Anand Damani – Page 14 – Behavioural Design

Goddess of magic can save you fuel

Published October 25, 2023October 1, 2012 by Anand Damani

Remember being told by a kid in an ad sometime back, to switch our cars off at signals, because saving fuel meant saving money? If you didn’t, crores of tax payers money (in India), in the form of TV, radio, outdoor advertising went down the drain. Ok, so you are one of the few who do recall this message. Have you changed your behaviour? Do you now switch off your car at traffic signals? Does your driver do it? Have you asked your driver to do it? Ever?

Most of us don’t. It’s too much effort. You would first need to switch the AC off and then turn the ignition switch off, to turn the engine off. And when the signal turns green, you gotta turn the ignition key on, get frantically honked at (we’re talking India remember), change the gear from neutral to first, get frantically honked at again, put the hand brake down, and finally get moving. Oh yes, turn the AC on again. Even if you are highly eco-conscious or highly stingy, it’s still too much effort.

Here comes the Goddess of Magic. Isis, the Greek Goddess of Magic, is the inspiration behind the name of an innovative automobile product called, the same in capital letters – ISIS – Intelligent Stop Immediate Start!

Intelligent Stop Immediate Start (ISIS) is a device, which if fitted inside your car, can save you anywhere between Rs. 500 – Rs. 2,500 for every Rs. 10,000 you spend on fuel. The way it works is that when your car comes to a halt at a traffic signal or while in stop-and-go traffic, and you put the car in neutral, ISIS switches the engine off automatically. To start the engine back, you simply have to press the clutch. No additional effort required. Solutions made keeping in mind that humans are built lazy, work well.

What about the AC you must be wondering. ISIS comes with a built-in sensor, which detects even a minor drop in cabin temperature. If ISIS detects a drop in temperature beyond what is set by the driver, it restarts the engine automatically. As per tests conducted, the cabin temperature remains constant for about 1-2 minutes when the engine is switched off. Most signals restart, within 60 seconds in any case. And if you wish to start the engine/AC at any time, you simply need to press the clutch and the engine with the AC starts again.

One more benefit of the Goddess of Magic, besides saving fuel and money – the reduction in particulate matter, hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide – the stuff that’s weakening our lungs.

ISIS has been developed by Indent – Dhruv Chaudhry’s company. Indent is an auto research and development company, which focuses on creating innovative auto products that, benefit the environment and improve safety. To know more about ISIS click here.

Our advice to the PCRA (Petroleum Conservation Research Association) and Mr. S. Jaipal Reddy, (Union Minister of Petroleum & Natural Gas, India) – instead of spending crores on building awareness for saving fuel via advertising, change actual behaviour by promoting products like ISIS and help India save trillions worth of fuel.

The way you make me move

Published October 25, 2023September 24, 2012 by Anand Damani

This is a story from my days at Lowe Lintas. We were invited to make a communication pitch for Reliance Fresh. So I flew the next day to Hyderabad to Reliance Fresh’s first retail outlet at Banjara Hills. The newly opened swanky 3,500 sq. ft. store was a wide store with two openings – one for entry and the other for exit. But the entry to the store was on the right hand side and the exit on the left hand side. Which meant that people had to move inside the store in an anti-clockwise direction. What I saw inside the store was chaos. Not the kind we see everyday in the vegetable markets in Mumbai. It was different. There were mostly women in the store at that point in time. And they were walking around like zombies. Something had gone terribly wrong, but none had figured what was going on. Women kept going back and forth as if they had forgotten that the only way was to move forward. But I don’t blame the women, well at least not this time.

If you stay in India, I’m sure you’ve visualized what had gone wrong. Because we in India drive on the left hand side of the road, we write from left to right, we have gotten used to the habit of moving from the left to the right. As far as the store was concerned, the same principle applied too – enter, move in a clockwise direction from left to right. But it wasn’t the case for the American consultant who designed the store for Reliance Fresh!

