Welcome to the Behavioral Design Podcast. I am Samuel Salzer and I'm here with my Co host Eileen Holsworth. Hi, Ling. Hey, Sam, great to chat. Yes, Sam, I have a question for you. Are you ready? I'm ready. I'm curious, what sports did you play in your younger years? Oh, so I played mainly football and thing is when we call floorball, actually, what do you think floorball is? What do you think you do? Why? Before that, I just need to clarify. By football you mean soccer?
OK, OK. And then floorball. I'm guessing floorball is where you sit on the floor and you throw a ball back and forth. You could think you would have a lot of like something to do with floor. Mainly it's called floor ball because in Sweden we play ice hockey and if you don't like to skate, you can still play kind of a version of this with instead of a pocket of a ball, and it's called floor ball because you're running on on a floor and not skating on ice, so.
OK, but you still have the the hockey stick and you run around. It's smacking the ball around, it's more of a plastic stick and so on. So you could you can easily see that this is a little bit less of a cooler sport than ice hockey. But combined with these two sports, I also will admit that my dad really wanted me to become kind of someone following in his footsteps of doing Aikido. So he has, I don't know, 4th, 5th black belt in in Aikido and has kind of been his his life
passion. And I very much failed to to live up to that dream. So I think I got like did you try and fail? I think I got like a yeah, yellow or orange belt or something. So I was a protege, but I never became, you know, much more than that. Yeah, What a, what a disappointment. Yes. I'm I'm sure, I'm sure that you've excelled in other areas though. But according to my dad, probably not the most important one. I never never really feel, but he always, he always says that
was so good. He was so good when he was you know seven years old he was, he could have been so great. Yeah, so that's that's my, that's my sport, sport background. Well, I asked because our guest today, Steph Habib, is a surprise. I'm I'm sure that our guest did not know this is actually a four time NCAA champion in volleyball. So she actually did excel at her sport way back then. Yes, very impressive. Super impressive.
Super impressive. Have you, have you actually played volleyball in some capacity? Have you tried that? The extent of my experience with volleyball was in high school I tried out for the volleyball team and I made it, not having any experience playing volleyball. And so I I decided to learn how to play volleyball. Once I had joined the team, I discovered that I didn't really like, I didn't really like diving onto the floor. It turns out that was not
really, not really my thing. Well, I do like that kind of general strategy of kind of like pitching something before you, you know, know how to do it and then, yeah. Yeah. Like, like I didn't even watch any videos. Or like, I just showed up and I was like, yeah, I can hit balls. I did. So I played. I actually played basketball and was, you know, for for a high schooler, I think pretty good. I was definitely very passionate about it. And softball, I was kind of a sporty, A sporty kid.
But yeah, his volleyball was never, never really my strength. Yeah, fair enough. Well, our, our guests as mentioned has that strength, strength, but also behavioral science. Do you want to introduce? Yes. That's right. Yeah. We're not here here today to talk to her about volleyball. But, yeah, let me let me tell you a little bit about her. She's really, I think, mostly these days known for leading behavioral science at tandem diabetes. So very impressive.
And also for having amazingly pink hair, which is which you'll notice in in any photo that you see of her. And actually, I don't know if I'm allowed to disclose this, this top secret, but I learned from her that her this is actually a pink conditioner. So it's not even You don't even have to have pink hair every day. You can just have pink hair when you want to have pink hair. I don't even know how that works I I think.
I'm very uneducated in terms of. Oh, well, I wonder why that could be. I mean, you do have some facial hair. You could have a pink beard for the days that you want. All right, so back to Steph. She's been in the diabetes space for quite a while. She's been in tandem for, I think, 6 years. Before that. She had also worked in in diabetes. She made some programs for diabetes, as well as as a range of health behavior research and strategy. So she's really.
Really been in this space for a while and yeah, knows her stuff. Yeah, we had a really good discussion with her on so many interesting topics. We obviously eve into the work she's been doing at Tandem to design for diabetic patients and supporting them working at intersection of behavioural Science and Human Computer Interactions.
