by Naohiro MatsumuraShikake

RECENTLY PUBLISHED

SHIKAKE The Japanese Art of Shaping Behavior Through Design DR NAOHIRO MATSUMURA

Whether you work in marketing, product design, or merely want to delight and inspire your customers and colleagues, Matsumura’s powerful, inclusive method will show you how to create sustainable behavioral change – Nir Eyal, bestselling author of HOOKED and INDISTRACTABLE

An entirely fresh way of thinking, living and connecting with others.

The field of ‘shikakeology’ (pronounced shē-kä-kā-ology), as Osaka University professor of economics Naohiro Matsumura defines it, is the study of ‘shikakes’: things that influence our behaviour, not through direct requests or demands but rather through mindful, pleasant designs that invite action. It is a field that has the potential to shape our personal habits, boost professional success and even tackle social issues such as public health and civic engagement.

Shikakes are often simple: a small hollow pipe placed at eye level to direct attention; a urinal with a bullseye to direct another sort of attention; a piano staircase to encourage exercise; a miniature Shinto gate placed on the floor in a high-traffic hallway to discourage littering. Yet this simplicity can be extremely powerful, engaging our curiosity in ways that directly stated guidelines, or brute-force application of willpower, never will.

Dr Matsumura has devoted his career to the pursuit of shikake solutions for all sorts of problems in the public sphere. In this book, he does much more than simply show readers charming examples of existing shikakes: he gives us specific, concrete tools to invent our own shikakes to forge creative solutions to almost any problems we face.

DR NAOHIRO MATSUMURA is a professor in the graduate school of economics at Osaka University, specializing in behavioural economics. He received a BS and MS in engineering science from Osaka University, and a PhD in engineering from the University of Tokyo, where he studied artificial intelligence. In 2015, he advocated for a new research field called ‘shikakeology’. He wrote a paper with his Stanford University colleagues Renate Fruchter and Larry Leifer that laid out the principles of shikakeology and formally defined a shikake as ‘an embodied trigger for behaviour change to solve social or personal problems’. In 2017, Dr Matsumura was awarded the Osaka University Award in recognition of his pioneering contributions to shikakeology and data-science education. He has since collected and conceived of hundreds of shikakes in his pursuit to understand the myriad mechanisms that make them work.

Agent: Jeff Shreve

Publisher: Liveright (Norton) Publication: 3 November 2020 Length: 192 pages

All rights available excluding World English Language (Liveright), China (China Renmin University Press), Japan (Toyo Keizai), Korea (WisdomHouse Publishing Co.), Taiwan (Yuan-Liou Publishing Co.)