Nudge connects people and organisations in order to realize bottom-up initiatives that contribute to positive and lasting change to our society. Small and big steps together have a positive impact on our society. From terminating your phonebook subscription to starting an energy cooperative, Nudge believes that every step counts. The Nudge platform allows people to share and discuss sustainable plans (broedplaats), further develop ideas with support from organisations (projects), and find simple guides for sustainable initiatives and actions (nudges).
Nudge’s statement that small and larger steps together have a positive impact on society currently remains under-defined. What is this positive impact, socially, economically and ecologically? How can this impact be defined? And how should Nudge communicate about impact? These questions were the starting point of my graduation project:
Collaborative impact analysis: defining, assessing and communicating the impact of wildly different sustainability projects.
This results of this graduation project contain three main parts (some elements are in Dutch):
- an impact framework
- a collaborative process of analysing impact
- an impact communication strategy
Impact framework
An impact framework provides the foundation for the impact analysis process and the communication strategy for impact. In the framework, impact themes are divided over the three pillars of sustainability: social, ecological and economical. The framework is tailored to fit Nudge’s vision of small and large steps that together lead to a big impact. Moreover, the content of the framework is chosen to be easily understandable by everyone and soft impact themes have been included to make the framework more engaging.
The Nudge impact framework. Themes are divided over the three main pillars of sustainability: ecological, economical, and social. Each theme has sub-themes and those sub-themes have quantitative impact indicators.
Impact analysis tool
In order to engage and guide people through the complex process of impact analysis, the design proposes a stepped approach for impact analysis. The analysis tool is designed to be online-based, so that it can be integrated with the online Nudge platform. It is a highly visual process that structures and clarifies an idea and its impact. By making an idea or plan visual, people can easily collaborate.
An impression of an online interface for collaborative impact analysis by novices. An adapted version of theory of change is used to make ideas and plans explicit and map needs, actions and impact indicators.
A proposal for an app that makes it fun and easy to measure impact. The example above show a public bookshelve initiative through which people can share books. An app is used that allows people to take a picture to prove they have shared a book. Organisations can give rewards if a certain goal is achieved.
Impact communication strategy
A communication strategy is proposed for using this impact definition to stimulate people and organisations to contribute to sustainability at Nudge. People can find initiatives that fit their personal values and beliefs. By showing how small steps lead to a big positive impact on our society, people are stimulated to change their behaviour.
The core concept of the communication strategy is that people can do specific actions, for which they need things and which lead to an impact.
Example: people and organisations can share impact information on social media. The upper facebook post shows a public bookshelve initiative through which 279 books are shared, which leads to a certain impact. Impact indicators that are harder to grasp can be translated to easier metrics (eg. kg of paper to amount of trees).
Example: organisations that support initiatives can use impact widgets on their own website. This allows them to demonstrate their efforts and the impact of those efforts. In doing so, organisations can leverage from their efforts and exposure is generated for Nudge.
An addition to the Nudge homepage shows a few key impact metrics (shown in the grey area).
People can already search by location on the current website, but some initiatives and actions are not location-bound. Additionally, I propose to create a dynamic impact map that allows people to explore initiatives and actions based on impact in stead of location.
