EAST Framework
Service, Hallsworth, Halpern et al. — UK Behavioural Insights Team (Nudge Unit), 2014
To encourage a behavior, make it Easy, Attractive, Social, and Timely.
In plain language
EAST is the UK government's applied behavioral science toolkit. It emerged from the Behavioural Insights Team (informally the 'Nudge Unit'), which ran hundreds of randomized controlled trials to find what actually moved public behavior.
The four letters: Easy (remove friction), Attractive (grab attention), Social (show that others are doing it), Timely (prompt at the right moment). Each letter corresponds to a body of experimental evidence with measurable effect sizes.
EAST is less theoretical than Fogg or COM-B — it's a checklist for practitioners who want to ship an intervention this week. It pairs well with A/B testing: each letter becomes a testable variable.
How Maxim applies it
- Every Maxim install command is EAST-tuned. Easy: one paste. Attractive: the hero shows Maxim converting a vague prompt into a tagged, cited, audited output. Social: the Discord + GitHub badges signal an active community. Timely: the install command appears in the hero, which is where you land when you're actively deciding.
- Maxim's Growth Stack pack (L2.2) applies EAST to user onboarding flows. /mxm-cmo flow-design returns your onboarding redesigned against each of the four letters, with experimental evidence cited for each claim.
- The framework also powers the Marketing skill dispatch. When you ask Maxim to write conversion copy, the output names which EAST lever each section targets and flags gaps — 'your hero is Attractive but not Timely: triggered on page load, not on scroll depth.'
What generic LLMs get wrong
Generic LLMs optimize for Attractive alone (catchy copy) and ignore Easy (friction audit), Social (evidence), and Timely (trigger placement). The output reads well, converts poorly. Maxim names all four levers and flags which ones your draft is missing.