How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life pdfdrive com

Nudge 3: Provide Visual Hints to the Outcome You Want
We can also nudge in subtler ways, by giving visual clues to the outcome we’d
like to see. For example, on escalators in many big cities around the world,
there’s a convention: relaxed people stand to the right to allow rushed people to
thunder past on the left (in some cities it’s the other way around, but with the
same idea of separate fast and slow lanes). But visitors to these cities often don’t
know this, which leads to frustrated commuters and startled tourists. Recently, at
my local station, I’ve noticed some escalators are now printed with pictures of
two feet on the right-hand side of each step, giving visitors a subtle suggestion of
what’s expected. And it’s worked beautifully, reducing tension all around.

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How might you apply this in your communication? Here are a couple of
things to try:
Use visual cues (arrows, graphics, photos) to draw people’s eye to whatever
you’d most like them to focus on.
Make the visual layout of your material suggestive of the kind of response
you’d like from them.
On the latter, suppose you wanted to ask colleagues to share their ideas for
improving your company’s workspace. If you made an open request for input,
it’s fairly likely you’d hear between zero and one idea per person. But if you
were to give people a form with three numbered boxes preprinted on it, you’d be
more likely to get three ideas (or at least one or two) from each person. Just be
sensible in how you use this; research suggests this works as long as your
request is reasonable, so only put forty boxes on your form if you’re sure people
will be fired up rather than scared off by the suggestion that you’re asking for

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forty ideas.
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