We also went over what the Steph calls the behavioural science branding problem and you might be able to guess what it is, but I think she has some interesting takes on that and we also gave Steph a very interesting product to deep dive on. Obviously this is some we've explored various deep dives and we asked her to use people science to improve the basketball game and you learn more about why we chose that in this episode. So with without further ado, let's jump in to. The episode,
I'm very happy to say. Welcome Steph to the Behavioral Sign Podcast. How are you? I am so good. It's very early where I am right now. What's so special for me about this is that the three of us are located in very different parts of the world. And so I'm really happy we were able to make this happen. Thank you for having me. Yeah, it's so exciting and you know we like to really jump in
feet first. And I think the first question that we should ask is something that I'm sure you have some thoughts on, which is when looking at behavioral design in the wild, is there one example of either really well done applied by your science or really poorly done applied by your science that you kind of think about as a go to example of either a maybe some form of aspirational or inspirational or a, you know, what do you call it, something to avoid,
something to learn from. Yeah. Sure. Thanks for that question. Well, I'll start with an example of good behavioral design. And and I can't not do this because I have an insane bias as a behavioral scientist who has been for the last six years working at Tandem Diabetes Care, which is the company where I
work. We're headquartered here in San Diego and we make diabetes technologies for people who take insulin for their diabetes, so. But the reason I say that these are excellent examples of behaviour design is because these medical devices, even though they are regulated by the FDA and other international regulatory bodies, we have still managed to find a way to iterate quickly and enhance in an
ongoing fashion. The way people get to experience these product is that it's automatically delivered through some form of pump and that I'm sure changes things from I guess from behaviour standpoint if we want to make it easy, right? Right, so there are a few things that from a behaviour design perspective, our technology systems do. For somebody who needs to take insulin for their diabetes, the 1st is in using our system. You do not need a needle or a
syringe for any reason, right? The insulin pump to your point. Automatically delivers the insulin to your body that it needs. And so you don't have to inject yourself, you don't have to administer a needle. The second thing that is exciting about what our systems do is their algorithm driven. And so the math behind how our devices deliver insulin is fully automated. That math is able to predict what will happen. With your blood sugar looking 30 minutes into the future.
And it uses very beautifully complicated predictive math to figure out automatically, without very little requirement from the human, how much insulin, when to deliver the insulin, the rate at which it needs to be delivering the insulin. So it's completely automated insulin delivery. So from a behavior design perspective, first, no needles, let's be honest, Nobody wants to
give themselves an injection. Nobody wants to have to prick their finger and check their blood sugars on a regular basis. You don't need to do any of that with our system. And secondly, you don't really have to do any math. You don't have to figure out the amount of carbohydrate in your food. There's so much that these technology systems do to alleviate the burden that somebody who's managing diabetes. Has to experience on a day-to-day.
So to me that I feel like that automation is really kind of the beauty of this use case and and like like it's really sort of lends itself to lightening the disease burden and making it easier for people to to manage their diabetes. I'm wondering if if you think there's a a potential in other areas of health to achieve a similar. Effect. Without having this, you know the device implanted and inside you.
Like how how can you have you thought about how you know if there's a a metaphor or you know, a a real example of achieving the same kind of thing in other other health domains? So I think the healthcare industry, to your question, is ripe for automation design. Absolutely. And if any one of us, especially here in the United States, Samuel, your experiences might be different since you. Benefit from living in in the EU, but in the United States?
If any one of us who lives here thinks about what are the things that pain us or create burden either managing our own health or frankly navigating the healthcare system, I have no doubt we could come up with a really ripe list off the top of my head, one of the things that I've peripherally. Thought about, touched on, studied, written about over the course of my career is what in healthcare we call price
transparency. Because there's an economic component of how we have to do healthcare in the United States, and it's absolutely, incredibly impossible to know how to navigate it, to know how to manage it, to even know what it is, frankly. And so that burden is so insanely real for all of us living in the United States. On any given day, I don't know that I could tell you how much of my money doing my Healthcare is going to cost.
