, so I think he could imagine what I want him to do. And the first day he didn’t leave the lid up ones, what surprised me. I’m not sure if it was because of the handle or he knew I was watching him.

Day2: On day 2, I checked after I heard a flush from the bathroom. I waited a bit and then checked. Every time I went in, he put the toilet lid back into the position or even didn’t put it up in the first place. I didn’t want to sneak in, so I asked him if he is letting the toilet lid in the right position or is he putting it back. He answered that he didn’t put it up in the first place, because it looks like the toilet lid could autonomously come back because of the handle and this would be super uncomfortable when it happens when he is peeing.

Day3: On day 3 I did the same thing like on day 2. I waited till I heard the flush, and then I checked. In the morning, the toilet lid was in the right positions. After lunch, I checked again and I found the toilet lid up. I confronted him why he didn’t put it down this time and why he is putting it up in the first place. He said that he figured out that the toilet lid stays there and then when he is in a rush it’s more convenient to put the toilet lid up. But he also added that in general he didn’t want to put it up anymore, because of the handle, it just not feeling right, because he is constantly reminded by it.

Day4: On day 4 he just put the toilet lid up once, which was not that bad. He did this just before he had to leave and were on a rush. In the normal day routine he didn’t put the toilet lid up in the first place, what made me happy and a little bit proud, that it worked.

Overall I must say that the nudging experiment worked. If my boyfriend hadn’t figured out that the toilet lid doesn’t go back autonomously, he would let the toilet lid in the right position. So I think that the nudging experiment would work better if I had something that pushed the lid bit, so the feeling of the toilet lid coming down while he is peeing would nudge him definitely to not putting it up in the first place.

Anika Rieth

[polimi-designseminar2020]

Nudging my roommate to place the mop in the right position

I live in an apartment with 3 roommates, while I share the bathroom with one of them. About 3 weeks ago, there has been a problem with the bathroom. Every time after I take a shower, there will be a lot of water on the floor. At the beginning I didn’t notice it too much, until my neighbour complained about it. Since then, every time when I finish shower, I have to use the mop to clean the floor before leave. After about one week, I gradually realised a problem. The mop was usually placed next to the big sink in the bathroom, which is in the corner. However, after we need to clean the floor every time when we finish shower, we need to use the mop every day. The process is to wipe the floor first, and then squeeze the water into the sink. Since the shower place is closer to the toilet bowl than the big sink. Every time after I wipe the floor, I will squeeze the water into the toilet bowl. Then after several times the floor is dried, I place the mop in its original place (the corner near the big sink).

However, from the last week, every time when I go to the bathroom to use the toilet bowl, I find that the mop is just placed next to it, which makes it inconvenient to use the toilet directly. So I have to move the mop to another place every time I want to use the toilet. I thought about this problem and asked my roommate that share the same bathroom with me. I realised that since we need to swipe the floor every time after shower, usually every evening, he just simply leave the mop next to the toilet bowel after cleaning the water. Then, I asked him to place the mop in its original place, since otherwise it will be inconvenient for me to use the toilet. He understood and agreed. But until this week, I still found that more than half of the times he just left the mop next to the toilet bowl.

Since we have this nudge experiment, I came up with the idea to test it with this problem. Since this Tuesday, every time when I go to the bathroom, I closed the cap of the toilet bowl, so in this way, my roommate cannot directly squeeze the water on the mop into the bowl. Then, as he is lazy to place the mop in the right position, he will be the same lazy to open the bowl cap. So after he swipes the floor and needs to squeeze the water, there is only the easiest place left to do it, the big sink. So after finishing cleaning the floor, as the last step is to squeeze the water into the sink, he will simply leave the mop in its original place, the corner.

After just two days experiment, I was surprised honestly because I found that the mop is never placed next to the toilet bowl again. Today evening, just 40 minutes ago, I asked him about this micro behaviour. And definitely he confirmed my guess. I am totally surprised by the power of nudging. I think it changes people’s behaviour very unconsciously. Now, I am more interested in nudging and start to think about more examples or experiments that I can do through nudging.

By Banghan Yin

[polimi-designseminar2020]

Nudging experiment on my younger brother.

Thursday, June 18. Tomorrow will be the last day of an intense week of a Design Seminar that proposed the development of service design concepts that would intervene in the growing problem of AMR (Antimicrobial resistance).

