Calling DIBS

Karen Smallwood, Product Manager in Connected Services BC, BC Public Service. Karen Smallwood has an eye for how to use BI to save lives! Her capstone project team tackled organ donation from a new angle: It turns out many people assume they're registered donors when they're not! Drawing on her work in emergency management, Karen shares BI barriers faced by folks trying to prevent, prepa...

Faraz Haqqi, Principal Behavioral Designer at ideas42. Even highly skilled workers can struggle to find work. Faraz Haqqi provides a snapshot of ideas42’s projects tackling this challenge from Rwanda to Jamaica to Malaysia to the US. The projects approach the problem from a number of different angles, including helping employers provide apprenticeships and internships , helping training programs s...

Katherine Flaschen, Principal Behavioral Designer at ideas42.  ideas42's Katherine Flaschen explains how to tackle complex challenges like "improving educational outcomes" by using a step-by-step process and focusing on meaningful, movable, and measurable behaviours. To illustrate, Katherine shares a project using social norms and present bias to encourage caregivers to enroll girls...

Nicholas Chesterley, Author of "Future-Generation Government". Nick Chesterley's new book, "Future-Generation Government", uses a behavioural insights lens to explore why governments underweight the long term, and how we can help them better balance the present and the future. Nick and I talk about the importance of measurement, experimenting with new ideas, and iterating...

Dave Hardisty, Associate Professor of Marketing and Behavioural Science at UBC Sauder School of Business. Dave Hardisty returns to the podcast to talk about A/B tests, which are a popular and useful tool to help us determine which version of something works best. However, A/B tests run on online platforms like Google and Facebook aren't actually true experiments because of the way platforms t...

Greg Lockwood, Senior Analyst at Global Affairs Canada. Greg Lockwood returns to the podcast to tell us about recent projects using mixed methods to explore optimal hybrid work strategies and to encourage deep work in the age of distraction. Drawing from his experiences at the Public Health Agency of Canada and Global Affairs Canada, Greg also shares lessons learned about experimentation, communic...

Jordana Composto, Postdoctoral Researcher at UBC Decision Insights for Business & Society (UBC-DIBS). We're thrilled to welcome Jordana Composto as our new DIBS postdoctoral researcher. Through her contributions to the 2022 IPCC report and her research on the mechanics of social norms, Jordana works across disciplines and levels to tackle the climate crisis. She shares helpful ways to cat...

Alison Schatz, Senior Communications Specialist at Metro Vancouver. After completing the Advanced Professional Certificate in Behavioural Insights , Alison Schatz is finding a wide range of ways to weave BI into her work. Among other uses, Alison is drawing on BI concepts and methods to write action-focused communications, to coordinate with colleagues, to connect with difference audiences, and to...

Takuro Ishikawa, Senior Behavioural Scientist with the BC Behavioural Insights Group (BC BIG). Tak Ishikawa returns to the podcast to help us understand the recent "debate" about boosts and nudges. To help ground the conversation, we disentangle terms like heuristics, biases, nudges, and boosts. In the end, Tak and I firmly agree that there is no debate -- both boosts and nudges are extr...

Clea Stone, Associate Director at The Sound. Because Clea Stone recently completed the Advanced Professional Certificate in Behavioural Insights to complement her existing skillset from a decade of work in market research, she's perfectly equipped to help us explore the intersection of market research and behavioural insights. To wit, Clea brainstorms opportunities for integrating BI into mar...

Yann Cornil, Associate Professor of Marketing and Behavioural Science at UBC Sauder School of Business. As a French food researcher, Yann Cornil was surprised by North American eating habits and messaging about good vs. bad foods. Yann's research with Pierre Chandon suggests that we eat less and enjoy it more when we eat mindfully (read: with our TVs and phones off) and focus on the Epicurean...

Kieran Findlater, Lead for Behavioural and Data Science at the Impact and Innovation Unit. Kieran Findlater shares how his cross-disciplinary background prepared him to work at the Canadian federal government's Impact and Innovation Unit (IIU). Kieran explains the IIU's approach to projects and how it has evolved. He also provides an overview of the recently completed Program of Applied...

