New Scientist: Recruiting Smell for the Hard Sell Samsung’s coercive atmospherics strategy involves the smell of honeydew melon: THE AIR in Samsung’s flagship electronics store on the upper west side of Manhattan smells like honeydew melon. It is barely perceptible but, together with the soft, […]
All posts filed under “Retail”
Detailing and retailing
The dazzle painting of HMS Furious, c. 1918. Image from A Gallery of Dazzle-Painted Ships A couple of weeks ago we looked at casino carpet design – a field where busy, garish graphic design is deliberately employed to repel viewers, and direct their attention somewhere […]
In default, defiance
‘Choice of default’ is a theme which has come up a few times on the blog: in general, many people accept the options/settings presented to them, and do not question or attempt to alter them. The possibilities for controlling or shaping users’ behaviour in this […]
Pier pressure
  Deliberately routing users via a longer or more circuitous route is found in many forms (with a variety of intentions) from misleading road signs, to endless click-through screens, splitting up articles, periodic rearrangement of supermarket shelves, and so on. This kind of forcing function […]
Cleaning up with carpets
Following the recent post looking at aspects of casino and slot machine design, in which I quoted William Choi and Antoine Sindhu’s study – “[Casino] carpeting is often purposefully jarring to the eyes, which draws customers’ gaze upwards toward the machines on the gambling floor” […]
The Terminal Bench
Mags L Halliday – author of the Doctor Who novel History 101 – let me know about an ‘interesting’ design tactic being used at Heathrow’s Terminal 5. From the Guardian, by Julia Finch: Flying from the new Heathrow Terminal 5 and facing a lengthy delay? […]
Portioning blame
McDonald’s, Toledo, Ohio, 1967. Image from DRB62 on Flickr. We’ve looked previously at the effect of portion/packaging sizes as a ‘choice of default’ architecture of control, and I’m aware that I have not yet reviewed Dr Brian Wansink‘s excellent Mindless Eating, which examines this and […]
Objects in mirror are wider than they appear
This is an interesting story. Robert Kilroy-Silk (above) currently an independent MEP, has raised the issue in the European Parliament of intentionally distorting mirrors in clothes stores, specifically Marks & Spencer: Marks and Spencer has said it is mystified by a claim by MEP Robert […]
Packet switching
Both Dr Tom Stafford (co-author of the fantastic Mind Hacks book & blog) and Gregor Hochmuth (creator of FlickrStorm, an improved Flickr search system) have been in touch suggesting packaging/portion sizes as a significant everyday architecture of control, (or at least an aspect of design […]
Coercive atmospherics reach the bus shelter
Jonathan Zittrain discusses scented advertising in bus shelters: the California Milk Processor Board recently tried a campaign with chocolate-chip cookie-scented “aromatic strips”, intended to provoke a thirst for milk, in San Francisco before having to remove them after allergy/chemical sensitivity concerns. The use of scent […]
A couple of stories from the Consumerist
“Is Sylvester Stallone Taking Over Your TV?” – anecdotal suggestion that some digital video recorders may be attempting to ‘push’ certain movie franchises in the run-up to release by recording (unrequested) previous titles in a series, or with the same actors. Well, this is totally […]
The fight back: loyalty card subversion
It’s inevitable that for every attempt to cajole or impose control on users, there will be some people who seek to avoid or circumvent it. As Crosbie Fitch put it in a recent comment, “humans are designed to explore the parameters of their environment and […]
Creating false memories
An interactive camera demo from Corporate Communications, Inc. Clive Thompson writes about some interesting research [PDF] by Ann Schlosser at the University of Washington into how the use of interactive product demonstrations on websites can produce “false memories” of product capabilities, compared with more conventional […]
Teaching customers a lesson
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 […]
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, […]
Review: Made to Break by Giles Slade
Last month I mentioned some fascinating details on planned obsolescence gleaned from a review of Giles Slade‘s Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America. Having now read the book for myself, here’s my review, including noteworthy ‘architectures of control’ examples and pertinent commentary. Slade […]