Nudgeathon?: a Behaviour Change Hackathon

How companies and institutions can get a fast introduction to Behavioural Science

At the beginning of July I found myself on a Zoom call with a very particular group of stakeholders from Coventry: a link worker, an artist, a medical doctor, a student from the University of Warwick, a professor, and a citizen. We were gathered there for a full day of brainstorming on how to best nudge individuals with non-clinical mental health challenges to uptake creative activities as part of their treatment regime. This was Nudgeathon?, an event to help any kind of organization fast track their adoption of behavioural science or simply to solve a problem with the methodologies of the discipline. By providing its members with a hands-on session where they learn about behavioural insights and then work together with stakeholders, Nudgeathon? is able to bring in fresh perspectives and a taste of what the discipline can offer. The methodology’s agile delivery and usage of diversity fits in perfectly with today’s need for innovative and inclusive approaches to problem solving that ensure no one is left behind. 

Read on to understand how Nudgeathon? works and how it helped tackle the challenge presented by Coventry's City of Culture.

A Behavioural Science Marathon

Nudgeathon? is in a nutshell a full day, or even multi-day, two-stage event where participants first learn about behavioural insights guided by an academic who’s researched extensively in the field and then come up with ideas for nudges to tackle a particular problem with the help of a behavioural scientist. 

In a typical Nudgeathon?, participants will first be introduced to the problem. A member of the organization presents data about the problem and the context surrounding it to make sure all participants understand the situation and its challenges. Then, they are split into groups and their first task is to identify behavioural barriers. Afterwards, they learn sequentially about an aspect of the EAST framework, a behaviour change framework developed by the Behavioural Insights Team to apply behavioural science to public policy. The EAST framework proposes that to encourage a behaviour, it must be made Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely. Real-life examples and how each principle works is explained by the academic leading the educational component of the event. As participants go through each part of the framework, they work in heterogeneous groups of stakeholders that represent different key characters related to the problem. More often than not these stakeholders have never before sat together on the same table (or Zoom call) to think about this problem in a collaborative manner. 

Added to this group of diverse stakeholders there is a behavioural scientist that guides the group’s discussion around each aspect of the EAST framework applied to the problem being analyzed. The behavioural scientist supplies vital knowledge about cognitive biases, heuristics and prior research to help the group come up with applicable, evidence-based nudges. At the end of the day, each group presents their interventions or nudges which are evaluated by members of the organization that requested the event. The nudges and insights presented by the teams can then be joined together into a holistic intervention to help the organization find potential solutions to their problem with behavioural science.

Watch the video below to see a recap of a Nudgeathon? to reduce birth defects.

Crowdsourcing Behavioural Insights in Practice

In my experience with Coventry’s City of Culture, we set our sights on encouraging individuals with mental health challenges to uptake regular creative activities offered in the community. Two main problems were defined: how to nudge patients to attend art activities and how to nudge general practitioners to recommend these services as treatments. For this purpose, participants were broken up into diverse teams. In our case, a link worker and a citizen that had attended art therapies provided insights about the barriers faced by patients and what could actually work in driving behaviour change. A general practitioner expressed the concerns of her colleagues in recommending these therapies and also about the nudges used. An artist shared what would be possible on their end to encourage participation. As the team’s behavioural scientist, I led the discussion and ensured that the insights gleaned from it resulted in viable nudges that could be deployed in a fast and cost-effective way. 

Some of the barriers we detected were that patients frequently have a hard time attending a first session due to stigma, lack of available information on new events and the absence of a support network at home. Based on the EAST framework, some of the proposals we made included using a foot-in-the-door technique where link workers would agree to go with the patient to a given session to make them commit to attend the session and to initially provide the support they may lack at home. We also saw a possibility to use reciprocity by encouraging patients to participate as volunteers to break mental barriers towards the events and create a sense of purpose and community. We also suggested that goal-setting could be implemented in the patient’s first session with the link worker where a personal plan could be put together for them to follow. Other groups suggested creating online groups to keep people engaged and motivated to attend. In the end each one of our proposals was challenged by fellow teams and members of Coventry’s City of Culture. Our insights would then be able to inspire future nudges for the City’s arts and cultures programs. 

Paving the Way for more Behavioural Science Around the World

The Coventry City of Culture Nudgeathon? is just an example of an organization that successfully used this event to find a solution to a problem. To date there have been more than three dozen editions of the event in four continents. It has helped find solutions to problems like encouraging entrepreneurship in Kuwait, increasing youth volunteering in Pakistan, reducing plastic bottle litter in Mexico, improving energy consumption in the United Kingdom, and reducing misinformation in China to name a few. 

Nudgeathon? can be a great idea for any organization, public or private, that may wish to get started with behavioural science by giving their teams an introduction to the discipline or for organizations that may wish to solve a specific problem with behavioural science so that they can later decide to build up an internal team. As a behavioural scientist, the event provides a way to test your skills in different contexts and culture, which is undoubtedly an incredibly fun way to learn and put this knowledge to good use at the same time. 

Would you try such an event within your organization? Share your thoughts in the comments below!