My ideas are better than yours

Published October 25, 2023September 17, 2012 by Anand Damani

Lets be honest, each one of us believes that our ideas are the best. We fall in love with our own ideas so deeply that most of the times we’re open to any solution, as long as it’s ours. Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality calls it ‘The Not-Invented-Here bias’.

‘The Not-Invented-Here Bias’ is basically this: ‘If I (or we) didn’t invent it, then it’s not worth much.’

One may argue that it is good to be attached to our ideas as it could motivate us and create a higher level of commitment. But it comes with its side effects. One example is of Thomas Edison, the inventor of the lightbulb. He fell hard for direct current (DC) electricity. At that point in time Nikola Tesla developed alternating current (AC) electricity under the supervision of Edison, but Edison dismissed Tesla’s ideas as ‘splendid, but utterly impractical’. Despite all of Edison’s efforts to foil it, AC eventually prevailed.

Sony is another example. Sony invented the transistor radio, the Walkman, the Trinitron Tube and many other successful inventions. But after a series of successful ones, Sony engineers began suffering from ‘The Not-Invented-Here Bias’. If something wasn’t invented at Sony, the engineers wanted nothing to do with it. iPod and Xbox were ‘outside’ ideas and therefore not considered as good as Sony’s ideas. We all know the consequences.

Acronyms (OAT, ECT, BCT, etc) that blossom inside companies are another example. Dan Ariely says ‘though they are a shorthand to talk about an idea, they confer a kind of secret insider knowledge. They tend to increase the perceived importance of the idea, and at the same time they keep other ideas from entering the inner circle.’

But like many findings in behavioural economics, this too, can be made useful. One example of its usefulness can be demonstrated in how Pillsbury made its instant cake mixes. When instant mixes were introduced in the US years back, housewives had to simply add water to make the cake. The mixes didn’t go down too well with housewives. So Pillsbury left out the dried eggs and required women to add fresh ones, along with milk and oil, to the mix and the sales took off. For housewives, adding eggs and other ingredients, gave a sense of ownership and pride and made them feel it was made by them. I’m sure each one also felt that their cake was better than the ones made by others.

Trust advertising to mislead

Published October 25, 2023September 10, 2012 by Anand Damani

Chances are you apply paste on your toothbrush the same way it is shown in the ads (as shown in the illustration above). Then you place it under the tap to add a bit of water to make it moist. I hear you saying ‘How else?’ right?

Well, here’s what the dentists recommend. Dentists say we should squeeze the paste at a 90 degrees angle into the brush from the top, so that the space in between the bristles gets filled with the paste + that we don’t add any water.

This works in two ways. First, the paste keeps getting released from the toothbrush at a consistent pace, ensuring that the paste comes into use, even after the initial burst of foam in the mouth. Second, dentists recommend we don’t add water because it leads to breaking and slipping of the paste out of the mouth. (You might have noticed those chunks of paste falling into the basin or on your clothes, if you are clumsy like me.) Dentists say that in anticipation of brushing our teeth, our mouths generate enough saliva, to ensure that the experience of brushing is not too dry for our liking. Together, this ensures that the quantity of paste used is just right and there is minimum wastage.

Don’t trust me? I have started doing it since few weeks. The paste lasts longer and is therefore more effective. Nothing gets wasted, I don’t act clumsy (atleast not in this circumstance) and the mouth doesn’t feel dry at all without the water. However small this may sound, I’m glad I learned the right way to brush, never mind that it’s happened at the age of 34.

Music by design

Published October 25, 2023August 27, 2012 by Anand Damani

Music they say has healing powers. True that. It can lift your spirit. It can relax you. It can set your heart pumping faster. But could music influence you to buy wine from a particular country?

