Protos – Creative Stuff by Kristian Tørning (tags: rhetoric design persuasion persuasivetechnology tørning methods) Digital Productions: Controlling the Flow of Information Crosbie Fitch explores the “angst about losing control over the flow of information” and how it relates to corporate, state and creators’ engagement with […]
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User intent and emergence
Something which came out of the seminar at Brunel earlier this week (thanks to everyone who came along) was the idea that any method of selecting ways to design products that aim to shape or guide users’ behaviour really must incorporate some evaluation of users’ […]
Getting someone to do things in a particular order (Part 3)
Continued from part 2 This series is looking at what design techniques/mechanisms are applicable to guiding a user to follow a process or path, performing actions in a specified sequence. The techniques fall roughly into three ‘approaches’. In this post, I’m going to examine the […]
The Rebound Effect nicely illustrated
The Rebound Effect is a significant problem in energy policy and sustainable design: if new devices are more energy efficient, will users simply use them more, or leave them on for longer? (A kind of Jevons’ Paradox). This UK Energy Research Centre report (PDF, 5 […]
Cyclepathology
A lot of architectures of control / design with intent examples are trying to enforce what I’ve termed ‘access, use or occupation based on user characteristics’. Not all designs are especially successful at achieving that target behaviour: users will not always be persuaded, or will […]
Seminar, 27th May
I’ll be giving a brief seminar at Brunel on Tuesday 27th May, in advance of presenting at Persuasive 2008 – it’s a bit of a practice/rehearsal, to be honest…
links for 2008-05-20
Berkeley Path Gallery More ‘desire paths’ – thanks to Ariel Guersenzvaig (http://interacciones.org ) for the tip (tags: desirepaths Berkeley architecturesofcontrol, desire paths interaction use usemark) Metaverse Territories Mixed realities (tags: metaverse SecondLife architecture architecturesofcontrol, design reality) CFP: The Psychology of Facebook This looks to be […]
Ann Thorpe: Can artefacts be activists?
Ann Thorpe, author of the intriguing-sounding Designer’s Atlas of Sustainability – is pursuing an interesting investigation into design activism: Some of the basic issues around design activism include: # isn’t all design activism? # how much design should be activist — aren’t designers supposed to […]
Best bitter
Bitrex, the world’s most bitter substance, is what’s known as a taste aversive – added to products which might seem tasty to humans (especially children) to persuade them not to drink them, or to spit out what they’ve already drunk. It’s a similar idea to […]
One-way turn of the screw
One-way screws, such as the above (image from Designing Against Vandalism, ed. Jane Sykes, The Design Council, London, 1979) are an interesting alternative to the usual array of tamper-proof ‘security fasteners’ (which usually require a special tool to fit and remove). There’s a very interesting […]