In recent years, designers have become increasingly interested in people’s behaviour, but this is often considered simplistically. Design with Intent aims to give practitioners a more nuanced and critical approach to design and behaviour, working with people, people’s understanding, and the complexities of everyday human experience. It’s a collection of design patterns—and a design and research approach—for exploring the interactions between design and people’s behaviour, across products, services and environments, both digital and physical.
I originally released the Design with Intent toolkit card deck in 2010 (free download), as part of my PhD, and am currently working on a followup book which expands the ideas in the toolkit and looks at other perspectives. Over the years I have published a number of academic papers around the toolkit and the Design with Intent idea.
The toolkit is applicable across product, experience, service, interaction and architectural design, aimed particularly at socially and environmentally beneficial behaviour change. The patterns are drawn from a range of disciplines, and are phrased as questions or provocations to enable the toolkit’s use as both a brainstorming tool and a guide for exploring the field of design for behaviour change. It’s in use by industry, public sector and educational organisations worldwide, including in Brazilian Portuguese and Czech translations.
Explore the lenses of the toolkit / How to use it / Downloads / More about the book
