Commonly asked questions

Q: Tell me more about the science?

A: The science behind the product incorporates scientific theories and frameworks from a number of different areas. In particular:

• Learning science (from cognitive psychology, neuroscience & behaviour science) i.e., the science of how people learn: Core science-backed learning principles baked into the product include spaced repetition, personalisation, and workflow integrated training
• Behaviour science i.e., the science of how people change: Fogg's behaviour change model is leveraged, which describes how people need motivation, ability - and triggers (or prompts) to change i.e., opportunity put learning into action.
• Psychological science i.e., the science of people and individual differences: Science on values, motivation, attitudes, preferences, and traits is also baked into the product

Q: What scientific theories are you drawing on?

A: Several! ****However, two of the most prominent psychological theories right now are cognitive dissonance theory and self-determination theory. This is key to creating the desire and motivation to change - which traditional corporate learning solutions often lack.

• Cognitive Dissonance Theory
  • What it says: People experience psychological discomfort (dissonance) when they hold two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values, or when their behaviour is inconsistent with their beliefs. Our desire for consistency means we will generally strive to maintain harmony between thoughts, beliefs and actions.
  • How it’s relevant: Improving users’ self-awareness by providing them with insights from assessment, feedback from others, and / or encouraging reflection on current practices and improvement opportunities can help create a desire for change.
• Self-Determination Theory
  • What it says: Individuals have 3 innate psychological needs: autonomy (the need for personal control and choice), competence (the need to feel capable and effective), and relatedness (the need for social connection and belonging). These needs underlie intrinsic motivation and when they are satisfied people function and feel better.
  • How it’s relevant: We help drive motivation to use Humani by designing relevant features into the product. For example, the ability to set personal communication goals can support autonomy, the ability to track progress can support competence, and using the product to facilitate enhanced connections with others can boost relatedness.

Q: How you are assessing people in the product?

A: We are currently seeking to understand people through a proprietary tool that is predominantly based on working style preferences. This is designed to capture common elements of working life from approach to work, approach to colleagues, preferred working environment, etc.

A central pillar of our philosophy is that inclusivity requires learning to not only accept and accommodate differences but to embrace and celebrate them.

We have found traditional approaches to assessment to be more divisive than uniting with how they are operationalised and many people feel over-surveyed and underwhelmed.

We want to win back trust with the user, hence starting with preferences which have high face validity and little 'magic' happening with opaque scoring algorithms behind the scenes.

We want people to feel safe sharing their profiles and as such feel transparency around measurement is key to this.

Our tool also includes a behavioural measure to capture communication style (improving communication is a central focus of the product from the beginning). This is designed on the classic communication model that incorporates 2 dimensions (assertiveness and affiliation). There is no consensus around any particular communication model in the literature, but all models capture these critical dimensions and they have been shown to hold up in multiple factor analyses as well as tie into personality (deVries et al. 2013).

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