This weeks blog post will be a bit shorter because of the workload this week. I want to continue on the the theme of nudging, and reflect a bit about how it might be utilized in a festival setting.
However first i want to reflect a tiny bit around the ethics of using nudges. Nudging as technique has also gained critique for being social control and that it can be unethical. This however is mainly in the context of using nudges in design of public spaces, and by public officials. In these cases, as a member of the general public, you do not really have choice to interact with these or not. This is nuanced debate with no clear answers, however i will not delve into it in this project. The spaces i am focused on are not public spaces, and audience members can choose to be there or not, and also if they wish to return.
From the article that last weeks blog post was primarily based around, one of the key issues in utilizing nudges effectively, was evaluating them. Which to most designers seems a no brainer, iteration and user feedback is essential to most of our processes. However this might not be as simple if you are a part of festival staff that is only hired for the festival and move on to other projects and jobs after the festival is complete. So systems to effectively evaluate your nudges would have to be in place, before even starting to think about which ones you could try. However i had a discussion with Karoline who i interviewed two weeks ago, and from the festival she had worked on, evaluations after the festivals was implemented in at least two of the larger festival she had worked on. This is a very small sample size, but it suggest that at least larger festivals have systems in place to evaluate how well everything went, and these could be extended to nudges.
In my research this week i found the article “How nudging inspires sustainable behavior among festival attendees: A qualitative analysis of selected music festivals”. This is an extremely relevant article for my research, as i looks directly at the unique aspects of festivals in implementing nudges and changing behaviors. As the article is focused on sustainable behaviors most of the concrete suggestions are not relevant for my research, but the are still some very interesting findings.
Key findings:
- The relationship between the festival attendees and organizers influence how easily the attendees respond to prompts and nudges. A more personal relationship makes it easier to for attendees follow instructions.
- Larger crowds where people are more anonymous are harder to nudge
- Expectations and communication beforehand of the event can have a great effect.
- Sanctions and consequences for negative behaviors do not have a great effect when people are feeling anonymous in a crowd
- Creating a sense of inclusion in to the group and as a part of the festival is key
These are the findings for this week, and i want to continue into this realm next week.