Bigger, Better and Bolder. But what does ‘bolder’ really mean for the Cowry Global Summer School 2021?
Earlier this year, we pledged to increase diversity and inclusion in the summer school - all the way from outreach to the application process, the summer schoolers and the speakers. In order to stay accountable to our pledge, we want to be transparent about our process and ensure that we have levelled the playing field.
With applications just around the corner on the 15th of April, this post will give you an in-depth look into our application process and outline some resources our team has put together to equip you with the tools you’ll need for a fair application.
What does the application look like?
The application will be available as a form for you to fill in on our website. It may be useful to work on your application elsewhere and copy-paste your answers into our form once you’re ready. Rest assured, we’ll email you as soon as the application is live!
This year, we’re focusing on having more defined pathways for each summer schooler. There are three specialisations within the summer school - Behavioural Architecture, Behavioural Design and Experimental Design. Each specialisation will have a different application, but there will be elements that are common for everyone. Here are the steps involved:
- You’ll have to pick ONE specialisation you’re most interested in. We recommend picking the one that best showcases your expertise.
- Based on your chosen specialisation, you’ll be directed to your respective application.
- You’ll be given a set of questions tackling different challenges. Some of them will be common to all the specialisations and some of them will be specific to your specialisation. Either way, you’ll be asked to come up with behavioural solutions to the problems.
You may take as long as you need to answer, as long as you submit your application before the 6th of May.
What advice do you have for applicants?
We’ve got a lot of questions asking for guidance to help with the application process, so we curated a list of resources for each specialisation. This list is not exhaustive, binding or mandatory to read, but it serves as a starting point to guide your thinking. It also ensures that everyone is treated fairly and equally and has access to all the information before they begin their application. Please read over the section of your chosen specialisation.
Read this section if you’re a budding Behavioural Architect
For Behavioural Architects, it’s important to show us that you think in a clear, systematic and coherent manner. While there are many different behavioural interventions out there for each behaviour you may be trying to change, you must be able to justify to us why you chose a particular intervention over another.
To help you with this, here are some behavioural frameworks that can help organise your thinking during the application.
Read this section if you’re a budding Behavioural Designer
At Cowry, Behavioural Designers combine principles of User Experience Design with perceptual psychology to create visually appealing and behaviourally sound interventions. So, as a Behavioural Designer, we’re looking for people who can not only understand behaviour, but can also creatively design experiences to drive those behaviours. Good design must not only be visually pleasing, but must also drive the user to engage in the desired behaviour. It’s not about how fancy your design tools are. Whether you use Powerpoint or Photoshop, we’re looking for how your design influences behaviour in the desired way.
In order for you to understand how that looks, here are some resources you can use to draw inspiration from.
Read this section if you’re a budding Experimental Designer
Experimental Designers use their knowledge of statistics to design and test experiments. While experimental design in an academic setting involves tight conditions and long-term measures, in the business world, it looks slightly different. Due to client restrictions, testing in the real world is often much faster and data much messier. So, experimental designers must not only be able to showcase their knowledge of statistics, but must also show that they can adapt their skills to the real world in order to keep up with clients.
Here are some resources to help you understand how to apply your experimental design skills in a business environment.
What’s next?
- Applications go live on April 15th! Look out for a link to them in your inbox
- Feel free to work your way through the resources in the meantime!
- We'll also be sharing three advice videos to summer school applicants. Avoid missing out on those by following our LinkedIn page!
Best of luck!
While we love to chat about applying behavioural science, please note that booking in meetings with Jez is only for business purposes. If you do have a business query and would like to discuss how Cowry can help you, we're always happy to chat. However, for all other purposes, please drop an email to theteam@cowryconsulting.com and we'll get back to you!