VIVALDI18 Comprende
Scienze comportamentali applicate
People don't make decisions in a vacuum.
Information, context, habits, timing and small friction points can change how a person understands a choice or manages to act. VIVALDI18 STUDIO observes these mechanisms to design services and interventions that are more understandable, effective and respectful of people's freedom.
ANTONIO AI is VIVALDI18 STUDIO's AI orientation assistant: it helps frame the question, it does not diagnose biases, does not attribute motivations, does not carry out behavioural research and does not replace professional analysis.
In sintesi
Quando serve
Un messaggio, una pagina o un percorso decisionale non vengono compresi o utilizzati come previsto.
Cosa ottieni
- Ipotesi e gerarchia informativa esplicite
- Alternative di messaggio confrontabili
- Un piano di test e linee guida applicative
Primo passo
Un CHECK Processo o servizio, applicato ai contenuti e ai punti di scelta.
Limiti dichiarati. Nessuna lettura dell'inconscio, nessun accesso diretto alle emozioni, nessuna capacità predittiva non supportata: «neuromarketing» non è il nome del servizio.
Before asking people to change, we look at what makes the behaviour we're asking for difficult.
- People start a procedure but don't complete it.
- An important communication gets ignored.
- A new service is used less than expected.
- There are many options and choosing becomes difficult.
- A new internal process is adopted only partially.
- People state an intention, but then can't act on it.
- We want to encourage a more sustainable or responsible behaviour.
The problem is not automatically a lack of motivation.
It can be found in the context, in the information, in the required friction, or in how the choice is constructed. That's where it's worth looking before designing a solution.
Behaviour emerges from the encounter between the person and the context.
It's not a sequence of steps: it's a convergence. Several factors act at the same moment and together make a behaviour easier or harder.
Starting point
Person
With their history, their knowledge and their concrete possibilities at that moment.
Converging factors
Information
What the person knows, understands and remembers at that moment.
Time
How much time they have, how much urgency they feel, when the request arrives.
Environment
Channel, device, place, noise, presence or absence of support.
Habits
What they have already done before and with what outcome.
Alternatives
How many options exist and how comparable they are.
Friction
Steps, requirements, obstacles and effort needed to proceed.
Consequences
What happens right away and what happens later.
Other people
Who advises, who decides, who observes, what others do.
Observable outcome
Behaviour
What the person actually understands, decides or manages to do.
The same person can behave differently when the context changes.
The VIVALDI18 model
Six stages of work. They are not compartments: learning can bring us back to observation as many times as needed.
We observe
What actually happens, before explaining it.
We understand
Context, information, motivations, friction, constraints and habits at play.
We hypothesise
We formulate possible explanations to be tested.
We design
We build interventions that are proportionate and respectful of freedom of choice.
We test
When appropriate, we verify the effects with a method suited to the context.
We learn
We confirm, adjust or abandon the hypothesis based on the evidence.
A bias can suggest a question. It doesn't automatically give the answer.
Useful use
Cognitive biases are interpretive models: they help imagine what might make it hard to understand or choose in a given situation.
Use to avoid
They are not labels to attach to a person, they don't explain a behaviour on their own, and they don't replace observing the real context in which that behaviour occurs.
An intuition can be a starting point, but it only becomes useful once it is turned into a hypothesis formulated so it can be tested.
Biases can suggest hypotheses. They don't replace evidence.
Friction and cognitive load
Friction is anything that makes an action more costly to perform. It can be small and still decisive.
Digital
Steps, fields, authentications, errors, unpredictable interfaces.
Cognitive
Effort of understanding, memory, comparison, interpretation.
Informational
Information that is missing, scattered, ambiguous or arrives at the wrong moment.
Organisational
Handoffs between offices, repeated requests, unclear responsibilities.
Temporal
Waiting times, deadlines, moments poorly compatible with real life.
Load increases when we ask for
- too much information at once
- too many decisions close together
- requests that rely on memory
- complex language
- unpredictable steps
Not all friction is negative
Some friction is necessary and should be kept, because it serves to:
- protecting the person or their data
- verifying an identity or an authorisation
- reducing errors that are hard to correct
- slowing down an important decision
- encouraging greater awareness
Reducing the load doesn't mean removing what's necessary: it means organising it better, spreading it over time and making it understandable.
Designing a choice means taking on a responsibility.
There is no neutral way to present alternatives: someone still decides how many there are, in what order they appear, and what happens if the person doesn't choose. This is the terrain of choice architecture.
Number of options
How many alternatives are presented together.
Order
What is read first and what stays at the bottom.
Defaults
What happens if the person doesn't actively choose.
Language
How the alternatives and their consequences are worded.
Comparability
Whether the options can really be compared with each other.
