ABOUT

The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) asked us to help them develop a new handbook to help them change the behaviour of internal teams at WRAP.
This handbook would need to summarise the key behavioural biases and heuristics that are relevant to WRAP’s work on citizen behavioural change, with a specific focus on citizen food waste prevention. These mental shortcuts are used by the brain to make decisions easier, but they can also be used by WRAP to encourage sustainable behaviours.
The handbook is designed to act as a training tool for WRAP staff and is structured to provide a resource to assist in the development of behaviour change interventions and campaigns. The handbook can also provide content for the production of presentations and funding bids.

Mediums:
Digital PDFs, Presentation templates and other key assets

Concept:
The Waste And Resources Action Programme (WRAP’s) behaviour change interventions team regularly have to produce presentations for a range of internal and external audiences. Elements of these presentations inevitably require behavioural concepts or models to be included. When presenting the behavioural rationale that underpins a proposed intervention idea, the team often highlights the key behavioural heuristic(s) that is being employed. The objective of this work is to interpret the information included in the ‘handbook’ and produce a series of ‘visual metaphors’ and imagery/designs/infographics that represent and help to communicate the meaning of each heuristic and its description.

Execution:
We began with a concepting programme where we explored a number of potential visual styles that we could adopt to develop the new handbook. The style needed to engage audiences in what can be perceived as quite a dry topic area and persuade them to get interested in a programme and a whole new way of working that would only be more fun for internal teams and individuals, but would also likely deliver better outcomes for the important work that WRAP delivers.

When one style had been agreed with the WRAP team, we then developed a series of 52 visual illustrations for individual heuristic behaviours. This involved creative concepting (through description) for each of the 52 individual behaviours, producing a draft illustration for each once the concept idea had been agreed, then moving through a development and finalisation process to ensure each individual illustration did indeed convey the desired heuristic. Where there was any doubt at each step, we would revisit the previous step and amend the idea or execution to ensure each behavioural heuristic was being successfully and independently communicated through the illustration.

When all 52 had been agreed with the WRAP team, we then developed additional associated iconography and assets to use as navigation tools in presentations and reports.

When all elements had been agreed we took all the assets and turned them both into a single heuristics’ handbook containing all the behaviours, but also as a series of presentations slides, templates and tools that could be adapted for individual presentations as relevant across the whole of WRAP that we developed into a series of slides, templates and additional assets to bring the idea to life.

Results:
The work is now actively employed across WRAP driving more effective behaviour and delivery across the organisation.

Project credits:
Partner (Project Management): Richard Morris
Project Manager: Helen MacVicar
Designer/Illustrator: Andy Carolan