And I would love for people who have passion in automation and behavior design to spend as much or any energy on that. Talk about alleviating burden for literally every single person who lives in the United States. Yeah, that's huge. All right. I want to jump, I want to jump into our our product for today, we we've chosen a product especially for you and we're hoping you can use the, what you know of all all your chops from your background and experiences to help us improve the
basketball game. Yeah, I was. Really delighted when I heard you guys wanted me to talk about basketball. I've actually never played basketball myself. I grew up a volleyball player at university. I played volleyball, which was some of the most fun I've ever had in my life, and I know that all my friends who have played and do play basketball will share a similar sentiment. It's such a fun game.
My husband is an avid basketball player and fan, and I have several friends who also were collegiate basketball players who even played professionally for a while. And one of my dearest friends from back home has worked for the NBA for 25 years. And so I get to experience basketball sort of through them Also in the past couple of years, especially like I'm sure many of you here in the USI have become an avid collegiate basketball fan.
I think that what the men and women who play university basketball in the United States have done. To create excitement and fandom for the sport. Our March Madness tournament is some of the most enjoyable and entertaining and exciting sport I've ever watched. So I was excited when I was invited to talk about basketball as a product because I feel like this year in my life and and I'm 47 years old. I have now become officially a a collegiate basketball fan. I now pay attention.
I read the stories all the time. I watch it, even if it's not the March Madness championship, you know, basketball tournament. And so I think the invitation from you two is, you know, what about the sport of basketball? Might you redesign or what parts of the game are up for change? Yeah, including the, you know, the viewer experience for example. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Thanks for that. Yeah. So, so I did what I think any good behavioral scientist might do. And since I first learned that you all were interested in hearing from me about basketball, my first reaction was like, I don't actually know that much about basketball. And so I did what any good behavioral scientist might do, and I went and spoke with people who do know a lot about basketball. So that I so that. Is some research? Yes. I did a lot of research so that
I could learn from them. So as I mentioned, I the first person I talked to was my husband who has been playing and, you know, enjoying watching basketball his entire life. And this might tickle you. It tickled me. I was actually really surprised. I said to him, you know, if you could change something about the game or if you could redesign anything, what would it be? And he said, nothing. The sport is perfect. And I said sounds like a very hardcore fan. Really, there's nothing you
would change. I'm sure if you really thought about it, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So then of course, I talked with a couple of my friends who have played or continue to play. And as I mentioned, I have this one friend who works and has for the last 25 years worked for the NBA. But through all of those conversations and really just thinking about it, I have come
up with a couple of ideas. Again, being somebody who has never played it and doesn't have first hand experience, which again all of us who do behavioral design, you're always working on things that maybe you don't know anything about or that you haven't experienced. Constantly. Right. So I want to start with women's
basketball and. I think something fascinating is happening here in the United States, literally as we speak, which is the introduction of what we call the nil, which is the mechanism that enables collegiate athletes now to get paid to earn money from sponsors and other types of organizations. What that means here in 2023 is a player like Caitlin Clark or Angel Reese. The people I just mentioned have a greater earning potential as collegiate athlete. Than they do as professional
athletes. And I think those economic influences have significant direct impact on how not only they and other players experience basketball, but frankly how fans get to experience basketball. I watched one of these women do an interview just recently, maybe two months ago, right at the end of the tournament. And everybody just assumed she was going to go pro, right? She just won the national championship as a college player. The next step is to go pro.
And she said I'm not going pro this year. I'm going to earn about $1,000,000. There is none of that type of money waiting for me as a professional basketball player and that, that. Is she Is she flunking her classes just to make? More money. She still right? Of course. She still has eligibility to remain at the university and there are other reasons.
It's not just the money. She loves to play for her coach at the university and she would like the opportunity to win another championship and be back-to-back champions. So I don't want to pretend it's only the money. But I think when you think about how the sport is designed and we're we're constantly thinking about micro and macro influences, that's a very real influence for the decisions that athletes are going to make. So that's one.
