Using Nudges in Everyday Life

“A Nudge is any small feature in the environment that attracts our attention and alters our behavior.” -Richard Thaler

I’ll give you an example of a nudge you see every day:

We know that little red circle with a number in it indicates that something inside of the application needs our attention. From unread messages to software updates, you see these indicators everywhere. What you may be unaware of is that these indicators don’t add additional value to the app- they are just the app’s way of Nudging you into opening and sorting through it.

Nudges are just elements of an environment or details of a product that influence people to get them to act in a certain way.

Consider these other common examples of Nudges: emails that remind you its time to refill a prescription at the pharmacy, the rumble strip on the highway that lets you know if you’re drifting out of the lane, the second text “chirp” noise that rings if you didn’t open the initial text within a minute or so.

Nudges can be used for good or for evil. Richard Thaler (the man who popularized Nudge theory with his book Nudge written with legal scholar Cass Sunstein) likes to cite the example that a good use of a Nudge is putting healthy foods at eye level in a…