#behavioral changes

Sometimes living with others is difficult – The problem

Living with roommates can sometimes be difficult because of different ways of seeing things, misunderstood characters. But when you live with your best friend... This is just worse! You start by not telling each other the things that bother you because you don't want to fight or offend your friend, ignoring the fact that this could only complicate things for the future. But if there's one thing I've always said to my roommate it's, "please, at least turn off the light when you leave the house!" If there's one thing I can't stand is seeing all the lights on in the house...Or even worse: coming home, finding the house empty, but with the lights on! In the 9 months that we live together, she never managed to get used to turning off the lights, although I must admit that sometimes she tried...But probably not enough! So, the "nudging experiment" gave me the cue to try this time in a more direct way to try to change her attitude.

Thinking how to nudge my flatmate

So, I started brainstorming about possible solutions I could use to get her to change her behavior. I started to think of something that could really make her want to keep the lights on, something that could make her pay more attention and that could immediately have an effect on her. At the same time, I wanted my experiment to be perceived as something playful, ironic, but also serious. So, after a while I got the solution..

The nudging experiment

On Tuesday I decided to make a jar to leave at the entrance of the house with "Paula extra contribution to the electricity bill" written on it. When she came home and saw the jar, I explained to her what would happen until next weekend.

I explained to her that I had decided that every time I found the lights on in the house again, I would not turn them off but would leave a post-it on the switch with "I saw you! Put the money in the jar and turn off the light :)" written on.

For every time I found the lights on in the house, she'd have to put 1 euro in the jar. My goal was to see if within three days, the amount of money accumulated in the jar daily would decrease. If not, it would mean that my experiment hadn't worked and that my roommate was really incorrigible! I have to say that this experiment worked really well for me, not only as a designer and because I experimented how really sometimes small things can have a strong impact on people, but also because in just 24 hours I earned 25 euros. Yes, my roommate despite everything managed to make the same mistake 25 times in 24 hours. I was really fascinated!

I thought she was hopeless, but the second day, unexpectedly I saw some behavioral changes. I'm not saying that she had totally stopped forgetting the light on, but the fact that she had seen that my game continued and was getting more and more serious, obviously pushed her to pay a little more attention.

Indeed, on the second day I only earned 7 euros, which compared to 25 euros on the first day, was a big step forward. On the third day, the amount of money was the same, maybe a little less. So I decided to continue my experiment until Sunday, to see if there might be more progress in the next few days, or if progress will remain constant.

In any case, it was for me a very funny experiment during which despite the jokes and laughter, I noticed how really small actions, small tricks can encourage people to pay more attention to their behavior. Many times, as in this case, a nudging experiment shows how to change a behavior for the person doesn’t require any effort or sacrifice. The secret is just to find a way to push him/her initially towards a change of conscious behavior.