Nathalie Nahai, behavioural psychologist and author of the book Webs of Influence, explains how colour shapes our decisions and affects our buying behaviour. And what it is about red that makes it the winning colour?

In this episode we’re talking colour psychology and how you can apply these techniques to your own website and branding.

You’ll learn about:

• The colours which imply trust, calmness and wealth
• Which combinations make us see danger
• How different generations and cultures respond differently to colour – and how global influences throw all this out of the window
• And why our brains process a black and white caricature of Celine Dion more quickly than a colour photo.

We will also be taking a break in the middle to explore why red is statistically shown to be a colour for winners – great news for Manchester United fans, but not so much for Chelsea…

Show notes

Visit Nathalie Nahai’s website where you can buy her books, listen to her podcast and discover useful resources.

About Nathalie Nahai

Nathalie’s background in human behaviour, web design and the arts offer a unique vantage point from which to examine the complex challenges we face today.

Her best-selling book: Webs Of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion has been adopted as the go-to manual by business leaders and universities alike, and her new book, Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience, has been described as “One of the defining business books of our times”.

A popular speaker, consultant and facilitator to Fortune 500 companies, Nathalie also serves as a behavioural science advisor and helps organisations to ethically apply behavioural science principles to enhance their business.

Having lectured at some of the world’s most prestigious institutions, Nathalie's ability to ignite conversation and offer tools and strategies with which to harness human potential, has helped countless organisations transform how they approach business online, with clients including Google, Accenture, Unilever and Harvard Business Review, among others.

Having co-hosted the Guardian Tech Weekly, Nathalie now hosts the popular podcast, Nathalie Nahai In Conversation, which explores our relationship with one another, with technology, and with the natural world.

She is also the founder of Flourishing Futures Salon, a project that offers curated gastronomical gatherings that explore how we can thrive in times of turbulence and change.

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Iain Boyd and Adam Robertson from GOV.UK Forms at the Government Digital Service join us to share best practice in designing online forms to capture information efficiently and ethically. Plus, discover the dark patterns on the web which set out to trick us into doing things we never set out to do.

Online forms. They’re either so intuitive you hardly notice you’ve filled them in. Or they take so long to complete that you just lose the will to live.

Or maybe you’re the one creating the form and trying to gather the information. People just don’t fill them in properly! How can you work with data that’s incomplete?

An organisation dealing with this issue on a massive scale is Government Digital Service, who are behind GOV.UK, the website for the UK Government.

More than 13m people use GOV.UK weekly, and more than 1bn transactions are completed a year – things like filing a tax return or renewing your passport. GDS are introducing their new Forms Builder to make Government forms more accessible.

Our two guests on this episode are both from GOV.UK Forms at Government Digital Service. They share best practice in designing online forms so that not only do more people fill them in – but you get accurate data too:

• Adam Robertson, Senior Product Manager
• Iain Boyd, Engagement Lead at GOV.UK at the UK Government Digital Service and Iain Boyd from GDS

And in complete contrast to this ethical, transparent approach, you’ll find out about dark patterns on the web, and why Amazon, Google, Meta and the makers of Fortnite are being fined millions of dollars for tricking users into doing things they simply never set out to do. And who’s clamping down on nudges and sludges, biased framing and confirmshaming once and for all?

Show notes

GOV.UK Forms builder tool: “Create an accessible online form in minutes without needing technical knowledge”

Government Digital Service service manual. Accessibility, measurement, research, good design practice…it’s all in here!

GDS blog: How we’re opening up access to GOV.UK forms

GDS blog: Making it easy to create and publish digital forms on GOV.UK

About dark patterns

Visit Harry Brignull’s website, Deceptive Patterns for a full description of the term and some pretty horrifying examples in the Hall of Shame!

The autofill dark pattern

UK regulators target dark patterns

National Law Review: FTC report shows increase in dark patterns

ICO and CMA clamp down on dark patterns in the UK

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Sean Willard from The Menu Engineers joins communications specialist Sue Keogh to talk about menu design. What big shifts are we seeing in this post-pandemic era? How do the fonts, colours and material they’re printed on affect our choices? And why should every restaurant offer something that lets you blow the budget?

Plus! How does Netflix use idleness aversion in their menu to keep us endlessly scrolling through?

No one understands more about the psychology of designing a menu than Sean Willard from The Menu Engineers.

He’s got over two decades in the restaurant trade. Starting out in a steakhouse at 18, he went on to study at Cornell’s prestigious Hotel School under the tutelage of Gregg Rapp, who laid the foundations for the techniques The Menu Engineers use today to optimise menus.

We talk about the huge shifts in menu design in this post-pandemic era. How the fonts, colours and material they’re printed on affect our choices. And why every restaurant should have an item on the menu that lets you really blow the budget.

Along the way, we’ll look at how entertainment giant Netflix uses idleness aversion tactics in its menu design to help us pick what we want to watch out of thousands of titles.

About Sean Willard

Sean Willard is a seasoned Menu Engineer dedicated to assisting restaurateurs and hospitality operators worldwide in the creation of optimised menus. His approach melds the precision of science, the finesse of art, the insights of data, and a wealth of industry experience to empower restaurateurs in crafting menus that not only bolster profitability but also elevate the overall guest dining experience.

With a distinguished academic background from Cornell’s prestigious Hotel School and an extensive tenure within the restaurant industry spanning over two decades, Sean brings a wealth of knowledge and practical expertise to the realm of Menu Engineering.

His journey into this specialised field was cultivated under the mentorship of the late Gregg Rapp, a luminary in the discipline who laid the foundations for many of the methodologies and principles still revered today.

Get in touch with Sean via menuEngineers.com, on Instagram or LinkedIn.

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