Speaking of women in sport, I think something that could be interesting across the men's basketball game, and not just in college but at the professional level, is to position more women head coaches. And the reason I think that that would be really interesting is because women do strategy and tactics differently often than men do. Neither is better nor worse, just different.
And I think instituting more women as head coaches in charge of either men's professional basketball teams or men's collegiate basketball teams could make the game very interesting. Not just for viewers, but for the people playing it. So those are the two like big things that I would get really excited to see what could happen. Interesting. And what is the I'm actually, you know very much a non follower of basketball including collegiate.
But, but what is the, you know, reason or difference in coaching style or I guess in many contexts? I assume that you know, diversity in general is is really good. Like it provides often times different perspectives and new ways of thinking, new ways of doing things and so on. So it seems to be really reasonable that perspective. Is there something particular that you expect to come out of this type of order?
Yes. I actually expect the performance of the athletes and the teams to elevate, right? So if we talk about why I think this matters. And I don't want to pretend I don't know anything about this. I actually did my master's degree in sport and performance psychology, and my master's thesis was on men's and women's attitudes towards male versus female coaches.
So I have studied this across my career and when I was doing my do it, when I was yeah, when I was doing my master's degree to pay for my degree, I had a job and my job was as the assistant. Coach to the men's volleyball team. So I've also lived this myself a little bit. And I think the opportunities to diversify the head coaching staff by instituting more women in those positions stands to elevate their performance of not only the athletes but the Games
in general. Because when you introduce either new ways of thinking or when you can figure out how to decrease inhibition or if you can find new ways to socialize, how the athletes earn from, learn from each other. These are just a few things off the top of my head. You actually see collective performance increased. Now, somebody like Steph Curry or LeBron James, some people might say, I don't know, that their performance can get much
better, right? Like, these are superhuman basketball players and I would like to offer. I actually think they could get even better as basketball players. Awesome. Let's say that you could design an experiment around this topic of the the gender of top coaches and the coaching staff. What? How how would you approach that and and what would you be most interested in testing if you had all the resources in the world and you could do anything right?
The experiment would probably look something like spending about a month's time across the calendar, just like one month, and rotating coaches across teams, right? So the teams remain intact, but we position different coaches in charge of different teams across time to see if we notice any difference. I don't think it would require an entire basketball season, which is like six or seven months long. We don't need to do it across an
entire season. I think that for both the coaches and the players, if we could spend just a few few weeks changing out the coaches, we would see some very interesting things and certainly the self-reports would be incredibly rich. That's awesome. Yeah. I wonder how much the effect would be just like the players preferences versus their actual performance. And you know, which one would win out or if they would both improve. Maybe one more than the other. Yeah, yeah.
Or it becomes, we had a discussion recently on the podcast with Paul Bloom talking about how parenting is maybe, you know, not as I guess impactful as maybe we want to believe sometimes. And maybe that could be a kind of a a another result from that kind of, you know, research where you kind of like, well, actually coaches. Coaches don't matter as much as you think. Yeah, absolutely. We can learn that too.
All right. So. One topic that'll be really interesting to hear your thoughts on is I guess I I see it as AS2 sided the same coin when it comes to really getting applied Barel science to be successful. And I guess one part of it is kind of call it the scaling problem, like how do we scale bare science and business, but part of that is also kind of the branding problem like how do we brand Barel science in business so. I don't know where we'll start.
We can start in many sure. But but from your perspective, you know, how do you think about that challenge? I love this question. There is no doubt that behavioral science as a field has a major brand problem, major and that's OK, right. It's just as long as we all kind of recognize that. And the way I would challenge any one of us to really understand that is if you were to go to any person in business and say I'm a behavioral scientist or, hey, you know, what do you think a behavioral
scientist does? You would get so many different answers to that question. There would be no coherence whatsoever, right. And a brand is intact when people are using the same words and phrases to describe something, right. So our brand is not intact, right. So let's just start there.
