Does better information lead to better choices?

Our choices have effects, but we often don’t get feedback until much later. What if we could get much faster feedback, or even feedforward about small choices we make every day in our life? Would we make different choices?

What if the carbon footprint of groceries was printed on the packaging together with the price? Would you buy the 1 euro carton of milk with a footprint of 1.4 kg of CO2, or the 1,40 euro carton with a 1 kg footprint?

What if on those same cartons of milk you would see how much of the price goes to the farmer? Would you buy the 1 euro milk, of which 35 cents goes to the farmer, or the 1.40 euro milk, of which 50 cents goes to the farmer?

What if in the shower you had a small meter, showing you how much energy every minute of using the hot water costs, together with the price? Would you still stand in the shower as long, or keep the water as hot?

And what if, when you are asked to create a new password, you get instant feedback on how strong your new password is? Not with colors like red, yellow or green, or words like “weak” or “strong”, but with how long it would take to hack your password: minutes, days, months, years or even centuries. Would that make you create a safer password?

I bet it would. Check out this little gem I discovered today on Twitter: a password field just as described, by startup company Column Bank. So simple and brilliant, it’s surprising no one created it before:

We can make better decisions if we have better information. The question is: are companies willing to provide us with that information? And are we as consumers willing to look at it?