Digital Nudging–Guiding Choices by Using Interface Design

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 userinterface 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.

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