I would like to share the story of how I ended up working full time at this company that I'm currently at Tandem Diabetes Care and I think it will share my perspective on, on what you're asking Samuel as a behavioral scientist and somebody specializing in research and and behavior design, the majority of my experience in diabetes prior to coming to this company was in pre diabetes and type 2
diabetes. And that's because pre diabetes and type 2 diabetes have the opportunity to be reversed. We can reverse the trajectory of diabetes for somebody who either is pre diabetic or has type 2 diabetes. And so that's ripe for interventions. That's a really opportunistic way to work for somebody who specializes in, you know, behavior change and intervention design. I learned about this company
through my family At the time. I had a niece who was diagnosed with type one diabetes when she was three years old. Now, if you live with type one diabetes, that means you need regular injections of insulin all day, every day. You essentially do not have any pancreatic function. And so that's why you need insulin, right, as medicine.
And the the amount of insulin that you dose and the rate at which you dose it and other metabolic activities like eating or exercising or sleeping, all of these things come into play. And if not used or if mishandled, if the insulin is mishandled, the scary thing is you could die, right? I mean, so we are literally talking about life and death.
And so I was really excited that a company like this would give me a chance to spend more time practicing human computer interaction more so than you know, programmatic intervention design. And so I found out this was back in 2017. I found out that this company was looking to hire more human factors and UX researchers which of course is a part of our skill set as behavioural scientists.
So at the time I was a freelancer and I called, called the company and I said, hey, I saw that you are looking to hire some human factors researchers. And I'd like to tell you a little bit about myself. And I spoke with one of the women who does our talent acquisition and we talked for about 15 minutes and she said it sounds like you're a little bit more than what we really need right now.
But what was serendipitous was a couple weeks from then was going to be the American Diabetes Association conference here in San Diego, where I was living at the time and where where this company is located. And I was going to attend the American Diabetes Association conference as part of my work anyway. So she said to me, she said, since you're going to go to that conference, do me a favor, go to the booth, the tandem diabetes care booth at the conference.
Walk over there, Look for the tallest, baldest man standing at the booth. That is Brian. He's our Chief Commercial Officer. Just go talk to him. So I did. I went to the conference. I went to the booth. I found the tallest, baldest man. He's 6 foot 8, so he's properly tall. And I walked right up to him and I said hi, My name is Steph and I would love to tell you why tandem diabetes care could use a behavioral scientist. And he said, I don't know what that is. It sounds expensive.
Why don't you sit down and tell me your story? So I did. And he said, yeah, that sounds like quite a lot and I don't know that we need that much right now, but let's stay in touch. And what ended up happening over the next week or two and why I eventually got a phone call from him is because both the Human Factors team that was working here at the time and the people who were who were doing market research for the company left
for other jobs. And so there was sort of this operational gap where both the market research needs of the company and the UX research and human factors research of the company, those things were not being tended to. So he called me and he said hey, can you do human factors research? I said sure, hey, can you do market research? Absolutely. Great. I need you to come in and work with us for a while. And that's how I first started
working here at the company. And the reason that that story I think matters is because as much as we all want to get hired full time right out of the gate for a really exciting full time behavioral sciences job, pure behavioral sciences job, sometimes what we need to do first and foremost is meet the
immediate needs of the business. And at that time when I had the opportunity to come work here, what the company was asking for overtly what they said they needed was we need somebody to run human factors research and do those studies and we need somebody to do our market research because we're trying to make some, you know, strategic and product decisions. And so even though that is only a slice of what I or any of us do, right, it mattered to the company.
And so I came in and I did it. And during those couple of months I had the most fun. The people who work at this company are just what I like to call filet mignon people. They're the best of the best. I fell in love with them. I fell, Hopefully you're a carnivore if you're a vegetarian. That might not be a very nice analogy, just a company with an amazing mission. It's a mission, a mission driven company to change the life of
people who live with diabetes. And so a couple months later, Brian, the Chief Commercial Officer who who is my boss, we started talking and he said what do you think about working here full time? And I said, can I build out a behavioral sciences team? And he said, Yep, just come work here. So over the last six years, I've been working on building up and scaling A behavioral sciences unit inside of tandem diabetes care.
