Digital Nudging–Guiding Choices by Using Interface Design

Abstract

Decisions are influenced by the environment in which the choices are presented. In fact, no choice is made in a vacuum, as there is no neutral way to present choices. Presenting choices in certain ways, even unintentionally, can “nudge” people to change their behavior in predictable ways. “Nudging” is a concept from behavioral economics that describes how even minor changes to decision environments (e.g., setting defaults) can influence decision outcomes—typically without the decision-maker noticing this influence. The more decisions people make using digital devices, the more the software engineer becomes a choice architect who knowingly or unknowingly influences people’s decisions. Thus, we extend the nudging concept to the digital environment, defining “digital nudging” as the use of user-interface design elements to guide people’s behavior in digital choice environments, and present a digital nudge design process to help online choice architects take nudging principles into consideration when designing digital choice environments like Web sites and apps.

Keywords: Digital Nudging, Behavioral Economics, Choice Architecture, Human-Computer Interaction