In a study of exactly that question, four French and four German wines, matched for price and dryness, were placed on the shelves of a supermarket in England. French and German music were played on alternate days from a deck on the top shelf of the display. And indeed, on days when the French music played, 77 percent of the wine purchased was French, while on the days of German music, 73 percent of the wine purchased was German. (Source: Subliminal by Leonard Mlodinow)

As people strolled down the aisle they looked at different wines, pondering on each label concerning the grapes each wine is made from, the wine’s vintage, cost, etc. They consciously weighed all that information, and in addition they’d probably considered what they’ll be eating with the wine. But what worked on their sub-conscious mind was the music. And a little nudge like music turned out to be key in influencing their decision of the origin of wine.

When asked whether the music influenced their choice, only one shopper in seven said that it had, while the truth was just the opposite. And that’s because we don’t realize the extent of influence our environment has in our decision- making.

The next time you visit McDonalds, notice the pace of music. Greater the crowd, faster the music. Faster the music, quicker the food consumption. Quicker the food consumption, quicker the tables turn free. I’m not sure if they play slow music when the restaurant is relatively empty. Though that could make people eat slower and sit longer, creating the perception that the restaurant has a good number of visitors and is therefore doing well.

Eyes are the window to your bedroom

Published April 17, 2013August 21, 2012 by Anand Damani

We have often heard the phrase ‘Eyes are the window to the soul’. I believe it too, but I have found it difficult to explain how exactly looking into someone’s eyes says something about them or about what was going in their minds. Here’s an interesting finding.

In which one of the photographs, do you find the model more attractive? A or B?

Most of the men find picture B to be more attractive (unless you are into the ‘bitchy’ kinds). While both the pictures are the same, in picture B the size of pupils has been dilated.

Studies have shown that our pupils dilate wider than normal when we are excited about something and even someone. In 1965, pupillometry pioneer and psychologist Eckhard Hess asked men to compare the attractiveness of images of women with average-sized pupils to drawings in which the women’s pupil sizes were enhanced. Hess noted that “none of the men reported noticing the difference in pupil size” between the pictures, but the subtle change seemed to subconsciously influence the level of attraction they felt for the woman. When the woman had large pupils, she was said to be soft, more feminine and pretty, while when the very same woman had small pupils, the men described her as cold, hard and selfish. Therefore, men may unwittingly read pupil dilation as an advertisement of interest. Now I know why everyone seems so attractive at candle-light dinners!

Are women attracted to men with large pupils? The answer is sometimes. Apparently for women, smaller pupils being more attractive in a mate holds true, if they are into the ‘bad boy’ type or are seeking a short term fling. While women who preferred men with larger sized pupils sought long term relationships with ‘nice guys’ more often than not.

Given the above, I now feel the eyes are less of a window to one’s soul and more of a window to his or her bedroom.

Don’t worry, just drink

Published October 25, 2023August 6, 2012 by Anand Damani

Back when I used to work at Lowe Lintas, I used to strategize for a brand called Pureit, the water purifier from Hindustan Unilever. The product was test marketed in Chennai and at that point in time, 83% of households used to boil water for drinking purposes, as the water condition in Chennai was (and is) extremely bad. Moreover doctors had always been recommending to boil water. So boiled water was considered the gold standard in drinking water.

The challenge for us was to create the market for water purification systems and more precisely, to change the behaviour of the conservative Tamilians, who had been boiling water for generations, to let go of their old ‘boiling’ habit and switch to Hindustan Lever Pureit. We had created an ad campaign for Pureit, which ultimately went on to win an EFFIE – the advertising effectiveness award, but the ad campaign started only months after the actual launch.

Here’s the interesting part and probably the most effective piece of behavioural design we had implemented – we placed Pureit water purifier at doctor’s clinics. We requested doctors in Chennai to keep Pureit in their clinics as a service to their patients. Doctors agreed and Pureit was placed in thousands of clinics, with a sticker of it being ‘As safe as boiled water’ and another sticker of the toll-free number, which people could call to find out more. This simple intervention served as a sampler, product demonstrator, trial generator, doctor endorser, people-convincer and lead generator all in one.

