The insights

Let’s consider the spectrum of implications that have come out of this work. Firstly, in terms of health implications, NudgeUp have shown that through a simple change of menu design, you can radically affect a person’s food choice. Most importantly, you can generate healthier food choices. Crucially, this change is not motivated or fostered by an individual’s self-control or desire to be healthier but is instead, prompted by simple changes to an individual’s environment. Compare this with traditional interventions for health change that ask individuals to ‘watch what they eat’, calorie count, and restrain themselves. Here, the process is made simpler. The customer enters the cafe, sits down and looks at the menu. Due to the layout and design of the Smart Menu, the customer selects a jacket potato for lunch instead of an unhealthier alternative. Healthy eating becomes less effortful and more accessible than in traditional interventions.

Secondly, let’s consider the financial implications. With just a few changes to the architecture of the menu, the cafe gained a significant amount of extra turnover. The cost-effectiveness of these nudge interventions is hugely advantageous for all businesses (small, medium, and large); the difference between the project costs and revenue is remarkable, generating an impressive profit. By targeting healthy food items with high mark up, NudgeUp were able to promote healthier eating for customers while also generating a sizeable financial incentive for the business involved. Hopefully, this evidence can be utilised as a starting point to encourage food establishments to think differently about stocking healthy options.

More broadly, and beyond this project, it is important to note the scope of using nudge across various environments. The elegance of nudge allows application across multiple contexts. In terms of promoting health, consider the use of footprints on the floor to guide shoppers to healthier foods or even simply presenting fruit in smaller bite size chunks to encourage consumption; there are countless ways in which we can design ‘foodscapes’ to nudge people in the right direction. Going beyond healthy eating and the Smart Menu, the application of nudge for decreasing unhealthy habits (for example smoking), promoting prosocial decisions (for example recycling, using public bins), and encouraging future planning (for example financial saving, pension planning), makes it a practical, cost-effective, and sophisticated solution for the boundless list of 21st century problems.

In 2017, as part of the DATA Play nomination, the smart menu was shortlisted for a Chartered Institute of Environmental Health Excellence Award in the ‘Best Innovative Environmental Health Solution’ category and was featured in the Environment Health online magazine (February 2018)