Title: PPT Ted Talk – Sille Krukow – v1.01 Shell tube File-SD
Duration: 8:27 minutes
Description:
Sille Krukow, Founder and Chief Behavioural Strategist at KRUKOW, a company that specialises in behavioural design and economics, spoke at the Shell Powering Progress Together (PPT) forum about designing ways to change behaviour to become more energy efficient.
PPT Ted Talk – Sille Krukow – v1.01 Shell tube File-SD Transcript
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Designing Efficient Energy Behavior
Sille Krukow
Founder and Chief Behavioral Strategist, Krukow
Powering Progress Together
The Stadium at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London
Thursday June 30, 2016
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Sille Krukow is on stage. There are six men sitting in chairs on stage. There are several people in the room listening to her talk.
Sille Krukow’sTED Talk
[Title]
Founder and Chief Behavioral Strategist
Sille Krukow
“Thank you so much. Yes, so I’m just going to give you very few insights on how we can start designing efficient energy behaviors because here is the thing; when wanting to change human behavior we often assume that it’s a matter of providing the right knowledge and motivation, and it is actually not. The reason for that is to be found in the human brain, because basically we’ve got to start changing the way we view ourselves and each other, because we’ve got to realize that we are a lot more like Homer Simpson.”
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Slide showing an X-ray image of Homer Simpson’s head. The reflective system of his brain is shown in blue.
Sille Krukow
“And we really are. The slides are sort of… okay, here we go. Great.”
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Back to Sille’s talk onstage.
Sille Krukow
“So my reason for saying that is that we’ve got to understand that human behavior is basically driven by two systems, the reflective system which in this image is the blue bit.”
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Slide showing an x-ray image of Homer Simpson’s head. The automatic system of his brain is shown in yellow.
Sille Krukow
“And the automatic system which in this image is the yellow bit. So reflective thinking is conscious thinking. That is what allows us to translate motivation and knowledge into something that makes sense.”
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Back to Sille’s talk onstage.
Sille Krukow
“And understanding, and essentially behavior change. Reflective thinking is what makes us the superior species on this planet. That is what allows us to build space ships.”
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Back to the slide showing an x-ray of Homer Simpson’s head. The automatic system is shown in yellow and the reflective system in blue.
Sille Krukow
“It is what allows us to develop solar panels and so forth, so it’s a very good thing to have. But there is a downside to reflective thinking.”
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Back to Sille’s talk onstage.
Sille Krukow
“Because reflective thinking is very effort-full, meaning that our blood sugar actually drops when we’re being reflective. That’s why it’s really hard for us to focus for a long time. That is why we are by default set to be automatic thinkers, and automatic thinking or automatic behavior is something completely different. Automatic behavior is not driven by motivational knowledge. It is driven by our instincts and immediate interventions in the moment of choice, so our surroundings and so forth.”
“This means that 90% of human behavioris driven by what I call choice architecture, and let me just elaborate on choice architecture. So choice architecture is everything that surrounds our decision-making, everything from services, products, surroundings or systems that we interact with in the moment of choice. So when designing efficient energy behavior it is really a matter of designing choice architecture that works with automatic thinking. That means we’ve got to start applying behavioral insights to our existing choice architecture and make small improvements.”
“Today I’m going to introduce you to two basic behavioral insights that we can use when designing great choice architecture. Those two are visual directions or visual feedback, and social proof. But let me start with introducing you to visual directions. So basically automatic behavior works very well with visual cues, and I’m not going to be standing here telling you how it works, I would rather show it to you. So now we’re going to do a small exercise, okay? On your iPads in a second I’m going to show you a slide, but before that I would like you all to raise your finger like this.”
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Sille raises her right arm and index finger. Zoom out in the room. Members of the audience copy her and raise their arm and indexfinger.
Sille Krukow
“Okay, so now it’s going to be tricky because you need to hold up your iPad with the other hand like this. So you’ve got to look at your iPad because now in a second I’m going to change the slide and then you have to point in the direction the slide says, okay? So everybody look at the iPad. You guys look at the monitors and then I’m changing the slide. Point in the direction the slide says and do it really quick, okay? That was…”
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Several members of the audience lower the arm and point to the left. Zoom in on one audience member holding his left arm up, while holding an iPad in his other hand. He lowers his hand and points to the right. There is laughter in the room. Now he points backwards. Back to Sille on stage.
Sille Krukow
“Did you feel what happened here? Thank you.”
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Slide showinga yellow background with the word left written in caps in the middleanda black arrow pointing to the right underneath it.
Sille Krukow
“So basically what happens is our automatic thinking reacts intuitively to visual cues and visual directions, and what happens is all of a sudden our reflective thinking kicks in and goes, hey, wait a minute, there are two contradicting messages here, so we start analyzing the message in this slide.”
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Back to Sille’s talk onstage.
Sille Krukow
“We’ve always got to start out by addressing behavior with visual directions. Last year we did a small study for the Danish railway company. They asked us to reduce the amount of litter and especiallycigarette butts being left around station areas in Denmark. So we did a study, and what we did was we started out by looking at the existing choice architecture, and what we found was that in this case all the signage was using wordings and words and letters telling people what not to do. Don’t smoke here, don’t litter here, and so forth. So we took that choice architecture away and we introduced visual directions instead, and in that case it was yellow lines showing people where to smoke, where to leave their litter.”
[Video footage]
Slide showing a photograph of a Danish railway station. There are people waiting on the platform. A yellow line has been drawn in a square around them. On the screen next to the yellow line there is a yellow arrow pointing downward. Underneath the arrow it says 30%.
Sille Krukow
“So basically a very, very small intervention. We tested the effect and the amount of cigarette butts being left on a railway premises went down by 30%, improving the environmental impact, but also increasing customer satisfaction and providing the railway company with evidence-based strategies on how to improve litter behavior on a national basis.”
[Video footage]
Back to Sille’s talk onstage.
Sille Krukow
“So the last behavioral insight I’m going to provide you with today is social proof, and that is one of the most important ones we can use when improving behavior. Basically we are pack animals so we copy each other to fit in, and we can use that as an engine. The case I want to show you is a case done by a utility company called Opower. They used the electricity bill and our pack mentality to improve human behavior. So here’s what they did; they added a small visualization onto the electrical bill showing people how much energy they were consuming compared to their neighbors.”
[Video footage]
Slide showing part of an Opower electrical bill. There is a bar graph in three different colors. In the bottom right-hand corner there is a yellow arrow pointing downward with 2% written underneath.
Sille Krukow
“And then adding a smiley showing them how well they were doing compared to the community they live in, so a tiny little change in layout on an electrical bill. This small intervention made the energy consumption go down by 2%.”
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Back to Sille’s talk onstage.
Sille Krukow
“Or electricity consumption – sorry, I know there is a difference. So 2% might not sound as a lot, but Opower provides electricity to six different countries, including the US, so 2% is actually quite a lot. So to sum up really quickly, to me the most important thing that we’ve got to start working with when wanting to ensure efficient energy behaviors is moving from focusing only on motivation and knowledge to redesign our choice architecture, figure out what tiny little changes can we make in existing initiatives, services, products and so forth that’ll help people be successful and leading greener lives. And that’s it from me.”
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