Effective Nudging in Digital Environments

Abstract

This research investigates the user experience of receiving digitalnudges. The nudges were designed as being either gain-framed or loss-framed, informing users of the benefits of exercise and were sent as push notifications in a fitness app. Qualitative data from semi-structured interviews were analysed using a thematic analysis. The overall results suggest that nudges via push notifications are well-accepted by users, particularly if trustworthy, short, easy to read and well-timed. Differences in opinion between gain-framed or loss-framed nudges were not strong. However, those who did express a dislike for loss-framed nudges tended to do so strongly. This paper is novel and useful to designers of digital nudges as our results can inform designers of best practices. To the best of our knowledge, there are a lack of studies that actually carry out the design, implementation and evaluation of digital nudging interventions (by its true forms), with the aim of understanding users’ perception and experience of digital nudging. Further, as far as we have been able to ascertain, a systematic qualitative study of the user experience of digital nudges using push notifications has not been done until now.