Visibility
What is visible and what requires effort to find.
Reversibility
Whether the choice can be undone and under what conditions.
A nudge is an intervention on the context that makes one option easier without removing others. We consider it acceptable only if it remains transparent, proportionate and reversible.
An intervention can facilitate a choice without hiding, forcing or obstructing the alternatives.
Effective doesn't mean manipulative.
There are techniques that work in the short term and that we don't design. They stay outside our work:
- artificial obstacles to refusal or cancellation
- false urgency or manufactured time pressure
- information deliberately hidden or made hard to find
- options deliberately made confusing or ambiguous
- asymmetries created to force a choice
- undue pressure on people in a weaker position
Conversion doesn't justify reducing the person's freedom.
More information doesn't automatically mean more understanding.
Adding text, notices or documents does not, by itself, produce understanding or action. How useful a piece of information turns out to be depends on several factors:
Timing
Whether it arrives when the person can actually act on it.
Relevance
Whether it relates to the decision the person is making.
Language
Whether it is worded in a way the recipient can understand.
Trust
Whether the source is recognisable and credible in that context.
Channel
Whether the medium is compatible with the person's habits.
Ability to act
Whether there is a concrete possibility of doing what is being asked.
There is no communication formula that works everywhere, always: first we look at what makes the requested behaviour difficult, then we decide what to communicate and how.
From intuition to verification
Step 1
Observation
Something happens that doesn't match what we expected.
Step 2
Hypothesis
A possible explanation, formulated so it can be tested.
Step 3
Intervention
A proportionate change to the context, the information or the journey.
Step 4
Test
A method suited to the context and the resources available.
Step 5
Evidence
What the data really shows, with its limits.
Step 6
Decision
Confirm, correct or abandon, in a documented way.
When appropriate, verification can take different forms: pilot, prototype, usability testing, A/B testing, qualitative research, data analysis or other proportionate approaches. Not every project needs to become a formal experiment: the method is chosen based on the question, the available data and the risk of the intervention.
Correlation does not mean causation.
Two phenomena that move together do not prove a cause-and-effect relationship, and a result observed in one context is not automatically valid in another. We always distinguish evidence, interpretation, hypothesis and recommendation.
When ethics becomes part of the project
It's not a side note: it's a set of questions we ask while we design, not afterwards.
- Who benefits from this intervention?
- Who could be disadvantaged by it?
- Does the choice remain understandable?
- Can the person refuse without penalty?
- Are we facilitating or are we manipulating?
- What consequences could it produce over time?
Particular caution is needed when people in a vulnerable situation are involved — because of age, health, disability, economic hardship or a strong power imbalance — and when the decision has significant, hard-to-correct consequences. In these cases the criterion is not the effectiveness of the intervention, but the person's real ability to understand and to choose.
Applied behavioural science does not mean neuromarketing.
The area of expertise
Applied behavioural science is the overall name: it includes behaviour observation, the choice context, friction, research and verification.
The term neuromarketing
It can identify some specific approaches, but it is not a synonym for the overall area of expertise and is not used as its name.
We do not promise to read the unconscious, direct access to emotions, unsupported predictive abilities, or the ability to know what a person really thinks.
Attività che possono lavorare insieme
Understanding why something happens is different from designing every other part of the service.
- VIVALDI18 AscoltaCustomer ExperienceWhen the theme is the service journey as a whole.
- VIVALDI18 IncludeAccessibilità digitale, cognitiva e fisicaWhen comprehension, memory and orientation matter.
- VIVALDI18 FacilitaLogistica, processi e assistenza amministrativaWhen an internal process remains poorly adopted.
- VIVALDI18 GeneraConsulenza ESGWhen more sustainable behaviours are needed.
- VIVALDI18 ProteggePrivacy / DPOWhen data, profiling and personalisation are involved.
- VIVALDI18 ProgettaProgettualitàWhen an insight needs to become an intervention.
- VIVALDI18 RaccontaGiornalismo e storytellingWhen the theme is messages and narrative.
Illustrative scenarios
Typical situations built for explanatory purposes: they are not real cases or achieved results.
Illustrative example · Local authority
Many citizens start an online procedure but don't complete an important step.
Illustrative example · Healthcare
A communication is formally correct, but some instructions are followed only partially.
Illustrative example · SME
Customers have many alternatives and struggle to compare them before deciding.
Illustrative example · Organisation
A new process has been introduced, but people keep using the previous one.
Frequently asked questions
Which behaviour would you like to understand better?
It could be a choice people keep postponing, a service that is underused, a procedure that gets abandoned, or a change that is hard to adopt. Before designing a solution, we can try to understand what is really going on.
Every engagement is built and followed together with the client, with shared objectives, activities and progress.