Nudge4 Solutions Lab

THE CHALLENGE

Economically-disadvantaged students and their families need access to quality information and/or advising about their educational options.

A nudge is an action taken to encourage or alter someone’s behavior. In the past decade, nudging (behavior economics concept) has entered mainstream American education. An example of a successful nudge program is First Lady Michelle Obama’s text messaging campaign to expand college opportunity for all young Americans. The use of behavioral solutions has the potential to help level playing field for economically-disadvantaged students and their families throughout all stages of schooling.

THE OPPORTUNITY

Well-designed nudges can help students and families make active and informed decisions about the educational pathways they pursue. Nudge 4 has the ability to develop solutions that can be scaled to reach audiences of varying demographics and sizes. This is accomplished by leveraging behavioral insights, data science, interactive technologies, and deep partnerships. 

Behavioral insights: Our projects leverage behavioral insights to design interventions that encourage people to make informed decisions and to follow through on their own intentions.

Data science: We harness rich data and sophisticated analytic techniques to prompt people with information that is highly personalized, salient, and actionable.

Interactive technologies: Nudge⁴ projects leverage mobile technologies to effectively reach people, convey timely information, and connect people to individualized assistance.

Deep partnerships: We build collaborative, sustained partnership with schools, agencies and organizations to develop effective, scalable policy interventions.

THE STRATEGY

Nudge 4 has a project design that allows it to develop well-designed nudges for specific audiences.

Innovate: We bring together teams of behavioralists, designers, and practitioners to design innovative solutions.

Integrate: Nudge⁴ leverages insights and expertise from behavioral and labor economics, social and consumer psychology, visual design and data science.

Scale: Our projects are all designed with an eye towards scale.

Infuse: We infuse creative design into our interventions – images, infographics, GIFs, and video that engage and inform our audiences.

• PHASE 1

  $500,000

  Over the next two years Nudge4 aims to launch major scalable solutions in each of our four priority problem areas:

  Educational inequality
  Chronic Unemployment
  Criminal Justice Recidivism
  Education for Veterans and their Dependents

  Based on our prior and current projects, we estimate each project will cost $400,000 - $500,000 to design, implement, and rigorously evaluate.

• PHASE 2

  In years 3 – 5, Nudge4 will build its capacity to support other agencies to adopt, implement, and sustain scalable solutions, through targeted training and technical assistance.