And over the course of that entire six years, I have always worked hard to find that balance between meeting the immediate needs of the business and identifying and filling what I call opportunity gaps to apply behavioral sciences to show the value of behavioral sciences to the company and to the leadership and. Can I actually rewind a little bit to that time you met Brian I believe at the conference, Brian, sorry, when you met Brian at the conference and.
You kind of sat him down to say like, This is why, you know you need behavioral science. Was there something you said there that you would have changed through this experience? Like what I'm just interested to hear a little bit of because we all face that, like trying to always sell behavioral science and do so persuasively. And it seems like, you know really what one of the major takeaways is, is what you're saying is that we need to speak the language of the business of
the. What, what they need like they needed micro research, they needed some other things and and so speaking to that, was there something that you learn from from that experience or like would you change the way you were spoken to him the first time if you did it again now? Right. So I think the only way I can answer that question because my memory is terrible and we're talking, you know, over six years now.
But the way I would answer that question is I would have in that conversation faster used the words that he was using instead of the words that I wanted to use to talk about my expertise and the value that I could bring to the company. And I think all of us need to decide for ourselves, as professionals, how do you feel if somebody says, oh, you do market research, or how do you feel if somebody says, oh, you
do customer insights, right. The vernacular that industry uses tends to represent a part of what we do, but it's not the whole package, right? And this is where I say we have a brand problem. What words and phrases might the field of behavioral sciences use that become as commonplace and as well understood as market research, as human factors research, as customer insights? And I think that's the opportunity facing us right now, yeah.
That that's really interesting and and I see, I see this. On the one hand you you feel the need to teach other people about what you do and like you know convert them to you know to the good side and you know here's how we need to do experiments in order to learn and iterate and and really help help meet our users where they are and so on. But then on the other hand, you need people to to easily understand what you're saying.
And so having that more common language might might be beneficial, but I think that that actually presents a a new challenge for the branding problem.
If we're taking the words that other people, you know, human factors and market research and so on that other people are familiar with and kind of blending into those roles, how then do we differentiate ourselves, right, Like like so one of the tag lines that you'll hear me and every person on my team use to describe what we do at Tandem diabetes Care is we like to say we advocate for the humans using our machines.
And so that works inside of tandem because at the end of the day we make medical device systems and in its purest form that is human computer interaction, which is most of our society today, Let's just be honest, right? But the constant campaign to pursue human first versus technology first, design and development, This is why we have just simplified it and said we're here to advocate for the
humans. And every time I'm in a meeting sitting right next to our head engineer, I feel like we've done our job right. And so that's a very practical lesson that I would share with anybody is when you're in your work meetings, when you're doing your work, who are you collaborating with? If, as a behavioral scientist you're sitting with and collaborating with an engineer or a business strategist or a product owner or a UX designer,
you're winning, right? Because you are there to advocate for the humans that are ultimately going to use whatever it is they're building and making. I don't know if that's helpful. But sometimes the way that I find calm in my brain when I get really overwhelmed by the branding problem we face is to just find the simplest words and phrases to speak about what we do. Yeah. No, I think that's great. All right. Now we have a fun surprise for
you. We're we're going to, I know we're going to jump into our speed rounds and I'll, I'll tell you a little bit about how it goes. This is a little game that we've created called Would it replicate? And we're going to share some hypothetical research findings. These are, you know, just random things. Not that random things that Sam and I have made-up. And ask you to tell us whether or not you think it would replicate, and you know it.
It's sort of meant to be a just a fun thought experiment to give us a sentence or two about your thoughts around around that particular finding. Let's do it first. One, consumers with greater trust in AI have better healthcare outcomes than skeptics. False or no, it it had, it would not replicate because there are so many people out there who don't even consciously realize know about care about AI or automation, OK.
