Case Studies

Hear about the personal experiences of our industry partners and students

"Great collaboration between academic partner and industry", David Beattie, Ultrleap 2021

“"Both projects were run by exceptionally bright students", Keith O'Brien, Simply Business, 2020

David Beattie, Ultraleap, 2021
The student produced high quality work. It was great to collaborate with esteemed researchers from UCL. We had the expected level of access to UCL academic Faculty. We felt that the project was worthwhile and value for money. The benefits were: great collaboration between academic partner and industry; talented and enthusiastic student; ability to complete important work that could not be conducted due to other internal constraints; fostering and transfer of knowledge between partners. We would offer another project. Communication was easy and regular. Meetings were to the point. Progress was steady and noticeable. Outcomes were excellent.
Really enjoyed working on this collaboration with the student and Prof. Patrick Haggard

Keith O'Brien, Simply Business, 2020
"We completed two projects with UCL's students. One, how to improve feedback-seeking behaviour; and two, understanding how insurance purchase behaviour leads to greater risk-taking and thus claims. Both projects were run by exceptionally bright students, who navigated moving to working remotely (due to COVID19) and often across countries/time-zones with good diligence and communication. The students were highly motivated, self-directed (where expected), and also enjoyable to work with.
Both the process and the outputs were informative for how we improve our business for both employees and customers; and we are proud that work was recognised in Distinctions for the students that engaged with us...I'd recommend any student or organisation to get involved..."

Mike Hughes, Ogilvy, 2020

"Naomi has been great. She has unearthed strong insights into recycling behaviours, and brought some fresh, novel executions for her experiment design. Naomi’s proposed testing is a novel way of testing behaviours within a digital environment, and we can’t wait to see the results."

Jordan Buck, Ogilvy, 2020
"I’ve found Charlotte to be a brilliant student and collaborator. She has brought to the table a great many insightful suggestions, and I’m confident that the end result is going to benefit massively from her hard work and dedication at understanding the literature and nailing down the best route to take the research in."

What our students say

It also got me in the loop about an available job, which I interviewed for and ended up getting!" Charlotte Walton, 2020“

2021

Former student, 2021: Found the BIX industry project ‘fun, engaging, interesting to work with industry partners’ and would recommend other students to ‘go for it’. Their project used portable non-invasive biometric devices to measure heart rate and EDA on call centre employees and identified whether certain events throughout their working day were more stressful than others. They really enjoyed working in a team. They found the BIX project helpful to their career plans as ‘the topic of stress is very relevant to many aspects of clinical psychology.’

Charlotte Walton MSc Social Cognition: Research and Application, 2020
Charlotte's project looked at the effects of food creativity and shopping frequency on food waste. She conducted online surveys using Qualtrics to research this. Charlotte says: "Working with a company provides a lot of opportunities. Not only do you get more funding for your project, but you get to have a real sense of responsibility and understand the relevance of the research you are doing in a real world context. My company supervisor was also super nice and easy to work with. It felt meaningful and exciting to work on a BIX project. If you are potentially interested in starting a career in Behavioural Science then it's a great opportunity to gain experience and exposure. It's been really exciting to be able to share my research with a wider audience now that it's been completed. Working on a BIX project allowed me to build connections in the company which opened up opportunities such as publishing the research in their Behavioural Science Annual and presenting to one of their clients. It also got me in the loop about an available job, which I interviewed for and ended up getting! Needless to say, I'm so glad that I was able to do a BIX project as it opened up doors for me.”

Naomi Wang

MSc Social Cognition: Research and Application, 2020
Naomi’s project looked at creative approaches to promote cup recycling. Naomi says “As an international student, it's a really great experience. I planned to work in a business corporate before I started the master programme, so I chose this enterprise dissertation project to see the application of psychology in the business place. My project put new and subtle behavioural science techniques to the test. The best thing is that I can receive support from two supervisors, and their feedback focused on different aspects. One is more academic and one is more practical. I would recommend BIX to students who want to work for a corporate instead of doing the research or staying in academia after graduation. Anyway, it is a great project for master's student, and thanks for everyone who brings these enterprise opportunities to us :)"

Nimisha Parashar
MSc Social Cognition: Research and Application, 2020
Nimisha's project focused on advertisements, in terms of how their diversity in representation affects the purchase intentions and memory of them. She conducted correlational analyses and ANOVA for the data. Nimisha says “It is an amazing learning experience. I chose a BIX project for an opportunity to work with organisations outside the academic environment. I enjoyed the liberty that I had with working on my own project to make my own decisions. The support from my supervisors, both Industry and Academic, worked well. BIX has helped me to gain industry experience."

Pam Dang

MSc in Social Cognition: Research and Application, 2020
“For our main research question we tested the effectiveness of two interventions on inducing a desired behavioural outcome (i.e., increased feedback-seeking). We also tested the relationship between feedback-seeking behaviour and various individual-differences factors (e.g. goal orientation and implicit person belief). The project provided a very practical approach to conducting scientific studies. The biggest takeaway lesson from this experience, in my personal opinion, is applying my research skills in an actual organisational setting while managing the difficulties or challenges of a field experiment. This is a great and very useful experience if you are interested in research in non-academic work setting. I enjoyed the responsibilities that come with working for an actual organisation. I also enjoyed working with and learning from my corporate supervisor. The project reassured my interest in this career path and equipped me with more necessary and relevant skills. My corporate supervisor was very helpful and supportive not only in helping me with the project but also in giving advice about career choices. Overall it was a great experience.”

Doulos Lee
MSc Cognitive and Decision Sciences, 2020
"Great opportunity to combine what you have learnt from the course and work on a practical problem from the industry. My project was on drivers of moral hazard. The topic was interesting and it was an opportunity to learn from someone plugged into industry and not to mention contribute directly to something more applied in nature. It was the best of both worlds, with academic rigour from UCL supervisor combined with how to answer industry/real life related questions/challenges."

Learn more about what our students have been up to

BioStress
Tanith Archibald is a former MSc Psychological Sciences from 2020-21, Tanith worked on a BIX industry project with UCL's Prof Joe Devlin to measure workplace stress with BioStress Lab. You can read more about Tanith's project. This work helped Tanith to earn a place on the Dean’s List of outstanding students.

Channel 4
Nimisha Parashar is a former MSc Social Cognition student from 2019-20. Nimisha worked on a BIX industry project with Channel 4 and UCL's Prof Lasana Harris. Employing stereotype-inconsistent or -irrelevant information in a marketing campaign may reduce the perceived creativity of the advertisement. Here, we establish a link between stereotype and audiences’ creativity perception. In a pair of online experiments, we asked participants to rate the stereotypicality and creativity of British advertisements, as well as their intention to purchase the advertised product or service. We found a quadratic relationship between advertisement stereotypicality, creativity, and purchase intention such that advertisements perceived as low and high stereotypicality were rated as more creative and had higher purchase intention that medium stereotypicality advertisements. These results highlight the psychological mechanisms that potentially link stereotyping and creativity, as well as the implications for marketing.