The seminar was held at a distance as it has been all semester. On a personal level, this pandemic not only involved a whole semester of my first year of master's degree in PSSD at a distance; but above all, it determined my return and stay in my parents' home for the longest period of the last 5 years. I would say a real trauma!

I love my family, but going from the serenity and freedom of independence that living alone allowed me to return to share my daily life and the room with my 15-year old little brother can be considered a real challenge.

For this reason, when the professors who directed the design seminar proposed, in parallel to the project, to try to change the behavior of a member of our family through a nudging experiment, I thought it could be a good opportunity to try to change the terrible mess of my little brother, to be able to continue serenely and in a more orderly way this cohabitation.

I have always thought and appreciated that design as a profession and way of thought, can be a powerful weapon in being able to make natural, for people, the transition to behaviors healthier more correct and more valuable for them, for the community, and for the environment.

Just to give a context, I have two younger brothers: the first, Gabriele, is only a year younger than me and currently lives and studies in America, while Guglielmo, the "little of the home", even if he is not so much little now, has just finished his second year of high school. Since Gabriele and I went to live alone, the house has been reorganized by moving the living room into what used to be the bedroom where the three of us slept, and making the old living room the new single room for Guglielmo, with two kinds of foldaway bed for the short periods when Gabriele and I decide to return.

The problem comes from here, from the beginning the room was not designed to accommodate more than one child for a long time, and if at this, we add also some inevitable incompatibilities of living together, here we reach the complete scenario.

Guglielmo's most annoying habit, in my opinion, is that he used to leave his clothes on the floor instead of throwing them in his laundry basket or at least putting them back in his closet. The room is small, it takes little to make it visually messy, so this habit of Guglielmo's certainly does not help.

Determined to try through a nudge to change this habit I asked myself: How may I make more natural for my brother to throw clothes in the laundry basket instead of on the floor?

The resulting idea was very simple, exploiting the sporty-competitive spirit that is part of the essence of me and my little brother, making the laundry basket in a kind of basketball hoop. To do this I simply added one more detail, a paper-board placed on the top of the basket, with the necessary provocative text: "Dunk if you can!".

The experiment started yesterday, I would say with good success, at least we had fun throwing clothes inside the basket, avoiding that the same clothes remained on the floor. Of course, it's only the first day, it remains to be seen if in the long run, this solution can really change something or if it will simply remain a nice attempt.

We'll see what happens! I only hope that his competitive spirit beats the messy one. I believe that. He can do it!

By Giacomo Montefalcone

[polimi-designseminar2020]

My nudging experiment: put out that cigarette!

After almost 3 months in quarantine I finally managed to move from Milan to go to Palermo (Sicily), where my boyfriend Enrico lives. And it has been almost 2 week that we have started living together. You would say that staying together all days all nights after 3 months isolated must be great, a kind of paradise...and actually it is like that BUT spending so much time with a person – it does not really matter how much you love and care him or her – makes more visible and evident those little behaviours that annoy you!

He is a smoker, not an avid one since he does not smoke 2 packages of cigarettes a day…but not even an occasional one. On the contrary I do not smoke.

This is one of his bad habit that I cannot stand and when the ‘nudging exercise’ was launch I immediately thought that this one was the behaviour I wanted to change.

After a deeper thought I realized that making him stop smoking through nudging and in a couple of days it is something kind of extreme and impossible since he does not have this mind-set.

So I decided to focus on something else, always related to smoking. I thought that I really cannot stand when he does not put out the cigarette: it is not something that happens often, actually, but it is extremely annoying! That smell freaks me out! I mean, I do not really matter if you smoke close to me both outdoor and indoor just do not blow over my face or really close to me while you’re smoking!

Sometimes he starts smoking and doing other stuff at the same moment such as cooking and if he concentrates too much on his second action he just forgets/do not care he was smoking and just leaves the cigarette extinguishing in the ashtray. Sometimes he just finishes smoking and does not press enough to put out the cigarette because he is paying more attention on his phone. In both cases I AM the one who puts out the cigarette because as I have already said the smell is annoying!

Anyway by observing and paying more attention when he has this behaviour I could not figure out anything else except that he has this habit due to lack of attention and motivation. Why should he put out the cigarette if he is doing something else or if the smell does not bother him?