What about behavioral scientists who were former athletes are more likely to use competition as a motivational strategy in their intervention? Yes, that would replicate because at the end of the day, all humans are biased and whether we realize it or not, we're probably doing those types of things in our work. Awesome customer churn can primarily be attributed to users failing to form habits with the service. Whoa, that's a hard one. I want to say yes because I believe in the power of
behavior, design and habits. But I'm going to say no because the service or product was too shitty. It wasn't good enough. Right, OK. This is an easy one, or we'll see. Applied practitioners with a PhD performs better at predicting behavioral outcomes than practitioners without one. All else being equal, no, absolutely not. That would not replicate. I think education is powerful, but there's a lot of ways to get an education. You don't need a PhD. How about?
People with unconventional hair colors, like pink, perform better at creative tasks. These are just mildly. Directed behaviors. This is a big yes. We could replicate that all day long. In fact, I heard one of our executives here at Tandem the other day say something like I need more pink in my life. And she was talking about me and my team. So we are, we are on her mind for doing things over and over and over. Yeah, that's amazing.
OK. Companies with the Chief Behavioral Officer perform better. As measured by stock price performance. I don't care, yes. But I don't care if it's called Chief Behavioral Officer or Chief Experience Officer or Chief Whatever. I'm here to make sure that we advocate for the humans as strongly as we advocate for everything else. So yes, it would replicate. But I don't care about the title, and I don't think anybody else should care about the title either.
Yeah. And you wrote in 2017 a article on why digital health meet chief payroll officers. Yep. And so it sounds like your your stance remains the same. Like if we need these roles. Yes, yes, yes. And I don't care what we call it, All right? Last one. You're gonna like this. Volleyball players are more likely to spike their drinks. Their own drinks or their own drinks or somebody else's drinks?
You interpret it as you will. Volleyball players are absolutely that would replicate in the real world. Volleyball players are absolutely more likely to spike their own drinks. Their own drinks, yes. I I feel like I got associates spike with blah blah blah What is a spike? What? What does that mean? So in the sport of volleyball, when you spike the ball, it's when you hit it very hard to the other side of the net to try to offensively score a point. Right. Sam, have you heard of
volleyball? I'm surprised by volleyball. In Sweden, you know we. We have limited access to any type of sand. Or no, the Philippines. We don't call it smashing the ball, but maybe that's just same thing. Smashing. Spiking. Yeah, Yep. OK. But different. Different than serving the ball. So that's very important. Since we're talking about drinks. Spiking and smashing the ball is very different than serving the ball, right. Just like. I love that you extended the metaphor.
I did not see that coming. Amazing. Should we jump to our last question? Wrap it up? I think it's time. Yeah, Awesome. Yeah, please, Steph, what is your most controversial opinion in behavioral science? I mean, we've been. Talking about this already, and I'm not the only one that says this, but my goodness do we have a big brand problem and. You know, because enough of us are saying that I don't think it's controversial anymore. It is controversial for the implications of our field of
practice. And so, just to stick with whether or not it could be controversial, I would like to invite all of us to really think critically about would it help or hurt our field. If we were OK with being what I call title agnostic, right. So this goes back to what we were just talking about. Do companies perform better in the stock market with a Chief Behavioral Officer? I feel very strongly, yes. But I don't think that person needs to be titled Chief Behavioral Officer.
That doesn't help the brand though. That's the problem. So it's a, it's a, it's a it's a conundrum. It really is, it's a it's a heck of APAR opportunity. You know, I'm, I'm 47, almost 48. So I've been doing this for a very long time and I want very much for the field of behavioral sciences to be recognized for what it is, how important it is, how instrumental it is. And at the same time, I think.
We could as a field, you know, lock arms with customer experience, user experience design, a couple of other social science fields and it would work really well. So that's where I'm. That's where I constantly have that dialogue around like the purest in me about behavioral science versus well, if we blend, I think it could work just as well. Yeah. If then there's the risk of does it just disappear. Right. Do do people. Right the absolutely I'm afraid of. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
That's that's a real thing. You know, if if behavioral sciences all of a sudden, just like, aren't we all talking about that at one point, do people even do it right anymore? Right. Yeah. Well, Steph, this was lovely. Thank you so much for joining us. It it's been a blast. I had so much fun. I feel like I could talk to you guys for hours. Thank you so much. Time to wrap. Up another episode of the Behavioral Design Podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show.
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