We believe that combining the principles of disciplines like Behavioural Psychology, Social Cognitive Psychology and Behavioural Economics with concepts like Customer Experience Design and Social Engagement Strategy will enhance our ability to analyse, interpret and influence audience behaviour.

1. readingroom.com | info.london@readingroom.com | +44 20 7173 2800
the increasing
influence of
digital psychology
in digital strategy

2. readingroom.com | info.london@readingroom.com | +44 20 7173 2800
We’re making understanding digital
psychology a priority, should you?
For the past twenty years, digital practitioners have been developing and evolving
user strategy methodologies to tackle the continuous challenges presented by the
developing web. Meanwhile, computing and technology have presented Psychologists
with fertile new territory and prompted whole new specialisms like Human Computer
Interaction (HCI) and Cyber Psychology.
Now, at Reading Room, we’re combining these two disciplines to create a more
sophisticated toolkit that will help guide our clients through the next evolution of
digital technology. This is not about applying the principlesof behavioural psychology
or decision theory to meet a particular challenge – that’s business as usual. This is
about forging a new interdisciplinary approach, and developing new methodologies
built on experimental techniques.
So why is this so important?
Put simply, the increasing proliferation of
new channels and devices means established
UX principles require constant re-evaluation,
and the practice of user research requires
ever more careful analysis to tease out
meaningful insights.
On the one hand, human behaviour is evolving
in response to new technologies, platforms and
social contexts. On the other, new technologies
are giving rise to hitherto unknown forms of
human computer interaction that present
untested design challenges For example, in
Sonja Song’s recent work, she has applied
experimental research techniques to understand
the psychological motivations behind sharing,
and the touchstones that can make a post
spread to new audiences. And we’ve recently
been using similar techniques to profile research
respondents and detect sources of bias to
derive more value from statistical data.
So what exactly do we mean by
the term digital psychology?
In truth, it’s a term we have coined to simplify
and help communicate an approach that draws
equally from established digital disciplines and
the behavioural sciences.
We believe that combining the principles
of disciplines like Behavioural Psychology,
Social Cognitive Psychology, and Behavioural
Economics with concepts like Customer
Experience Design and Social Engagement
Strategy will enhance our ability to analyse,
interpret and influence audience behaviour.
This will help us formulate increasingly
sophisticated and effective digital strategies
for our clients.
We’re not alone in this quest, others have
dubbed this emerging field ‘web psychology’
but we think that the application of these
concepts goes well beyond the web, hence our
preference for the term ‘digital psychology’.
Internet enabled technology won’t remain
confined to screen based interactions for long
and we want Digital Psychology to encompass
work on emerging contexts like the Internet
of Things. For example, in-car technology is a
rapidly developing area of interest. Google’s
new driverless car is a case in point, a recent
article published by Eric Jaffe on FastCo design
suggests that the anthropomorphic design that
has attracted criticism, is in fact a deliberate
ploy to make it easier to trust that machine to
drive you about. And as dashboard computers
become the latest battleground between Apple
and Google, how can we design content and
experiences that will both suit the devices and
compliment the driving experience without
causing accidents.
The potential psychological ramifications of
these new contexts are perhaps best summed
up by the film ‘Her’. The central premise of the
movie, directed by Spike Jonze, focuses on
the extreme ways in which our relationships
with technology may evolve. The surprisingly
believable storyline takes the viewer on
a journey as the lonely broken–hearted
protagonist buys and falls in love with a new,
advanced operating system called Samantha.
Now we’re not suggesting that’s going to
happen anytime soon, but it does give us
cause to stop and wonder how much our
understanding of human behaviour may be
challenged in the next few years, and hopefully
explains why we think that advancing digital
thinking through the adoption of Digital
Psychology is the right way to go.
We believe that combining the principles
of disciplines like Behavioural Psychology,
Social Cognitive Psychology, and Behavioural
Economics with concepts like Customer Experience
Design and Social Engagement Strategy willenhance
our ability to analyse, interpret and influence
audience behaviour.

3. readingroom.com | info.london@readingroom.com | +44 20 7173 2800
How digital psychology could be applied?
Audience
profiling
Web
analytics
Sales
analytics
Macro
trends
Market
research
Principlesof
Psychology
User
testing
Persuasive
design
Optimising
UX
Productand
servicedesign
Marketing
andcomms
Audience
testing
CHANGING
BEHAVIOURINFLUENCI
NG
DECISIONS
IMPROVING
REL
ATIONSHIPSIMPROVING
DESIGN
Campaigns(sales,policy,activism)
Digitaltransformation
(internalcultureprocesses)
Developingmoredesirablethings
Developingprocesses
andservicesaroundpeopleRedesigninguserjourneys
Organisingcontent
Choicearchitecture
Messagingandmotivation
You’re likely already considering
some psychological factors in your
everyday communications whether
you recognise it or not. The below is
by no means exhaustive but certainly
gives cause to consider digital
psychology’s place in your business.
Social sharing, how to ensure
your content gets shared?
Focus on both the unconscious and conscious
mind. Beautiful photos, simple messages and
uppercase words should be accompanied by
sophisticated language and turning points in
the messages.
2nd screen and multitasking: how to
ensure your content is being understood?
Acknowledge the limitations of human
cognitive capacity and the limitations of our
focus as users: ensure that interfaces are
designed with cognitive load in mind.
Assisted digital: how to facilitate
digital use between generations?
One’s thinking patterns change depending on
one’s experiences. Focus on custom designed
digital technology in order to accommodate
the needs of digital natives and educate the
digital immigrants.
Donation / Charity: how to
increase pro-social behaviour?
Our motivations are varied: intrinsic – pure
altruism, extrinsic – getting something for it,
and personal-image-led motivation. Consider
emotions such as pride and empathy and take
viewers on an emotional journey.
And lastly: hypothesise, test, refine, repeat
The best way to discover what really influences
behaviour is through agile iterative development
and regularly refining learning to determine with
much greater certainty the causal relationship
between digital communications variables.

