We combine behavioural science, design and data science to test and develop ideas that work

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What Does the TV Show Golden Balls Tell Us About Human Cooperation? What Does the TV Show Golden Balls Tell Us About Human Cooperation?

Imagine that you’ve been invited to become a contestant on Golden Balls, the game show that graced the screens of British televisions in the late 2000s. By far the most memorable part of the show, for those who remember it, was called Split or Steal. It was played by the final two participants, who had...

Jun 5 2023 • 3 min read

Goldilocks and The Three Lemonades Goldilocks and The Three Lemonades

Imagine that it’s a warm summer’s day and you decide to buy some lemonade from a stand in a park. Which option would you choose? We recently asked participants in an online study to make this choice. Most people (52%) chose the Medium. Around a third (34%) chose the Small, and just 14% chose the...

Mar 21 2023 • 4 min read

Setting Carbon Budgets: The Effect of Defaults and Social Reference Groups Setting Carbon Budgets: The Effect of Defaults and Social Reference Groups

Imagine that you just found out your monthly carbon footprint based on your everyday spending. Yep, there’s a tool for that. It’s called Cogo, and it works by providing you with information about your carbon emissions within your online banking app. Cogo’s aim is to help people to reduce their carbon emissions. And one way...

Mar 2 2023 • 4 min read

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Case Studies

Understanding which elements of a phone package customers value most

Mobile phone operators have a wide variety of services and products that they can offer to their customers. They can provide more data; better coverage; shorter contract terms; and even free gifts, like a 6 month subscription to Netflix. But each of these elements comes at a cost, so it is useful to know exactly what value customers place on the different component parts of a contract. This might not be a problem, if customers were able to articulate clearly their preferences. But it turns out that we find it very difficult to do so accurately: it is challenging, for example, for any of us to come up with a figure when asked how much you might be willing to pay for a shorter contract.

Understand behaviours

Researching people's experience of harmful video content

In recent years, concerns have grown about people - especially young people - encountering harmful content while using online video sharing platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and Twitch. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport wanted to get a better understanding of the potential harms encountered by young people through the development of more rigorous methods for understanding their experiences. We took on this challenge as part of a wider programme of work with Oliver Wyman, the global management consulting firm.

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How digital design changes customer decisions

Online shopping offers customers a smooth, simple way of making a purchase. But Citizens Advice, the charity that offers confidential financial advice to millions of people every year, is concerned that some firms are designing online platforms in ways that act against the interests of customers. Citizens Advice therefore commissioned CogCo, working with Paul Adams, to devise an experiment that tested what the effect of different aspects of digital design had upon the choices and comprehension of customers. They were especially interested in the effect of different digital designs upon consumers’ decisions to choose to pay using ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ products. These products enable customers to delay payments into the future and now account for 6% of all online purchases in the UK.

Helping More People to Save for a Rainy Day

Around a third of all people in the UK have less than £100 in savings. This means that tens of millions of people across the country have next to no financial buffer, should they encounter any form of financial challenge. A broken fridge, or an unexpected parking fine, for example, can lead to someone needing to borrow money that they subsequently find it difficult to repay. The team at Wagestream, a financial wellbeing app whose goal is to make money management easier and more accessible for people, recognised the severity of this problem amongst the 500,000+ users of their platform. They asked CogCo to work with them in helping them to build a new product that could help their users build up their financial resilience.

Understanding What Influences Job Decisions: Is Money All that Matters?

Governments and firms regularly grapple with the question of how to attract particular employees to their shores, to different sectors of the economy, or to their workplace rather than that of a competitor. Research intensive firms might want to attract the best scientists. Often just as urgently, there might be a critical need for low-paid employees in sectors in which local citizens are reluctant to work, such as fruit picking in the US and the UK. Or there may be a need to encourage citizens to take up private-sector roles in countries where the public sector is particularly attractive, such as in parts of the Middle East. When considering how to encourage people to move into new roles or locations, governments and firms often focus on extrinsic rewards — the pay, benefits or even visa facilitation that can influence an individual’s decision. But a growing range of research shows that these extrinsic rewards are only part of the picture. Together with the global management consulting firm Oliver Wyman, we set out to explore the other factors that should be taken into account.

Understanding which elements of a phone package customers value most

Understand behaviours

Researching people's experience of harmful video content

Understand behaviours

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Our Partners

We create long term collaborations with the companies we work with - that’s why we call them partners.