M&M's and phones have much more in common than you would think.
In 2012, Google had a serious M&M problem - employees were eating too much of the free M&M's at display in glass jars at the office.
So the internet giant decided to put a bunch of data wizards on the case. In the so called Project M&M's, a special ops force of behavioural science PhDs conducted surveys of snacking patterns, collected data on the proximity of M&M's bins to any given employee, consulted academic papers on psychology, and launched an experiment.
What if the company kept the employees' favourite chocolates hidden in opaque containers and instead prominently displayed dried figs, pistachios and other healthful snacks in glass jars?
The result? In the New York office alone, over the course of seven weeks, Google employees consumed 3.1 million fewer calories. A decrease equal to nine vending machine-size packages of M&M's for each of the office’s 2,000 employees.
But what's now the link exactly between these snacking patterns and our phone behaviour? Check out the video.
