[Review] Digital Nudging: Guiding Online User Choices through Interface Design

Article

Digital Nudging: Guiding Online User Choices through Interface Design (Communications of the ACM, July 2018)

Background Knowledge & Summary

The baseline of the article is that “What is chosen often depends on how the choice is presented.” or more specifically, “What is chosen often in a choice environment depends on how the choice interface is designed”. People indeed have limited cognitive capabilities and thus cannot exhaustively ponder through the given choice, which makes them rely on heuristics and biases.

Today, most choices are being transferred to digital/internet environments. In such environments, real-time tracking and analysis of user behavior is possible. Also, the administrator can implement changes at a relatively low cost. Most importantly, the choice architect can select a default value for the choice maker. Due to these capabilities, many digital nudging techniques can be applied.

For details on such techniques and which heuristic they exploit, refer to the following keynote presentation I’ve made:

Keynote Presentation

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