So I decided to face and try to change this annoying behaviour through ‘nudging’.

But, what is it? Nudging is about behavioural patterns and it is concerned with the design of choices: it can be seen as a light push, an indirect suggestion or help that influence the decisions we make without forbidding other options and/or changing their incentives in a relevant way.

I wanted to focus on a specific kind of nudging which is gamification: everyone likes playing game, especially Enrico!

The solution I designed is really simple. What I needed were just a picture of Enrico’s university mate that he cannot really stand and he always badmouths and the ashtray. I opened photoshop, cut the head of the poor guy, put it on a target and put them under the ashtray. The ashtray is transparent so you can see through the new target with the hated face on it! Now his face is the target to hit to gain points!

I know the solution might be quite childish and kind of mean…but it actually worked! I do not want to promote hate or anything like this for sure but now Enrico, when he finishes smoking, enjoys putting out his cigarette on the poor guy face and winning his “game” with the highest score!

P.S. Here I’m drawing Enrico as a really bad person, but I swear he is super nice and kind!

poster by Valeria Soffientini

[polimi-designseminar2020]

Nudging Experiment:How to avoid using lights during the day？

Will you turn on the lights in a room with plenty of light during the day? I know this sounds strange, but my roommate always turn on the lights in bathroom and kitchen in the day. Perhaps because the light in romms is not much different, he often forgets to turn off the lights. So I decided to indirectly influence his potential behavior through the nudge experiment, so as to avoid this unnecessary waste of resources.

I suspect that the reason for his behavior of turning on the light easily is that his own room is relatively dim, and he needs lighting every time he enters his room, so he has a subconscious behavior habit of turning on the light when he enters the door. I plan to use two methods to help him reduce the frequency of this situation.

Period 1

First of all, I noticed that there are many debris and stuffs hanging behind the toilet door. When entering the door, it obstructs a certain amount of light, resulting in a subjective feeling of insufficient light. After I placed these stuff in other places, the light seen through the door would become sufficient, so that people would not think of turning on the light.

Period 2

Afterwards, during the day I closed the curtains and the partitions were pulled up to allow more light to enter the bathroom, making people feel that the room is well-lit and there is no need to turn on the lights.

Before the experiment, my roommate almost forgot to turn off the light 1-2 times a day. After I tried to make the room full of light, it might give him more sense of security, so this situation didn’t happen in the daytime in the last two days. Actually, I think that nudging is a more effective and smarter method than helping people eliminate or get rid of bad behavior habits. If some external factors can be used to guide his or her behavior to change, it is indeed a better solution to solve problems.

Qiushun Yao

[polimi-designseminar2020]

Experiment: How to teach my rommates (and me) to store the dry silverware

I live with my roommates in Milano. We are two guys and one girl from Colombia, and we have always had a great relationship. We are all from the same age, and we study in the same university. We do our best to keep the apartment clean, so every week we clean all the rooms in the apartment. 

However, there has been something that I have always found frustrating. Despite we always clean the dishes and the pots right after we use them, we always forget to storage the silverware once it is dry, as you can see in the next picture. For me, it is frustrating because at the end of each week we need to store a huge amount of silverware, last Sunday there were more than 50 silverware pieces in their drying spot, all of them dry, for a three people apartment is a lot. Moreover, since we do not store the dry pieces, once we clean a new one, all of the pieces get wet again, so at the end, all the pieces have stains from the calcium of the water.

With this background, I saw in the nudging experiment an opportunity to try to change this behavior. However, I was not sure how to tackle it subtly. We have always discussed everything with my roommates, especially the things that we don't like regarding the house order, and for this specific case, I have not told them anything in these past months. So to make a subtle change I decided to hide the plastic glass we use to dry the silverware, in this glass we used to dry everything from silverware to kitchen knives. However, without it, there is no way to accumulate dry silverware. 

Of course, this was not enough, I needed to replace the glass with anything else for them to put the wet silverware. But this new place should be smaller to avoid keeping many pieces during the week. I thought it was a good idea to use a small piece of fabric right next to the stove, so I store the wet silverwares we had in the glass and clean someones and put them in the fabric, as you can see in this picture. I choose this fabric piece and this location because the piece itself helps the pieces to dry quicker, and its small enough to just store the silverware of three people. As for the location, it is very close to the silverware's drawer, so if the pieces are dry we just need to open the drawer and put them.

So far the results are encouraging, we have reduced dramatically the number of accumulated pieces, and surprisingly we have not discussed yet the subject, they have not asked me what happened with the plastic glass and just assumed this is the new way to dry the silverware. I hope in the future we can keep this behavior, and I would like to extend it also to other pieces of kitchen utensils we kept drying forever.   

Andrés Hernández

[polimi-designseminar2020]

SMALL PLATES = LESS FOOD WASTE My nudging experiment was about wasting food. I wanted to adapt the GreeNudge experiment to my boyfriend's eating habits. GreeNudge, reducing plate sizes in hotel restaurants by 2”, was able to reduce food waste by as much as 22%. Importantly, guest satisfaction stayed the same — they barely noticed the difference…In my case it wasn't exactly like that INTRO Federico is an extremely cgolosa person, he never gives up anything during meals. In time I am convinced that mirror neurons will lead me to be the same, so I have to stop him now. I watched his eating habits on the first day to understand how to ride the dynamics of the experiment without him noticing.

DAY ONE LUNCH

I cook and serve the food using small plates, he doesn't actually make comments in support of the GreeNudge experiment. We finished lunch and the dishes were clear and totally empty.

DAY ONE DINNER

Same dynamics other food! Federico was particularly nervous I figured he was upset about the job. I couldn't imagine what he was thinking.

DAY TWO LUNCH Federico at my umpteenth implantation in small plates can no longer resist ... "Riccardo, what are you doing? Since yesterday you have been using small plates and you have never wanted to cook so much in your life I have to worry? But then what is the point of giving me these small portions?"  What can I say... lucky GreeNudge, you can see that his guests weren't from Campania.

Discovered in my intentions as a designer, I tell him what I was trying to do and he, a lover of challenges, decides to continue to do it for 2 days and see what happens. DAY TWO LUNCH At dinner, chicken breast and various vegetables... we weren't crazy at all. We ate at least 1kg of cookies afterwards, BUT the plates were totally empty. The experiment was working!

LAST DAY OF THE EXPERIMENT

We always do encores. Sometimes three of a kind. But the truth is that we are Neapolitans and we are used to eating... BUT it was really interesting and to confront with Federico (my user) on the fact that actually ending a meal served in a smaller dish, makes you seem to have eaten even less and so you tend to end everything on the plate a bit for greed a bit for psychology maybe...

GreeNudge was probably right ... but from here a question, is that why in the bistro they give you the flattened and super wide plates? So it looks like you've been eating more than just a bite? Riccardo Orlando Miele

[polimi-designseminar2020]

My mother had a cat when she was young, but her cat died very early, and she always had a psychological shadow, afraid of raising a cat and dying very poor. My dad thinks cats are tough, too. But When I was in high school, I really wanted to have a cat. I didn't know what to do at that time. I knew my parents well, and I knew the reason why they didn't agree was that they thought cats were dirty and worried about affecting my body. So I did an analysis I know my parents well, and I know the root cause of their disagreement is that they think cats are dirty and worry about affecting my body. So I did an analysis of whether or not each of them saw the worry

1. They don't understand cats. They think cats are unknown animals and have an unknown fear. I took them to a cat cafe or take them home and let them know that cats are kind, clean and well-cared for. Offer to show them videos of how Well I take care of cats at a friend's house to let them know that I've learned a lot about the basics.

2. They are afraid I'm just a temporary passion, and then no one will take care of the cat Solution: They were busy and worried that life would be difficult without taking care of the cat. In fact, the main crux of the problem is that parents don't trust you to take good care of the cat. They can't even take good care of the cat. When I saw their concerns, I confidently assured them that the primary responsibility for owning a cat lay with me and that I would take good care of it. and 3. If the cat is dirty, it will shed its fur and scatter the cat's sand all over the place. Cat hair can gilling concentrated cleaning will drop hair, tape or wet hands can easily remove the hair on the bed clothes, if you have posen cleaners and sweeping robot is more convenient. Cats really gets home a little dirty, but also can develop the good habit of cat owners diligent clean, good health is not always rely on to reduce pollution, but by picking up do realize, cat owners to swear, cat I am cleaning the dirty place, can solve the trouble back at home of parents. 4.Cats can be noisy and meow Solution: After my research, I found that pure-bred cats don't meow and their voice is not as good as the legend. I can choose to buy pure-bred cats or cats that don't meow.