Julie Szabo, Principal at Capulet. At Capulet, Julie Szabo has worked on a wide variety of online communication campaigns. In addition to sharing general wisdom for creating social media campaigns and measuring their impact, Julie tells us about recent projects promoting HPV vaccines in Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Pakistan. Julie also shares the exciting news that Capulet is creating a digital librar...

Joana Katter, Research Lead for Policy & Program Research at Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada. Drawing on her experiences working in academia, government, and the private sector, Joana Katter shares advice for finding BI roles and creating community. We discuss the importance of leading with curiosity and humility, especially when you're part of a cross-functional team. We al...

Lea Dunn, Principal Quantitative Researcher at Brooks Running. Lea Dunn unpacks the value of behavioural science for firms like Brooks, the performance running company. With their passionate customers and culture of curiosity, Brooks creates opportunities to use behavioural science, including both qualitative and quantitative research methods, in everything from developing strategy to evaluating c...

Piyush Tantia. After 15 years at ideas42, Piyush Tantia reflects back on big successes, including completing over 600 projects around the world and scaling impactful interventions like behaviourally-informed cash transfers. Piyush also shares challenges, such as finding funding for social science research and development. Lastly, we discuss opportunities ahead, including building BI into policy an...

Kirstin Appelt, Research Director of UBC Decision Insights for Business & Society (UBC-DIBS). To celebrate our 100th episode, host Kirstin Appelt reflects on her top takeaways so far: (1) There are multiple roads to BI and the field is richer for it. (2) BI is everywhere, which means there's no shortage of opportunities for doing the work of BI! (3) BI has a strong foundation and it'...

Adrian Camilleri, Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Technology Sydney Business School. Adrian Camilleri provides an overview of his research nudging greener car choices: He shares his earlier work testing different fuel economy metrics and activating different purchase goals . Adrian also gives us a sneak peek into his ongoing research exploring personalized nudges--the idea th...

Crystal Hall, Associate Professor at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Policy & Governance. Drawing on her book Antiracist by Design , Crystal Hall shares an updated model for working on behavioural science projects. The model emphasizes actively and collaboratively planning and managing projects so that they involve the right people, ask the right questions, identify the c...

Jade Radke, PhD student in Psychology at UBC, & Jiaying Zhao, Associate Professor of Psychology and the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at UBC. As part of the "Happy Climate" project, Jade Radke and Jiaying Zhao are exploring how to increase both climate action and happiness. Across projects, they've found that positive frames and probabilistic rewards wo...

Holly Caggiano, Assistant Professor in Climate Justice and Environmental Planning at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning. Holly Caggiano shares her research combining the disciplines of behavioural science and planning to explore climate equity, community-led solutions, and community solidarity and care. We also discuss some of the opportunities that arise when behavioural science and...

Eva Koromilas, Project Lead with the OECD’s Behavioural Science Unit. Sludge is baked into many processes, from filing taxes to renewing licenses to accessing services. Fortunately, folks like Eva Koromilas are paving the way for organizations worldwide to undertake sludge audits to find and eliminate the points of friction and psychological costs that keep us from completing processes. Eva explai...

Penny Norman, VP of Strategy & Communications, Rescue Agency. Penny Norman applies behavioural science to tackle a variety of pressing behavioural and mental health challenges. She provides a snapshot of the work Rescue has done to promote harm reduction behaviours within the context of the fentanyl crisis. The takeaways are widely applicable to behaviour change projects -- approach with an op...

Jeremy Gretton, Behavioural Scientist with the Ontario Behavioural Insights Unit.   Jeremy Gretton reflects on his time applying BI in academia, the private sector, and government. We discuss why many "a or b" questions are better answered with "both/and": Combining academic and applied expertise, qualitative and quantitative approaches, behaviour and systems change, and rigour...

Paloma Bellatin, Principal Advisor with BIT. The term "digital innovation" covers a lot of (quickly-changing) ground. Paloma Bellatin provides an overview of three different areas where behavioural science is making an impact: creating new technology to bring interventions online accessibly, improving existing technology to better serve users, and protecting against online harms, whether...