The blog

Ah, the Grand National. The one time a year when people who know nothing about horse racing feel compelled to have a flutter. And if you know nothing about it, how do you know where to put your money? It turns out almost half of us just go on the horse’s name. A lot of […]

Like most normal people, I like oranges more than bananas. But when I’m faced with the office fruit bowl I’ll inevitably go for the banana. It’s a phenomenon you’ll see in homes and offices around the world, and there’s a simple explanation: friction. Oranges are just too much hard work. In fact, if you look […]

It’s not as creepy as it sounds. According to this study from Stanford, changes in a new starter’s emails over their first six months could help you tell whether they’ll make the grade. Okay, it is a bit creepy. Specifically, the study measures how quickly new hires start using the same language as their colleagues […]

We’ve been chuckling at this story in the New Scientist. Some journalists (and a large number of optimistic balding people) have misinterpreted a piece of Japanese research, which seemed to suggest eating fries could cure baldness. Spoiler alert: it can’t. But, from a nudge perspective, we can totally see why this story took off. After […]

According to this study about parents’ behaviour, mums and dads who once hurried to collect their children from nursery on time were much happier to be late when the nursery introduced ‘late fees’. When the nurseries stopped the fees, the parents’ habits didn’t change. In fact, they were even later collecting their children than before. […]

Do your doors make you feel stupid? Well, ours do. There are lots of good things about the South Bank WeWork office: friendly staff, free treats, beer on tap. But the doors are making fools of us all. At least twice a day, I find myself yanking a door in a direction it doesn’t go. […]

Just about every business we work with is stressing about GDPR, not least because they’re worried they’re going to lose great swathes of customers from their marketing databases. GDPR is, of course, one giant nudge: it’s changing the default option. Instead of businesses getting you to hand over your data by pre-ticking consent boxes, they’ll […]

You know this message at the bottom of people’s email signoffs? It’s been doing the rounds for years now, and although I don’t have the stats to back this up, I bet it’s done nothing at all. In fact, by reminding people that printing the email is an option, it’s probably done more damage than […]