By Federica Piazzi
I was enjoying a movie night with my boyfriend. We were on a video call, watching a lovely movie that we had recently discovered. I was saying something to him, when all of a sudden the call dropped and I couldn’t see him anymore. “His wifi sucks for real”, I thought. But then I noticed that my wifi was off. What? No way, not AGAIN.
My dad has already interrupted many of my movie nights before. When he’s ready to go to sleep, he turns off the wifi and the lights in the living room, and goes to bed. Most of the time, his action is followed by my screams or by my brother going to turn the wifi back on. But clearly the message isn’t coming across. Something must be done.
I suddenly remembered about the nudging experiment that was launched at a seminar I’m currently attending.
To nudge means “to push something or someone gently” (Cambridge Dictionary).
In the design context, this word is used to talk about some non-invasive and almost indirect interventions that can lead a person to subconsciously correct an undesired behavior. This is exactly what I need.
The target of my intervention is my dad. The other protagonist is the modem that my dad turns off at night. What I want to do is stop him from turning it off while I’m using it.
I came up with a very simple solution.
I picked the brightest, most obnoxiously colored post-it that I have, a small bright pink one. Then I used a black marker to write a question: “Is anyone using the wifi? Ask”. Lastly, I placed the post-it on the modem.
Now when my dad will approach the modem, he will immediately see the flashy post-it and be drawn to it. He will read the question and remember that other people in the house are using the wifi, so he will be pushed to verify that before turning the wifi off.
Now it’s time to see whether it works or not.
Stay tuned for the next updates!
Check out the work of my classmates on our blog:
