Think long term: help your customers make more sustainable choices

We can do many wonderful things with technology.

For example, we can use it to help people make responsible and healthy choices. To help them better understand the consequences of their choices. By making honest information available and accessible.

But this is still happening far too rarely. In fact, the possibilities offered by automation are often used to steer people in the wrong direction.

This has to change. Technology must make it easy to do the right thing. As creators of digital services and products, we have a major responsibility in this regard.

Knowledge and information are just a few clicks away

Twenty years ago, when you walked through a supermarket, you had to make choices based on the limited information on the label. You had to go to great lengths to find out what was good for you and what wasn’t.

Now, you simply take your phone out of your pocket and have a world of information in the palm of your hand. About ingredients. About health risks and benefits. If you have an allergy and are in a restaurant, you can easily look up what you can and can’t eat. A few clicks and you’ve got your answer. There’s much more information available thanks to digital technology. That’s a huge step forward, but…

The question is: what do we do with it?

Technology offers opportunities to help people make more sustainable choices. For example, companies could use technology to provide honest information at the right time.

But if we look around us, we see that many companies are doing the opposite. They are secretive and opaque; they do not help people make sustainable choices. They primarily use technology to learn about people’s behaviour, and then to influence it.

There are countless tricks from behavioural science that are used both offline and online. These tricks steer people towards the product that yields the highest profit margin – not towards the healthiest or most sustainable option.

We need to sort this out together

It starts in our day-to-day work. We all have a part to play: marketers, business developers, product owners, designers, developers – everyone who works on digital products and services.

Aiming for the sweet spot
In many companies, the emphasis is mainly on doing what’s good for the organisation in the short term. We need to turn that on its head and broaden our perspective: we must do what’s good for the end user, for the world and for the organisation in the long term. We need to seek out that sweet spot. And that’s not only the right thing to do morally; it’s also smart from a business perspective: what’s good for your customers and the world around you in the long term is also good for your organisation in the long term.

Take a moral stance more often We cannot expect people to make responsible choices on their own. We’re far too easily tempted and influenced for that.

Just imagine: when you’re in the supermarket or at the checkout of an online shop, you don’t think: where does this product come from? What’s in it? You’re hungry right now; you want to buy the product right now. As designers, we need to take that into account. We must use our talent to help people make the right choices.

Furthermore, it is up to us – the designers and developers of digital technology – to raise awareness within the organisations we work for. We need to show them that we can also apply principles of persuasion to steer people towards a product that’s better for them, or better for the world. And that, ultimately, this is also better for the organisation’s success.

As designers or consultants, we need to put on our ethical and moral hats more often. Are we doing the right thing here? Could a small adjustment make it just that little bit better? We must learn to use the toolkit we have developed over the past twenty years in the worlds of marketing and design in a responsible manner.

Let’s have a chat about how we can help people make more sustainable and healthier choices