Times of India, today, reported how sustained efforts by Central Railway and FinalMile has been successful in minimizing death rates due to trespassing. Our interventions along with the Central Railway efforts have managed to bring down death rates by as much as 70% in some sections. The success of this approach hinges on two important factors. Big behavioural problems don’t need fancy solutions with large budgets and huge resources, but a fundamentally different approach tha

Our work to minimize deaths due to trespassing hinged on two key behaviour changes: – break overconfidence of trespassers as they enter the tracks. – make them alert, give them better judgement as they cross the tracks. While researching what types of stimuli help in making the brain more alert, we uncovered one research done by Stanford University on music and alertness. The research team showed that music engages the areas of the brain involved with paying attention, maki

Earlier this month, we wrote a column for Point-Of-Purchase, a Shopper Marketing Magazine. This article details what we learnt from our recent experiment to halt trespassing deaths while crossing the tracks, and how these can be translated into the retail space. ——————————————————- “Consumers claim 70% of their final purchase decisions are made at the store shelf, but we don’t know as much as we would like to about how these purchase decisions are really made. So we’re in th

Our unconventional ways of working and researching behaviour – observation based research, using principles of cognitive neurology and behavioural economics into our interventions, and behavioural design – is starting to get noticed not only by the marketing and corporate fraternity, but also world media. This video gives you a great idea into how we delve deep into the behavioural problems that exist in marketing departments, organizational cultures and public spaces, and ho

Just this morning, Mint-WSJ carried an article that details the work that FinalMile does in the area of behaviour change. Our experiment at Wadala station to minimize deaths due to trespassing — done pro bono — is probably Final Mile’s biggest project in terms of the number of people it works on every day. While the trespassing project forms a large part of the article, other initiatives we’ve undertaken for behaviour change across applications, including public behaviour and