Behavioral Insights: should you test it?

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Behavioral Insights.

👋 Hi, I hope today's Behavioral Insights newsletter will make you think, inspire or smile today. It's full of examples of companies that are using experimentation to become a little bit better every day.

Enjoy the read 👇

1. Should you test this idea? 🧪
David Mannheim explains when you should test an idea or simply put it live. And discusses which factors play an important role in that decision: purpose, traffic, type of test and time available. Read the article

2. Google testing out new office designs 🔥
With many Googlers working from home, the company is saving a lot of money. In the meanwhile it has started testing out different office designs to prepare for people coming back to the office. I especially like the Campfire meeting room concept, where virtual attendees can really be part of a meeting.

3. Best nudge to stimulate vaccinations 💉
Katy Milkman and her team did a large study of text-based nudges encouraging patients to get vaccinated at an upcoming doctor’s appointment. "The best-performing intervention in our study reminded patients twice to get their flu shot at their upcoming doctor’s appointment and indicated it was reserved for them." Read the article

4. Zalando's experimentation platform 🎧
In this podcast Shan Huang talks about how Zalando is using experimentation. Listen to the podcast

5. New A/B testing platform launched: Eppo 🚀
Chetan Sharma explains why he started building a new experimentation platform. Read the article

6. How experiments guide growth at Thumbtack 📈
Thumbtack is a website to find and hire small businesses. In this article their director of engineering, Alpesh Gaglani, explains how they use experimentation. Read the article

7. Applying experimentation within governments 🇱🇻
Latvia is showing how a government can use experimentation to create evidence-based policies and enable quick learning in early phases by revealing what works and what does not. Read the article or the full report (pdf)

8. Meeting fatigue? 🥱
The antidote to meeting fatigue is simple: take short breaks. According to research by Microsoft [h/t Remco]

😀 Fun of the week: play this Guess the Correlation game 🎲
The aim of the game is simple. try to guess how correlated the two variables in a scatter plot are. The closer your guess is to the true correlation, the better.

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I try to make it one of the best emails you get each week, and I hope you're enjoying it.

And should you come across anything interesting this week, send it my way! I love finding new things to read through members of this newsletter.

Until next week, keep experimenting.
— Kevin