4. readingroom.com | info.london@readingroom.com | +44 20 7173 2800
Today’s speakers
Dr Jens Binder
Senior Lecturer of Cyber Psychology at Nottingham Trent University
Jens is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology and a member of the Division of
Psychology in the School of Social Sciences. He is currently involved in the
running of the BSc Psychology course and teaches chiefly on Social psychology,
Cyberpsychology and Research Methods. He also regularly supervises 3rd year
dissertations and Masters projects. Jens’s research interests correspond to his
teaching and focus on social psychology and human-computer interaction.
Jens is primarily interested in social psychology, with particular reference to
social interactions and new technologies. He has investigated interactive settings
on various levels, from intergroup relationships to small group processes,
dyadic friendships and social networks. In particular, he is fascinated by
issues surrounding co-operation and competition; social exchange theories
of relationships; the novelties that internet-based technologies add to these
areas; applications of social psychological theories and models; and the overlap
between social and evolutionary and cognitive psychology. In addition, he takes
a methodological interest in the analysis of personal networks and
other applications of multi-level modelling.
Professor Peter Ayton
Associate Dean Research & Deputy Dean Social Sciences
Peter Ayton is professor of psychology in the department of psychology at
City University London. His research is concerned with human judgement and
decision making. His published papers cover subjects such as overconfidence;
risk perception, risky decision-making, fallacies of human judgment and the
impact of computer support on decision making. He spent last year as a visiting
scholar at the Anderson school of Business, University of California Los Angeles
and has previously been a visiting scholar at Princeton and Carnegie-Mellon
universities in the USA; the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, Germany and INSEAD
in Fontainebleau, France and Singapore. He is a member of the Society for
Judgment and Decision Making and the European Association of Decision
Making. His books include ‘Judgmental Forecasting’, ‘Subjective Probability
and ‘Myths and facts about football: The economics and psychology of the
worlds greatest sport’
Dr. Chryssa Stefanidou
Behavioural Psychologist
Chryssa provides Reading Room with a revolutionary scientific approach in the
Digital Technology research and consulting areas. Introducing the behavioural
sciences disciplines into the digital arena, assures that the audience can be
better understood, the products created have their intended effect, and that
the ultimate goal for a great audience’s experience is accomplished. During her
PhD research, she conducted an extensive and experimental research analysing
how the audience interacts with media. Her work has highlighted and revealed a
strong relationship that exists between humans and media, a relationship that is
shaped and established within a psychological framework.
Ian Huckvale
Head of User Engagement
As Head of User Engagement, Ian champions the user centric design process
at Reading Room, creating cutting edge user experience for our clients. He is
responsible for working with clients to fully understand their business objectives,
audience needs and communication requirements – and to use these to develop
digital strategy that will inform a clients’ web-presence, content and online
services to make them effective and engaging.
He oversees user experience, information architecture, content development and
design solutions across the business, working with designers and developers to
ensure our website solutions are both usable and accessible, in accordance with
best practice and web-standards. He has a deep knowledge of content strategy
and experience in developing both distributed and local content models, content
architecture, web-services, metadata application profiles, classification models
and taxonomy. He is heavily involved in the user research we carry out to better
understand audience needs and behaviours, conducting user workshops, focus
groups, user testing, stakeholder interviews, persona development and various
other research methodologies and techniques.
Simon Nash
Experience and Engagement Expert
Simon is a digital planner and content strategist with 15 years experience
working across a combination of traditional and digital media. He specialises
in multi-channel experience design and content strategy and he champions
these across Reading Room’s global business as well as on the digital
conference circuit. Simon applies a co-ordinated ‘system thinking’ led approach
to digital strategy - he is equally passionate about optimising digital services
and experiences as he is a proponent of digitally-led organisational change
– and has helped major organisations including Arts Council England,
City and Guilds Group, Pernod Ricard, Visit England and London Business
School transform the way they work with digital. His wider interests extend to
the future directions of the web, emerging digital technologies and their impact
on culture and society - and he organises our thriving Digital Conversations
Meetup to explore these subjects with London’s digital community.
Polly Willson
Strategy Director
Since joining Reading Room over 10 years ago, Polly’s work has been focused
on developing relationships and nurturing communications in whatever guise:
apart from the obvious digital immersion, Polly’s real interest lays in how
people communicate and the organic learning and evolution we all have as
individuals within a larger story. Within Reading Room, Polly’s focus is in using
behavioural and organisational insight alongside the creative use of technology
to make digital deliver. As of late, this has centred around delivery of content
and engagement strategy as part of broader digital transformation planning.
Regardless of particular digital trend or innovation, she actively champions the
digital community, nurturing new talent in the industry and across Reading Room.

5. readingroom.com | info.london@readingroom.com | +44 20 7173 2800
LONDON / MANCHESTER / BRISBANE / CANBERRA /
MELBOURNE / SYDNEY / SINGAPORE / HONG KONG