Yesterday, I watched an online lecture by Richard Thaler who is promoting his new book, Nudge: The Final Edition. In introducing the lecture, Thaler defined his area of expertise as "choice architecture." In the process, he listed several examples of good designs and bad designs. The good designs are examples of effective nudges that promote positive choices/behavior, while the bad designs are examples of ineffective nudges that do not have the same options or behavioral results. Among the effective nudges he listed was a fascinating example from The Netherlands:
For those of you who do not see this view often, it is a housefly printed onto the bottom of a urinal. Because it draws the user's attention, they tend to focus more on what they are doing. The results, as explained in the article in the url below, are striking:
"In the early 1990s, the story goes, the cleaning manager at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport was trying to reduce 'spillage' around urinals. He settled on etching small, photorealistic images of flies on the urinals, right near the drain. The idea was to give people something to aim at."
Why a fly, you ask?
"Flies are small and annoying and a little gross but they're not scary like say, a spider, which might discourage people from using the urinal at all. As Aad Kieboom, the Schiphol Airport manager who oversaw the introduction of urinal flies, [explained that] 'a fly may have unsanitary connotations, but that is exactly why nobody feels guilty aiming at it!'"
And, as I said, the results were pretty amazing:
"And aim they did. Kieboom reported an astonishing 80 percent reduction in urinal spillage after introducing the flies. He estimated this resulted in an 8 percent reduction in total bathroom cleaning costs at the airport. Since then, urinal flies have begun showing up in restrooms all over the world."
Highly effective. What is great about this design, and why Thaler gives it as much prominence as he does in his book, is that there is no compulsion involved and no options are denied, yet the outcome is beneficial. In other words, it is a great example of design and, in Thaler's words, effective choice architecture:
"Take the case of airport urinals. If you're looking to reduce spillage you could, say, institute a policy prohibiting bad aim, and hire attendants to enforce the policy by handing out fines to violators. But this would be expensive and contentious, as well as hugely intrusive into one's bathroom time. The flies do the same work as overbearing restroom attendants without any element of forced coercion. They make it easier for people using the urinals to make the right choice."
For those who are interested, here is an interview with Thaler on NPR about his new book: https://www.npr.org/2021/07/27/1021438772/nudge-vs-shove-a-conversation-with-richard-thaler
Take care
David
David Chandler
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What's a urinal fly, and what does it have to do with winning a Nobel Prize?
By Christopher Ingraham
October 9, 2017
The Washington Post