People believed that the doctor wouldn’t keep the purifier in his clinic, if it weren’t safe enough for his patients to drink. So they drank without worrying, and many Tamilians changed their habit of boiling water, by switching to Pureit.

Beware of large crockery

Published October 25, 2023July 27, 2012 by Anand Damani

So you’ve been trying to lose weight since sometime. And you’ve bought new fitness wear, taken membership to the gym, tried yoga, consulted a dietician, gone on different kinds of diets, even skipped meals, bought your favorite dress a size smaller so that you will motivate yourself to lose weight, but nothing has helped?

Try a simpler way. A few years ago, Brian Wansink invited a group of friends to a party and secretly conducted an experiment. Each guest was randomly given a Medium or Large sized bowl accompanied with a Medium or Large sized spoon respectively. The guests then helped themselves to ice-cream. Seconds before the guests took their first mouthful, the researchers weighed the bowls. Results revealed that those who were given the Large bowls and Large spoons had, on an average, taken 31% more ice-cream than their Medium bowls and spoons counterparts. Andrew Geier and his colleagues from University of Pennsylvania demonstrated that this effect is not confined to ice-cream and parties. In their study, a bowl of M&Ms was left in the hallway of an apartment, along with a spoon and a sign saying ‘Eat your fill: please use the spoon to serve yourself’. On some days they kept a teaspoon and on others a tablespoon. Findings revealed that using the larger spoon caused people to take almost twice as many M&Ms from the bowl.

So try replacing your crockery and cutlery with smaller sized ones and let me know if it works.

Ek haath de, doosre haath le

Published October 25, 2023July 17, 2012 by Anand Damani

The headline translates to ‘Give with one hand, take with the other’. Right from the time we were 2 years old we’ve been taught how important it is to give and share our toys with others. But little do we realize that we can benefit immensely if we use this philosophy by design, to affect persuasion in our daily lives or even in business.

Here’s an interesting experiment conducted by psychologist Dravid Strohmetz that illustrates how spontaneous favors can elicit the need to reciprocate. In the experiment, waiters of a restaurant handed over bills to their customers, with or without sweets. In the first situation, diners were given their bills without any sweets at all. Then a second group was given one sweet. This simple gesture of kindness resulted an increase in tip of a mere 3%. The third group of diners received two sweets each; and compared to the first group, they gave 14% larger tips. Not bad. However, here comes the clever bit. For the fourth group, the waiter was asked to present the bill to the customers along with one sweet each, then, just as he was about to turn away from the table, he reached into his pocket and quickly handed everyone a second sweet. In terms of sweets per customer, everyone ended up with two sweets – the same as the customers in the third group. But psychologically this was very different. The waiter had just carried out an unnecessary and nice favor, and because of that, tipping increased by 23% as a result of the need of reciprocating the favor.

Simply put, we like people who help us, and we help people we like. So if you want help, try helping others first.

Do the right thing

Published October 25, 2023July 9, 2012 by Anand Damani

Here’s a smart way of how design can be at the core of how your company does business. This was in the news in the US in 2008, but is increasingly becoming relevant to the way design can be applied to get better business results today.

U.P.S, the logistics company, realized that their trucks would sit in the left lane, engine idling, waiting for oncoming traffic to clear, so that it could make a left-hand turn, something that was wasteful — of time and peace of mind, for sure, but also of gas and therefore money. We’re talking about more than 95,000 big brown trucks delivering packages every day. U.P.S realized that when you operate a gigantic fleet of vehicles, tiny improvements in the efficiency of each truck, translates to huge savings overall. So here’s what they did:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak2GqmrUnVw&w=420&h=315]

This design thinking helped UPS shave over 28.5 million miles off its delivery routes. That in turn resulted in saving roughly three million gallons of gas! It also reduced CO2 emissions by 31,000 metric tons.

So next time you are in any of the cramped metros of India (which would be quite often), plan your route so that you take as many free left turns as possible.

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