5. There are a lot of plants or objects in the house that could be easily damaged by cats. I didn't think it was too much of a problem, so I put the plants out of the cat's reach, cleaned the utensils, and taught cats where to go because they can be raised. I learned how to train cats so they know where to stop. Many cats have fragile things in their homes, but over the years, they're fine. One day we went to a friend's house to play. I knew that his cat was very good, so I made a special arrangement with my friend to let his cat show how to be trained. I bought the cat's nail clippers to remind me not to forget to cut my nails. Regularly clipping your cat's nails is a surefire way to avoid scratching furniture. Prepare a cage to keep in when there is no one at home.

I am glad that my parents have changed their attitude and accepted the existence of cats because of my behavior. What is particularly interesting is that cats come into the house, no matter how much they refuse before, they always dote on them, and their parents always get along well with them.

zhengang lou

[polimi-designseminar2020]

WeRun function in WeChat

WeChat is a Chinese multi-purpose messaging, social media and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. It has been described as China's "app for everything" and a "super app" because of its wide range of functions. To easily understand, you can think of it a combination of WhatsApp and Facebook. Friends can share their moments, feelings, pictures through the function in WeChat; also, they can communicate with each other through the chatting function.

WeRun is one of the interesting functions. By enabling WeRun, you can track your daily step count and see how close you are to reaching your fitness goals. If friendly competition helps motivate you, you can see how you stack up with friends who also follow the Official Account on your personalized leaderboard. No matter how you rank, you’ll be able to like your friends’ steps, share your results to Chats, and even post them on Moments. As an added incentive, if you finish first on the leaderboard by the end of the day, you’ll be able to set the cover photo on all your friends’ leaderboards!

I don't feel affected by WeRun until long time ago before Covid-19, when steps are encouraged to show your exercise. My mother can see my step every day, and I was in a city far away from her. She began to notice my steps, and said to me, why your steps are so less? Go out and do some fitness.

So you can see that from the perspective of a mother far from her daughter, WeRun helps the mother to care about the health condition of her lovely baby. Even though I have no feeling towards the function itself, I love my mom, I don't want her to worry about me, especially my lifestyle and healthy body condition. So I try to go outside and take steps more, to show her that I'm all well even though I'm far away from her.

Tang Li

[polimi-designseminar2020]

Don’t kill the gru!

Intro

The place where I’ve decided to carry out my nudging experiment is my house and the people involved are my flatmates. I live in a big apartment with other 11 flatmates and each of us has his own room along a really long corridor. But this corridor has a problem that annoy some of my flatmates: one pavement tiles is unstable and when someone steps on it, it make noise. In particular the flatmate whose room door is in front of the tile suffer from insomnia and during the night this noise often wake him up. I’m going to try to solve this problem with my nudging experiment.

Design of the experiment

In the past we already tried to solve the problem, putting a post-its on the tile, but the result was to only reduce the number of times we steps on it.

We walk up and down the corridor so many time per day that we disconnect our minds while we are doing it, so the post-it became invisible.

It’s also important to say that the tile is in the middle of the passage, so you really have to think about it to not step on it

This time I decided to use a different strategy, leveraging the natural instinct to not damage something beautiful and delicate. I’ll glue an origami to the unstable tile. I won’t explain the experiment, I’ll just say that I’m carrying out an experiment.

The experiment

Day 1:

In the morning I glue the origami to the tile. During the day I spend some time in the kitchen from where I can see the origami so I can watch the behavior of the flatmates. At the end of the day the result is predictable: nobody steps on the origami. But the most interesting fact was that the flatmates not only avoided to step on it, but really care to put the foot far from the origami, to be sure to not damage it. They do it without thinking but just perceiving the value of the origami. Stepping with the foot far from the origami they don’t touch the unstable tile so no noise is made.

Day 2:

It would be interesting to wait that someone step on the origami to know the time that it takes to happen, but I don’t have time to do this so I move to the second part of the experiment. I will step on purpose on the origami to see how the behavior of the flatmates change when the origami is ruined. 

Now the flatmates step sometime on the origami and often near to it, moving the tile anyway.

They try to avoid to step on it anyway but they are not afraid anymore to ruin it so they put the foot really near to it.

