Mayhem in the Museum? The Downside of Neglecting Behavioral Design

The view from top to bottom

Watch your step when you descend the main staircase in the Jean-Noel Desmaris Pavilion in Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts! I nearly wiped out because there was no obvious cue that registers stair depth. The white bands at the front edge of each stair are supposed to signal their  front edge, but from the top of the staircase the arrangement pays greater homage to form (i.e., a cool design) than function (your safety). When I got to the bottom of the staircase, I looked back up the stairs. That’s when they revealed their true topography.

The view from bottom to top

That design choice seemed troubling given the museum’s predominantly older demographic. At the Musee des Beaux Arts, seniors typically pay full freight. Price breaks, in fact, target patrons under 31.  (Of course, if you sport a walker or are otherwise inclined, you take the elevator.)

The staircase would prove suitable grist for Don Norman’s seminal study, The Design of Everyday Things. It’s a deeply insightful marriage of behavior and design, of form and function. The author would no doubt consider those white bands as inept “signifiers.” Signifiers, he notes, deploy design to signal attributes, including what actions are possible and how to undertake them.

A social science classic, the book has received its due from behavioral economist Richard Thaler and social scientist Cass Sunstein, who credit it for inspiring elements of their own approach to creating conditions that nudge people in the direction of constructive behavior.

While many of Norman’s examples explore misplaced design that leads to awkwardness and inefficiency, he devotes less attention to design that is downright dangerous. The "Beaux Arts" stairs certainly qualify here. “Museums are repositories where form trumps function,” a friend remarks. “The Beaux Arts has certainly proved that here.”

*Designed by Canadian architect Moshe Safdie, the modernist Jean-Noel Desmaris Pavilion and its challenging stairway have greeted visitors since 1991.

Bend over and Nudge: Nudges of Chance at the Urologist’s and the Drive-up ATM

PSA results aren’t the only numbers that rule at my neighborhood urologist's.  On the far side of the waiting room, past the Flomax-branded coffee dispenser that jump-starts obligatory urine samples, I marveled at a very different game of chance. Who needs Vegas? Or even Bingo? . . . when enrolling in the new patient portal positions you to score a $100 VISA card! Don't forget to tell your urologically challenged friends that there's a new winner every month!

Sadly, I was an early adopter who had already signed up for the portal ahead of the contest. But I'm all for my urologist’s probe at nudging aging patients--none of them digital natives--to embrace the portal and more active participation in their urological karma.

Nudging, as advocated by professors Thaler and Sunstein  in their 2008 book, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Wealth, Health, and Happiness, deploys (frequently creative) behavioral "architecture" and framing to position us in the direction of presumably beneficial outcomes. When employers ask us to opt out of rather than opt into 401k savings plans, it's more likely that we'll participate. Ditto for organ donation programs via RMVs.

Nudges can also bedevil the consumer. In Northampton, Massachusetts, which I frequently visit, the parking meter sticker that exempts payment on  Sundays and Holidays is on the far side of the meter, away from the payer. When payers have less than perfect information,  they often choose  the lowest-risk outcome, i.e., feeding the meter.  To that end, I noticed time on one-in-five Northampton meters on July 4th. On  Massachusetts  holidays like Patriots Day, when the holiday's parking status is unclear to most drivers, meter feeding is far higher. My own hometown of Amherst deploys a parking sign on meter-free streets that is so intentionally confusing that drivers play it safe by seeking out streets with parking meters.

Happily, the urological nudge above is nothing more than a zero-risk frisson--just like an outlandish gambit several years back at a savings bank in Easthampton, Massachusetts that transformed its drive-up ATM into a zero-risk slot machine.