Behavioural Design Matters / Oct 1, 2023

(Note - This is a newsletter, previously titled 'Experience Matters', for anyone interested in things related to – human behaviour, consumer behaviour, customer experience, innovation, design thinking, culture, etc. The links I share below are a collection of links or articles I found inspiring, insightful or thought provoking from these kinds of topics).

1. The story behind the (Solapur) Handpump (via Hari Krishnan )

According to Rural Water Supply Network, by 1974, UNICEF conducted a review of its water supply program in India, and the findings were alarming: a staggering 75% of the wells drilled in the previous seven years were not providing water. The hand-pumps in use at the time, made of cast iron, were originally designed as simple family pumps in Europe and North America. They were never intended to endure the demands of serving hundreds of people for stretched hours. Faced with this challenge, UNICEF and the Government of India, along with Indian manufacturer Richard & Cruddas and a handful of compassionate individuals embarked on a remarkable technological endeavour. This endeavour gave birth to something which would go on to become the most widely used hand-pump in the world. The India Mark II.

2. Project Sunroof by Google (via Jess Holbrook )

Project Sunroof uses information that’s in Google Maps to figure out how much sun falls on a roof and takes into account stuff like the angle of the roof, the weather, and obstructions like trees and chimneys. Then it uses those measurements to figure out how many panels you’d probably need and how much you could save on your electric bill, including solar incentives in your area. You can see how buying or leasing panels affects your savings, and then send your estimate to installers in your area, instantly.

Visit google.com/sunroof and enter your address to find out how much solar energy could save you. Project Sunroof works in Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Fresno.

3. IKEA Tried Getting Rid of the Maze. Shoppers Wanted It Back.

IKEA’s experiments with new store layouts produced a surprising result: Shoppers prefer its mazes. The Swedish furniture retailer over the past five years opened new urban stores that diverged from the typical IKEA store experience that guides customers on a winding course through showrooms devoted to different parts of the home.

4. The World's Last Internet Cafes (via Simon Roberts )

When the world’s first internet cafe, Cafe Cyberia, first opened its doors in London’s West End in September 1994, its founders could never have imagined what they’d unleashed. Internet cafes — cheap, accessible venues where just about anyone could explore cyberspace in its infancy — spread slowly across the world at first, and then snowballed in popularity.

5. The Rebranding of MDMA (via Krittika Sharma )

In recent years, growing numbers of scientists have been asking whether MDMA could become a recognized, official part of psychotherapy. Rachel Yehuda, who runs a lab at Mount Sinai focussed on post-traumatic stress disorder, or P.T.S.D., says that MDMA “produces a substantial change in mental state that increases people’s ability to engage with traumatic material in psychotherapy.” Although the drug has been illegal since the eighties, the F.D.A. considers MDMA one component of a “breakthrough therapy” for the treatment of P.T.S.D., and could soon consider an application for its prescription use during therapy sessions. Such a development would force us to change our idea of the drug. Many people still think of MDMA as a chemical that makes you feel good when you go out dancing all night long. But what if its greatest power is an ability to inspire empathetic conversations? The meaning of MDMA is changing. What kind of a drug is it going to be?

And in case, you missed the event that we recently hosted on the topic of 'Behavioural Design by Rituals', you can download the Toolkit we published from here:

Thanks,

Param | Co-Founder, 3 Big Things.Studio

In case you missed the previous edition of the newsletter, here goes:

Behavioural Design Matters / July 3, 2023

1. All the Grand Prix Winners at The Cannes Festival of Creativity 2023 (via Lakshmipathy Bhat)

There were countless bronze, silver and gold awards handed out but the most coveted prize is the Grand Prix, of which 34 were awarded this year. It is these awards that give the strongest sense of where the industry sees itself or where it wants to go in the future.

2. Lakshmi or Lakmé?: 19th Century Fashionable Orientalism (via Tanvi Gupta)

When the TATA group wanted to set up a makeup line in the 1960s, their French collaborators suggested the name Lakmé as an homage to the opera. But what was Lakshmi, also the name of the Hindu goddess of wealth, beauty and prosperity, doing on the 19th-century French stage? Tracing the historicity of this name reveals a fascinating story about orientalist aesthetics and fashion.

3. Storytelling Is Your Secret Superpower: Talk by Shalini Raghunathan at Ishanya at IIT-Guwahati 2022

Juxtaposing Indic mythology on Creativity & Design Practice: As designers, we are storytellers aspiring to tell stories of intent and purpose through the products and experiences we create. How might we tell these stories to strike the right balance between connection and credibility? What new perspectives might we gain from mythology for the challenges of modern-day designers?

4. Engaging Men For Better Family Health Outcomes (via Sanjukta Das)

Family planning and child nutrition indicators show the least improvement of health indicators across India. Historically, programs in these two sectors have focused on women, both as end-users and as providers (e.g. female community health workers).?Evidence shows positive improvements in health, nutrition, and gender outcomes when men’s engagement increases, but falls short of showing lasting behavior change at scale.?To fill this gap, teams from Dalberg and Project Concern International India set out to design programs, answering the question: How might we engage men in nutrition and family planning through innovative and gender transformative programs in rural Bihar? More details on this dedicated website as well .

5. The Fascinating Science of Pleasure Goes Way Beyond Dopamine

Pleasure and happiness are too important for our mental health to be reduced to the single brain chemical dopamine. Dopamine, one of the many, many chemicals (aka neurotransmitters) found in the human brain, where it has many functions. However, if you were to go solely by the context in which dopamine is mentioned in much of modern culture, you’d be forgiven for concluding that it has just one fundamental, very specific, function in the human brain – producing happiness and pleasure.