Nudge Theory Examples: Your Choices Are Being Designed Before You Even Notice

Nudge Theory Examples: Your Choices Are Being Designed Before You Even Notice

My wife and I have run a bakery in Gangdong, a neighborhood in eastern Seoul, for almost 10 years.

When you run a bakery, you spend a surprising amount of time thinking about where to put the bread.

What will customers see first when they walk through the door? How far will they have to walk to find what they came for?

At our bakery, we keep the sandwich bread on the shelves in the back.

People who come in for a loaf of bread usually already know what they want. As they walk to the back, they naturally see everything else along the way, which makes it more likely they'll pick up something extra.

Our cake display case is in the back, too.

If someone came in for a cake, they'll find it wherever it is.

I can't tell you this layout raised our sales by some exact percentage. But for 10 years, I've watched what people come in for and how they move through the store, and I've rearranged our shelves again and again based on that. So the first time I heard the term "choice architecture," our bakery was the first thing that came to mind.

What you show first. Where you put it. How easy you make it to find.

Change the environment, and you change what people choose. And that can change the results for a business, too.

1. Nudge vs. choice architecture: what's the difference?

The word "nudge" became widely known through Nudge, the book by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. Literally, it means a gentle poke with your elbow. A nudge can be described as a way to guide behavior by gently changing the environment where people make choices, without taking options away or using money as a reward or penalty.[1]

For example, moving fruit to an eye-level spot that's easy to grab in a school cafeteria is a nudge. Banning junk food altogether is not. The first leaves every option on the table and just changes the layout. The second takes the choice away.

Here's another one you've probably noticed. At most grocery stores, the eggs and milk are all the way at the back. People who need eggs or milk are going to buy them anyway, so placing them at the back means walking past everything else first, which encourages extra purchases. It's a classic piece of choice architecture, and one of the best-known nudge techniques from behavioral economics.

Choice architecture is a broader idea.

It's about how the whole environment where people make choices is put together.

That includes what order things are shown in, what the default option is, and what kind of feedback people get.[2]

Seen that way, the way we arrange our bakery is a kind of choice architecture too.

To be honest, though, a layout that helps the store isn't necessarily a nudge that's good for the customer. Whether it helps people find the bread they came for, or gets them to buy one more thing they didn't plan on, is a separate question worth asking.

2. The next video starts before you even tap it

The same thing happens on the screens we look at every day.

On YouTube, if autoplay is on, the next video starts playing as soon as the one you're watching ends. Of course, you can turn the setting off or cancel the next video.[3] The feature itself is simple. But "you have to tap to keep watching" and "you have to tap to stop watching" are completely different situations.

Through the lens of choice architecture, it all comes down to one question:

"What happens if I do nothing?"

The "Popular" and "Recommended" labels on food delivery apps work in a similar way. "Popular" makes you feel like lots of other people chose it, and "Recommended" makes you feel like someone picked it for you. But what they really mean depends on whether they're based on actual orders, paid placement, or someone's personal pick.

That's why I think it's worth paying attention to the nudges built on behavioral economics that companies use on us every day.

In the moment you're choosing something, take a closer look at what information is in front of you, and in what order.

3. Designing spaces led me to designing an app

I studied spatial design in college and worked in the field for nearly 10 years.

When you design a space, you're always thinking about the same things. Where do people come in? What do they see first? Where do they stop? The same object can be the first or the last thing someone notices, depending on where you put it.

When I started building an app, I brought that same thinking to the user experience.

What should the first screen show?

How many taps should it take to log one entry?

When someone wants to look back at past entries, can they find them easily?

The screen is small, but in one way it's no different from a bakery or a building: people see something, then choose what to do next.

So when I built MOAVO Habits, my habit tracking app, I wanted just one thing:

"An app where you write down what you did, see the patterns in your own behavior, and can easily look back."

4. The nudges I'm building into MOAVO Habits

I built nudges into MOAVO Habits, too. The app has three core features: a short habit journal, a calendar where each entry shows up as a dot, and comments from AVO, your AI coach. Each of these works as a nudge to help people build their habits.

Here's what I hoped each one would do:

Of course, these are just my hopes as the person who built it.

Which features actually help which people is something I'm still learning from our users' experiences and feedback.

For me, watching the dots pile up on the calendar really does make me want to log again tomorrow.

But for someone else, those same dots might feel like homework. Streaks motivate some people, while others want to quit the moment a streak breaks.

Notifications are the same.

A reminder at a time you chose, about something you actually need, is genuinely helpful. But if it comes too often or at the wrong moment, it's just noise.

So as I keep building the app, I keep asking myself:

"Is this app helping people do what they actually set out to do? Do they still feel like they need it?"

5. You can change one small thing in your own life, too

You can apply nudges at home or at your desk, too.

Instead of waiting to feel motivated, start by changing whatever makes it a hassle to get started. For example:

You don't have to change everything about your environment at once.

Change one thing, give it a few days, and write down a few short lines, like a journal entry.

"I kept putting off working on my business after work, the thing I'm building for the next chapter of my life. So I started bringing my laptop with me and getting something done, anything, before heading home. Now I can actually see it moving forward, little by little."

When you write it down like this, you get proof that one small change actually worked.

"Before bed, I laid out my workout clothes and sneakers next to the bed. In the morning, I could head straight out. Less time fighting myself, and getting ready was so much easier."

When you look back at entries like these later, you'll see exactly why it's worth keeping your sneakers out.

6. Next to what you did today, write down what was around you

Whether I'm arranging bread, designing a space, or building an app, I end up looking at the same thing.

What was around someone in the moment they acted. What caught their eye first, where things got annoying, and which choice was easiest. Lately, I've been logging these kinds of observations in my MOAVO Habits journal and turning them into data.

It's simple. Next to "Read today," you write a quick note like "Left the book on the kitchen table, so I opened it right after dinner." Do that every day, and you'll have a record of not just what you did, but what made it possible.

MOAVO Habits is the AI habit journal I built so you can jot down notes like these and look back on them later.

Change one small thing in your environment today. Then write one line about how it changed what you did.

Download on the App Store · Get it on Google Play

References

1. Richard H. Thaler & Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge (2008). Definition reference: OECD, The BASIC Toolkit.
2. Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein & John P. Balz, Choice Architecture. Harvard Law School bibliographic record and abstract.
3. YouTube Help, Autoplay videos.