They don’t perceive anymore the value and the fragility of the origami

Conclusion 

The experiment showed to me that the system 1 in the brain work fast and it keep working even when “we detach our brain” doing something automatically. The value of the origami it’s consciously perceived as what I call an instinct, but maybe it’s a fast evaluation of the system 1. 

(no real cranes has been harmed during the experiment)

10403067_Marcello Iudice

[polimi-designseminar2020]

Hug pita once an hour challenge

I had a little cat in milan maned pita and he is soooooo cute. But actually I didn’t pay much attention to him because a lot of reason. And I just wanna try “hug my cat at least once every hour” too see what is going on.

For now the situation is pita come to me every morning asking for patting and at the same time he is trying to wake me up. You know the straggle feeling  when you r so tired but your cat is too cute to let it go. And after wake up I set up a series of alarm to help me remand me of the challenge.

First day for me actually is a little bit annoying coz the alarm is always interrupt me. Smartphone is not smart enough to see what I am doing and what the alarm for is it emergency or not. And for the cat pita I thought he should be shocked and think about what is this man doing. But no. He just enjoyed it very much.

And the 2nd day is quite interesting. Normally he would not come to me because he knew when I was busy and when I was free. But today he suddenly lost this ability. He often came to me to find me, even if I was typing or in class on the teams. Based on the current situation, I temporarily believe that his IQ has suddenly dropped sharply. Do I need to make an appointment for a pet hospital?

Day 3 I forgot to open all the alarm for the challenge. But according to my estimation, I hug him not less than once an hour. I have to admit that in this nudging, my relationship with pita has greatly improved (or am I infected with Toxoplasma gondii??). Having such an interesting connection with my pet made me feel a subtle warmth. I had dogs and a few hedgehogs before coming to Italy, but cats are really a magical animal.

I really like the nudging this time. It would be nice if the time was not so tight. I think we should get out of our comfort zone, otherwise it will be difficult to experience new feelings.

10704402/Le Jiaqi/PSSD2019 PS2

[polimi-designseminar2020]

Nudging experiment: How to clean our home regularly?

What is a nudge in design?

“A nudge, as we will use the term, is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior 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.” (Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.)

My experience:

I live with three roommates in Milan. Each of us has a heavy workload in the study, we are so tired after all-day class.Usually, the home will be very messy: no one cleans the kitchen counter at home, it is all stained; no one mops the floor; no one wants to throw the garbage. 

In general, the one who likes a clean room the most will clean when it gets dirty, but when there are more times, she starts to complain. But sometimes we really don’t recognize it's time to clean. 

By visualizing things that are not visible, we solved this problem. Through a duty table post on the wall,  four days as a term, we clean regularly. 

Also, we often cannot distinguish between dry and wet garbage. Sometimes I want to throw garbage, but I can't find the right garbage bin. Or it seems that all three are dry trash.I put the post-it notes on the trash can to sort out the trash in each trash can. Now, we can more easily identify the type of trash can.

Xiaolin Shen

[polimi-designseminar2020]

an Italian girl that love soluble coffee

Vitto, the blonde and clever girl, who I met the first day of master, invited me and our friend Anna to spend a week in her granny’s house beside Como Lake.

Actually when I said she is clever I am really serious … what a perfect situation for a nudging experiment: locked in the same place for a 5-days workshop, sharing emotional instability and reassuring each other sleeping time will come as soon as possible.

By the way, we decided that each of us would have done the nudging experiment once one day and a yesterday was my chance to...encourage Vitto get rid of soluble coffee. *You can see from her discouraged beautiful face*

But, let’s go back to the very beginning: what I could discovered in this days of cohabitation is that she is coffee addicted. I was surprised a lot because I started recalling our past experiences I remember she always decline groups coffee breaks at university.

“I didn’t know you like coffee” I said once but she immediately showed me the coffee cup saying “this is not the coffee you imagine”. Indeed I got to know this particular coffee: it’s a soluble one, without caffeine, to make it you have to add few spoon of “material” from the packaging into the cup which has hot water inside. She uses to do this in a very simple way: as soon as she feels the desire, she goes into the kitchen, where she takes the cup, she fills in with water, she heats up this using the microwave Owen, she adds few quantity of powder coffee and she mixes the solution using her spoon, the result is a very liquid coffee similar to the “americano”.

