Salient translates the latest insights from behavioural science into practical solutions, providing a new perspective and approach to business, policy, and design challenges.
Key to this approach is the rigorous testing and measurement of our designed solutions to ensure they are relevant, meaningful and impactful for our clients.
Maddie is currently completing research on the impact of mindfulness meditation on financial decision-making, integral to her Executive MSc in Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She holds her CFA Charter, and Bachelor degrees in both Finance (B.Comm) and Psychology (B.A.).
Maddie is a yoga teacher, writer, and animal rescue advocate. And is trying to teach herself to play the guitar (again).
Undertaking an Executive Masters in Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics was a clear next step and has allowed him to focus on variety of factors influencing decision-making, as well as their short and long-term effects on consumers overall happiness and satisfaction. He is currently applying this new thinking and techniques to design better communications, policy and products.
Andy plays five-a-side football with all the energy and enthusiasm his 35 years can muster and likes to cook for his friends (nothing too complicated, mind - mostly chilli con-carne).
He is enthusiastic about using technology as a positive force to drive behaviour. For his MSc research project, he explored how augmented reality could be employed to promote healthy eating habits.
Elliot is a keen singer, and regularly performs with two choirs. His voice was once heard on a commercial for a well-known brand of fish fingers.
Our experience in industry has shown us a troubling approach to a breadth of challenges. Many individuals and institutions still hold the belief that humans behave in a fully rational manner. They implement practices around this mistaken assumption and are surprised when their results don’t reflect their models. Not only do these approaches often fail, they can backfire.
Our aim is to introduce a truly human perspective back into the understanding of decision-making and behaviour, and use that perspective to elicit successful results and address fundamental challenges:
Research shows that only 36% of behaviour change can be explained by a change of intentions – i.e. what people say they are going to do, the other 64% is explained by other – often contextual – factors. What people say they are going to do is only a part of the picture, and what people do can run in opposition to these intentions. Behavioural Science seeks to understand this intention-behaviour gap and provide solutions to bridge it.
Many of Behavioural Science’s biggest breakthroughs have been in the understanding that seemingly identical messaging can illicit completely different behaviours. Beginning with the Allais Paradox, this idea has been applied to analysis of risk in healthcare and finance, pricing of products and subscriptions and voting, elections and political change.
Many habitual sets of behaviours do not serve our best interests or align with what we believe will make us happier – deeply ingrained neural pathways to behaviour are notoriously difficult to change. Behavioural science uses the understanding of context and underlying mechanisms of behaviour to change these patterns.
We translate proven behavioural science insights and leverage cutting-edge techniques to design practical solutions to real-world problems. We have been involved in designing and testing interventions in various contexts – from trading, consumer research and process improvement to sustainability and animal welfare. We do not believe in a single solution that can be applied to every problem; we use our 5D approach to design tailor-made solutions within a specific context.
Our approach contains rigorous measurement in both problem identification and intervention impact. The design of our solutions marries our academic backgrounds in behavioural science with years of industry experience, enabling us to bring these two worlds together.
