Behavioural Design Matters / Aug 17, 2024

This is a newsletter for anyone interested in things related to – human behaviour, customer experience, innovation, design thinking, culture, etc. The links we share below are a collection of links or articles we found inspiring, insightful or thought provoking from these kinds of topics.

1. The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar

Sheena Iyengar studies how we make choices -- and how we feel about the choices we make. At TEDGlobal, she talks about both trivial choices (Coke v. Pepsi) and profound ones, and shares her groundbreaking research that has uncovered some surprising attitudes about our decisions.

2. We don't want to dress like our parents: If young people no longer wear trainers, what do they wear?

For a few years now, in conversations about urban fashion, there’s been a discussion about whether it’s possible to say — without hesitation — that sneaker culture is dead. This trend long put the sports shoe at the center of everything, turning it into a desirable object of status and a commodity ripe for speculation in a resale market that has grown to become a global monster.

Earlier this year, Shawn Stussy — one of the icons of urban fashion and creator of the Stüssy brand — was very direct in declaring the death of sneakers. His theory was simple: if someone like Donald Trump could sell limited edition sneakers, the culture that Stussy helped create already represented the opposite of its origins. The question that arose then, in urban fashion circles, was clear: what now?

3. How to use the ritual of Lent to reevaluate your life (even if you're a non-believer)

Even if you’re not Christian, you’ve probably at least heard of Lent — the 40 (really 46, since Sundays don’t count) days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. But what is Lent really about?

It’s about introspection. “Lent is a time of putting aside what we normally do to reevaluate our lives. It’s a time to ask, ‘Am I really being the person I intend to be?’” says Father Mark Morozowich, dean of the school of theology and religious studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. It’s about connecting with others. “Lent is a journey people can take together. Even if you don’t identify as Christian or identify as religious you can take part in the journey with friends or family members,” says Corey MacPherson, university chaplain at Colgate University in Hamilton, NY.

4. Do You Know How to Behave? Are You Sure?

How to text, tip, ghost, host, and generally exist in polite society today.

The ways we socialize and date, commute and work are nearly unrecognizable from what they were three years ago. We’ve enjoyed a global pandemic, open employer-employee warfare, a multifront culture war, and social upheavals both great and small. The old conventions are out (we don’t whisper the word cancer or let women off the elevator first anymore, for starters). The venues in which we can make fools of ourselves (group chats, Grindr messages, Slack rooms public and private) are multiplying, and each has its own rules of conduct. And everyone’s just kind of rusty. Our social graces have atrophied.

5. How Microsoft Excel Tries to Rebrand Work as Excitement

Last summer, ESPN2 offered viewers the opportunity to spectate an event distinctly incongruous with its usual sport offerings and yet yawn-inducingly familiar: spreadsheet calculation. The ESPN family of channels is no stranger to unconventional programming, with events like the Scrabble Players Championship, Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, and the World’s Strongest Man Competition. But even by its own standards, the channel had seemingly outdone itself with a half-hour programming slot devoted to the 2022 World Excel Championships. Part of the Financial Modeling World Cup and sponsored by the likes of Microsoft and AG Capital, the event pitted eight Excel wizards against each other to see who could solve tasks most efficiently with table fills and complex formulas under the pressure of a ticking clock. The event has only continued to grow: ESPNU has since broadcast the collegiate equivalent, and the 2023 version will be aired by the ESPN family and held live in Las Vegas with over $15,000 in prize money to boot.

6. Quitting When The Going Gets Tough: A Downside of High Performance Expectations (via Katy Milkman )

High performance expectations often improve performance. When individuals with high external performance expectations encounter early setbacks, however, they face impression management concerns and the prospect of embarrassment. As a result, when the going gets tough, individuals facing high external expectations may be less likely to persist than people facing low external expectations. In a field study of 328,515 men’s professional tennis matches (Study 1), we employ a regression discontinuity design to demonstrate that, after losing the first set of a match, players who are expected to win (favorites) are significantly more likely to quit than players who are expected to lose (underdogs). We replicate this pattern of results in a laboratory experiment (Study 2) and provide evidence for our proposed mechanism: compared to individuals facing low external expectations, those facing high expectations are more easily embarrassed by poor performance and consequently less persistent following early setbacks.

We at 3 Big Things.Studio have published a toolkit, 'Behavioural Design by Rituals'. You can download the Toolkit and accompanying workbook on how to design and build organisational / team / individual Rituals from here:

Param, co-founder, Studio 3 Big Things (www.3bigthings.studio)