Observing her attitude I noticed that the coffee moment is extremely present in her routine: the first as soon as she gets up, then two both in the morning and during the afternoon and finally 2 after dinner. It’s basically the right water consumption I might say, but for sure not the recommended ingestion of soluble coffee. Instead for her it is really an habit.

I figured out that what I have to discourage is the Default Bias, defines as the behavioural principle based on the idea that people pick the easiest option to avoid complex decisions. Defaults provide a cognitive shortcut and signal what people are supposed to do.

I decided to increase the difficulty in the actions she needs to do in order to reach her final goal. Yesterday morning when she went to the pharmacy, I put in practice my pitiless plan! A metaphors could briefly explain the final result: “making coffee it’s becoming a treasure hunt”. So first of all I hid the cups in specific spots of the house and when she come back and wanted a coffee she spent 2 hours “looking for the cups”. Then in the afternoon when she was having a shower I put in practice the second step, I removed the microwave oven from the kitchen and put it in the terrace upstairs. Acting on a space level, made my modify the time one and this is perceived as an increasing difficulty.

“I would not make any coffee it takes that much effort” said Vitto at the end of the day, maybe she was just under pressure because of the delivery but what she understand is that she can survive even without a frequent a continuous consumption of soluble coffee.

Posted by Virginia Luisa Volontè

[polimi-designseminar2020]

Nudging experiment: how to make my roommate remember to clean the water on the bathroom floor

Nudging is nothing more than a gentle push towards a good direction. All options are still open, so the person who is nudged can make any decision they want. The ‘less-good’ options cannot be inflicted with any kind of extra fee or extra effort. The nudge is simply a small change in the surroundings that makes it more likely for the desired option to be chosen. An alteration of the choice architecture.

background:

I rented a house in Shanghai through a rental app, my roommates are kindly person. But I needed to share the bathroom, living room, and kitchen with them, and we never know each other before. The landlord arranged for the cleaner to clean the house every two weeks.

However, in the past few days, I encountered some problems. When a current roommate uses the bathroom to take a shower, the bathroom floor is often covered with water. This caused me to slip a few times when I entered the bathroom. And I found that if two people use the bathroom to take a shower without clean the floor, it will become very dirty. So, the cleaning of the bathroom is a big problem for me.

Although the bathroom gets very dirty every day, none of my roommates are willing to use their own cleaning tools to clean the bathroom floor after using the bathroom. Even after cleaning the bathroom, it can be used by the next person. And if there is too much water in the bathroom, people who have just taken a shower will bring the dirty water form bathroom to the living room, make the floor of the living room become dirty. In response to this problem, I want to try a nudging experiment.

Start trying to solve the problem:

The first time: First, I sent a message in a group chat, hoping to tell my roommates the importance of cleaning the bathroom through chat. And I suggest that they clean the bathroom floor after taking a shower every day.

Me: Is it easy to get bugs if there is water in the bathroom? Roommate A: Yes, I saw a big insect last time, it scared me. Me: There is a lot of water in our bathroom and it is very dirty. It would be nice if everyone could clean the bathroom after using it every day. Otherwise, it is easy to slip if there is a lot of water on the bathroom’s floor, and it is easy to have bugs in summer. Roommate B: Good

But the final result is not very good. Only one of my three roommates started to do this, and she would clean it carefully after using the bathroom every day. But after seeing other people still not cleaning after a few days, she also gave up. The bathroom floor became dirty again.

The second time: In order to solve the problem further, I bought a mop online. First, I tried it by myself, and then I found it very easy to clean the water in the bathroom. So I put the mop in a conspicuous corner of the bathroom and posted the message again in the group.

Me: I bought a mop from Taobao (an online shopping platform) and put it in the bathroom so that everyone can clean the water in the bathroom easily after showering. If the bathroom is clean, it will bring convenient for us. So everyone can use it. Don’t need to give me the money. Roommate A: That's good. Roommate B: I was too busy the other day and forget to clean the bathroom. I will remember it today.

The effect was very good, they use that mop to clean the bathroom floor after they taking a shower. But sometimes someone will forget to clean and she will bring water to the living room floor. So I bought another bathroom rug again and placed it near the bathroom after a few days. In this case, even if someone forgets to clean, it will not cause too much trouble.

Post by Liu Xiaoyong