Hotels as “living” labs for GoodLife hacking? Summary

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Summary

The core idea presented is leveraging hotels as “living labs” to apply insights from behavioral science towards facilitating positive habit formation and human flourishing. The speakers argue that despite good intentions, people struggle to change habits due to psychological barriers and lack of scientific rigor in translating research into real-world applications.

They propose systematically redesigning hotel environments to include subtle cues, gamification elements, and environmental nudges aimed at prompting desired behaviors like improved sleep, communication, exercise, etc. This would involve partnering with hotels to test different interventions, collect personalized data on guest responses, and refine the most effective, evidence-based approaches.

The key technical concepts involve embedding behavioral science principles into the choice architecture, leveraging technology for data collection and personalization, and bridging the gap between intention and action through “sneaky” subconscious prompts. By transforming hotels into living experiments, they aim to better understand how to optimize human behavior change at scale.

Specific implementation details were not provided, but examples included using game mechanics to foster deeper connections between guests, environmental cues to encourage better sleep habits, and subtle nudges like placing objects to make certain behaviors more intuitive. Measurement would involve a mix of self-reports, biometrics, and observed behaviors.

While no results were shared, the speakers emphasized the need to get beyond surface-level applications of science and to treat human behavior with the same technical rigor as complex engineering challenges like space travel. Potential real-world applications span any domain involving ingrained habits around health, productivity, relationships, and wellbeing.

Key Takeaways

• Despite good intentions, people struggle to change habits due to psychological barriers like the intention-behavior gap. Applying insights from behavioral science in real-world contexts could help bridge this divide.
• Hotels provide an ideal testbed or “living lab” to systematically experiment with environmental nudges, choice architectures, and data collection to optimize for positive habit formation at scale.
• Gathering robust personal data through IoT, biometrics, and self-reports could enable personalized, adaptive interventions that are continually refined and optimized.
• Key implementation details involve partnering with hotels, embedding “sneaky” subconscious cues into the environment, and rigorously measuring impacts to identify the most effective, evidence-based approaches.
• Applying scientific rigor and technical principles to the often overlooked “soft science” of human behavior change could unlock transformative potential for flourishing across domains like health, relationships, productivity, and more.
• Overcoming social barriers like privacy concerns and incentive misalignment will be critical for widespread adoption and scaling of evidence-based environmental habit interventions.
• Interdisciplinary collaboration between fields like behavioral science, design, data science, and hospitality will likely be required to successfully execute on the “living lab” hotel concept.

Speakers

• Adam, Role/Affiliation unknown, Demonstrated expertise in systems thinking, behavioral science applications
• Ting, Behavioral Scientist, Expertise in habit formation, human-centered design Key contributions:
• Adam provided framing examples comparing habit challenges to complex engineering feats like space travel, highlighting the need for rigorous scientific approaches.
• Ting outlined the core concept of using hotels as living labs to systematically test environmental interventions based on behavioral science principles. She emphasized the importance of going beyond surface-level applications of science to drive meaningful habit change.