Seth Godin talks about companies that try to teach their customers a lesson: “Either you’re going to make someone happy or you’re not… Here’s the short version: If you try to teach a customer a lesson, you’ve just done two things: a. failed at teaching […]
Yearly archives of “2006”
Shaping behaviour: Part 1
A couple of months ago I posted about the ‘shaping behaviour’ research of RED, part of the UK Design Council. At the time I noted in passing a classification of design approaches for shaping behaviour, mentioned by RED’s Chris Vanstone: “stick*, carrot or speedometer.” It’s […]
Behaviour shaping round-up
The legendary Rob Cockerham looks at the Point of Sale Trail in Fry’s Electronics, Sacramento. Shoppers queuing for the checkouts are routed through a maze of aisles densely packed with impulse products: “At any point in the line, approximately 280 different products are within view, […]
Sniffing out censorship
Image from News Sniffer News Sniffer‘s Revisionista monitors alterations to published news stories from a variety of sources by comparing RSS feeds, sometimes revealing subsequently redacted information or changes of opinion (e.g. note the removed phrase in the first paragraph of this story about Cuba). […]
Locking out IE users
UPDATE: The code being used is from the Explorer Destroyer project, which has an explanation of its rationale here. It’s worth noting that it’s not just ‘Get Firefox’, but ‘Get Firefox with the Google Toolbar’, hence the $1 referral fee… I’d much rather have Firefox […]
The secret
“The secret to getting ahead in the 21st century is capitalizing on people doing what they want to do, rather than trying to get them to do what you want to do.” (Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com, in a Wired article quoted at the Public Journalism […]
Enforcing reverence & increasing mental acuity?
The steep steps with tall risers and shallow treads at Ta Keo, Angkor, Cambodia. Photos by Casual Chin and Sarin Va Simon Crilley, designer and author of the Future Thinking blog, left a very interesting comment on the recent ‘Architecture & Security‘ post: “These architectures […]
A vein attempt?
Blue lighting is sometimes used in public toilets (restrooms) to make it more difficult for drug users to inject themselves (veins are harder to see). The above implementation is in Edinburgh, next to the Tron Kirk. It was more difficult to see my veins through […]
Anti-perch spikes
These spikes on a window ledge in Lawnmarket, Edinburgh, look quite old. The ledge is steeply angled, so would be difficult to sit on anyway; if anything they’d make it easier actually to climb up to the window if breaking in were a concern. All […]
Preventing baggage trolleys going down the escalator
These ‘pinch point’ barriers at London’s Heathrow Airport prevent the baggage trolleys from the Bus Station being taken down the escalators which lead to Terminals 1, 2 and 3. Mistake-proofing (for safety reasons: a trolley down the escalator would be dangerous) but also unnecessary if […]
Disaffordances and engineering obedience
Image based on Don Norman‘s famous teapot, and the Obey Giant face Last month I asked, in response to some criticism, whether there was a better term than ‘architectures of control’ for the loose category of stuff discussed on this site. The response was great […]
Epson messes up my day
My Epson Stylus Photo R1800’s been running low on ink in a couple of cartridges for a few days now. I’ve been putting off ordering them until this weekend. Now I find that when the printer believes a cartridge has reached 0%, it won’t print […]
Product psychology to discourage anti-social behaviour
From McGazz (who also has some great music to listen to on his website): “As I was getting myself a cup of tea in work this morning, I overheard a colleague talking about a problem at the tanning salon his wife runs. Each cubicle has […]
Bruce Schneier : Architecture & Security
Bruce Schneier talks about ‘Architecture and Security’: architectural decisions based on the immediate fear of certain threats (e.g. car bombs, rioters) continuing to affect users of the buildings long afterwards. And he makes the connexion to architectures of control outside of the built environment, too: […]
‘Design Must Relinquish Control’
Niblettes tackles the issue of designers and control, specifically, how much the user’s experience and methods of using a product or service should be defined by the designer. The conclusion – paralleling a theme in a marketing speech by Procter & Gamble’s Alan G Lafley […]
The Tell-Tale Part
Open the case of your mobile (cell) phone. Do you see a round white sticker, similar to that in the first photo below? This is a water damage sticker, which changes colour if moisture gets into this bit of the phone, and will be used […]