PA SSENGER B E HAV IOUR
actually drops when we are using system two. This
means that, biologically, we are wired to make system
one decisions 90% of the time.
“System one decisions are not based on what we
know we should be doing, but on our surroundings at the
moment of choice and how well these are designed to
nudge us toward behaviours such as being at the gate on
time. Everybody knows that we should be there on time,
and that we should choose effectively. We know all these
things, but we somehow end up failing sometimes. That
is because our surroundings do not nudge us to the right
behaviour and don’t make it easy for our subconscious
decision-making process to do the right thing.”
FAILURE MODES AND CUES
The process of behavioural design involves mapping the
journey – a decision-making chain – in a particular
process that identifies barriers and potential cues that
would lessen the burden of decision making for system
two in our brains.
“I would start by thinking about the barriers in the
passenger journey and in the employee journey that make
026 aircraftinteriorsinternational.com
JUNE 2019
“The process of behavioural
design involves mapping
the journey”
it difficult for us to use our subconscious processes to
do the right thing,” Krukow says. “How come we keep
failing? It’s not a matter of passengers being motivated.
Passengers are really eager to have a great journey. But
a lot of the time, they end up prolonging the boarding
process and thus delaying take-off.”
These failure modes come down to simple questions
that require validation when they are not self-evident by
design. Are you at the right gate? Are you in the right
seat? Is your luggage in the right bin, loaded the right
way? In the case of operations personnel, it can come
down to any of the many decisions that crew and ground
staff have to make to prepare for loading and take-off.
Nudging design will find those touchpoints of decision
making and lessen the need for system two thinking by
providing cues for positive actions, or barriers to negative
actions that work on system one decision-making.
Krukow says there is a library of work which identifies
different systems and tools that work to nudge specific
behaviours. “For example, working with efficient
reminder systems. We lose track of time – that’s the way
our brain operates, unless we get effective reminder
systems, such as visual boards showing that it will take
five minutes to walk somewhere, or that we are boarding
and that’s why the flight is turning yellow on the
departures board,” Krukow says.
“These are good existing reminder systems that we
look at in the airport. But why haven’t we used them more
effectively, like deploying the airlines’ apps to help send
reminders to people? Because they are not looking at that
flight-display board all the time: they are shopping, eating
or doing different things. We could deploy the different
touchpoints we have right now with passengers. We could
send reminders through the airline apps such as ‘you
should be heading toward the boarding area now’, ‘we will
be boarding in five minutes,’ and so on. When it comes to
timely behaviour, I would work with reminder systems.”
Krukow credits aviation for already having some good
nudge design cues in the cabin – specifically visual
language systems such as pictographs – but believes that
these types of visual cues could be applied more broadly.
“For example, when you look at safety instructions,
these are always given in a visual and very tangible way,”
Krukow says. “When it comes to finding the right seat, we
could use colours, we could use images. When it comes to
placing your luggage in a locker correctly, in the right area
and so forth, we could use far more visual instructions.”
NUDGING COULD HELP SPEED
UP THE BOARDING PROCESS AND
IMPROVE THE EXPERIENCE OF
STOWING BAGGAGE IN OVERHEAD
LOCKERS
PHOTO: © UNDREY/ ADOBE STOCK
/aircraftinteriorsinternational.com