Thinking Space

Dave Trott shares some interesting examples of choice architecture

At a school in the USA, the girls in their early teens had just discovered lipstick. They would go into the female toilets to apply it. Then, giggling, they’d leave imprints of their lips on the large mirror. This made a lot of extra work for the cleaning staff. The head teacher asked the girls to stop. Of course, they ignored her. So she took the girls to the toilets for a demonstration. She said, ‘It takes a lot of work to clean the lipstick off the mirror.’ She said to the janitor, ‘Please show the girls how much work it takes.’ The janitor put the mop in the toilet, squeezed off the excess water and washed the mirror. Then put the mop in the toilet again, and repeated the process. From that day on there was no more lipstick on the mirror. That’s choice architecture.

The National Portrait Gallery’s problem was that very few people visited the upper floors, while the ground floor was always packed. People couldn’t be bothered to climb flights of stairs. So they borrowed an idea from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim building in New York. They changed the entrance. They installed a large escalator right by it, taking visitors straight up to the top floor. The exhibition now started at the top floor and worked its way down to the ground floor. The stairs were now for walking down not up. Quite literally, choice architecture.

As an architect, you deal with choice architecture on daily basis. You present your solution options to stakeholders.
Sometimes the stakeholders may not be convinced with your recommended option. Apply the choice architecture to prove your point. However be mindful that it’s not manipulative or biased, rather use it as a tool to bring out the differentiation.