This is some placeholder text for a story about Blacksad. immersed myself in these behavioral principles in 2018, when I worked at Advance Local, which is a hub for a collective of regional news organizations. Their digital products had always been free and ad-supported, and now they were planning to sell digital subscriptions for the first time. My team and I wanted to contribute meaningfully to the mission.

First, we conducted our own user tests to validate the aforementioned principles. Why did we bother? After all, the concepts described had been heavily validated. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2002 for his work integrating psychology insights into economics. Behavioral economist Richard Thaler likewise won a Nobel Prize in Economics in 2017 for related nudge research. We tested for three reasons:

Because it’s not enough to be right; it’s important to be effective. Nobels notwithstanding, my colleagues at Advance Local were dubious of these seemingly weird and unfamiliar concepts that didn’t match their opinions or experience. Validation using our own digital products may not have popped any buttons on Kahneman’s or Thaler’s vests, but it was meaningful in aligning our teams and instilling confidence in our design strategy. It was important that we made the journey together.

Because very little of the research led by Kahneman, Thaler, and other leaders in their fields pertained to digital editorial products. We wanted to be confident that we could extend their principles to our products.

Because some popular behavioral science research has come under scrutiny, before and since then, including accusations of flawed or fabricated data. A group of concerned academics at DataColada.org have executed some notable takedowns. We didn’t want to lead our company over a cliff or squander trust in our design team.