Rational Overrides: Influence Behaviour Beyond Nudging

Abstract

Service designers and organizations are struggling to understand and change customer behaviour since it is complex, dynamic, multidimensional and very often not considered to be rational. Knowledge from behavioural sciences can provide service designers with the ability to more fundamentally understand, predict and guide customer behaviour. A combination of qualitative and exploratory methodologies was used in order to develop a design approach that supports service designers to create behavioural interventions across customer journeys. While service designers increasingly leverage the insights of behavioural science for designing nudging interventions, we propose that different efforts are needed to increase the chances of having a durable impact on behavioural change. We propose the inclusion of rational overrides in service design as an additional approach for influencing behaviour. Rational overrides introduce micro moments of friction in the customer journey, which can be used to disrupt mindless automatic interactions, prompt moments of reflection and more conscious decision making. This research resulted into a design toolkit to support service designers, clients and stakeholders to understand and design behavioural interventions by combining nudges and rational overrides.