All posts filed under “Design with Intent

Getting someone to do things in a particular order (Part 2)

Getting someone to do things in a particular order (Part 2)

Continued from part 1 These are the suggested mechanisms applicable to User follows process or path, performing actions in a specified sequence – they fall roughly into three ‘approaches’. In this post, I’m going to examine the System element approach. System element approach This approach […]

Nudges and the power of choice architecture

Nudges and the power of choice architecture

An ‘advance uncorrected page proof’ of Nudge I managed to get off Abebooks. Thanks to Hien Nguyen for the photo. Nudge, by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, is a publishing sensation of the moment, no doubt helped by Thaler’s work advising Barack Obama (many thanks […]

links for 2008-06-12

links for 2008-06-12

Rhizome – Prison Inspection “Proof of the jail cell’s status as unspoken spectacle and insight into the architect’s ethical and personal relationship to the places they create.” Thanks to Eugene McHugh for the link. (tags: prison panopticon foucault architecture intent) Good Experience: Deception considered helpful […]

Lights reminding you to turn things off

Lights reminding you to turn things off

Duncan Drennan, who writes the very thoughtful Art of Engineering blog, notes something extremely interesting: standby lights, if they’re annoying/visible enough, can actually motivate users to switch the device off properly: Our DVD player has (to me) the most irritating standby light that I have […]

Exploiting the desire for order

Exploiting the desire for order

I met a lot of remarkable people in Finland, and some of them – they know who they are – have given me a lot to think about, in a good way, about lots of aspects of life, psychology and its relation to design. Thanks […]

Sarah Burwood: Tumble Sums

Sarah Burwood: Tumble Sums

We’ve covered teaching machines and programmed learning textbooks a few times on the blog, and I’ll admit to a general fascination with analogue computing and similar ideas, ever since reading John Crank‘s Mathematics and Industry as a teenager, after finding it in a skip (dumpster) […]

Cross-purposes?

Cross-purposes?

Last week I was at a seminar where a fellow student was outlining some (very interesting) research about how to adapt ‘professional’ products to be usable by a ‘lay’ audience (what functions do you retain, what do you lose, how do you deal with different […]

Paper Rights Management

Paper Rights Management

This delivery note from Springer informs me that the book I’ve bought “must not be resold”. Good luck with that. So have I bought it or not? Or have I bought a licence to read it? What if I give it away? Many companies would […]

links for 2008-06-23

links for 2008-06-23

Tomy’s new piggy bank rewards savings with in-built RPG – Boing Boing Gadgets Persuasive games? “Every coin you pump into the bank is translated into gold, which can be used to buy weapons, items and armour for your character.” (tags: persuasion persuasivetechnology games saving money) […]

links for 2008-06-24

links for 2008-06-24

BBC – Mark Easton – Nudge Some interesting readers’ comments, many fundamentally opposed to the idea of ‘nudges’, at least in the government-led way suggested by the article. (tags: nudge BBC behaviour libertarianpaternalism)

links for 2008-06-27

links for 2008-06-27

Vox Popoli: The importance of condescension Amazing stylised rant about ‘other people’s incompetence’ interacting with a ticket machine in the Paris Metro… (tags: rant usability interaction interactiondesign interface ticketmachine Paris design) TDWTF Forums – The importance of condescension …inspiring this wonderful riposte. I have some […]