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 […]
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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 […]
Cry from the wilderness
Apologies for the hiatus in posting (and responding to comments & e-mails); I’ve had a couple of extremely important projects on which have taken longer than anticipated. Thanks to everyone who has been in touch; normal (better than normal, in fact) service will be resumed […]
What’s happened to the website?
Unless you always read via RSS, you’ve probably noticed that this site’s changed a bit in the last few days. It has a new style, new layout and even a pretentious/over-complex new name: fulminate // Architectures of Control. Why have I done this?
Getting around
The TAXI Design network has syndicated* my post on the Nicostopper for its very interesting ‘The Driver Speaks’ strand of articles – perhaps not the most obvious choice of articles to choose, but I suppose it was relatively short and to-the-point compared with much on […]
How this research will be moving forward
UPDATE: This 2-page PDF (produced summer 2008) introduces the research I’ve taken the plunge, and will be starting a PhD in September at Brunel University, Uxbridge, in the School of Engineering & Design. The chosen subject incorporates both a formal investigation and review of certain […]
Welcome, new readers
Thanks to Cory, this site has a lot of new readers today, so I thought I’d try to explain briefly what it’s all about. ‘Architectures of Control’ are features designed into things which intentionally attempt to restrict or enforce certain behaviour on the part of […]
Still here
Apologies for the lack of posts for the last week-and-a-bit; I’ve been very busy with projects (design, research, building prototypes, testing, etc) for a number of clients and, as always, things take longer than you expect. I said before that I didn’t want to write […]
[off-topic] Self-referential search results
I don’t normally do ‘off-topic’ posts – in fact this is the first – but I just re-read the earlier post ‘Nice attitude‘ and clicked on the link ‘device to stop young people congregating‘ in the post, which links to an Orange search page which […]
Some links: miscellaneous, pertinent to architectures of control
Ulises Mejias on ‘Confinement, Education and the Control Society’ – fascinating commentary on Deleuze’s societies of control and how the instant communication and ‘life-long learning’ potential (and, I guess, everyware) of the internet age may facilitate control and repression: “This is the paradox of social […]
Designed to control rather than enable
As Cory Doctorow says, “Your home and life are increasingly full of devices that seek to control, rather than enable you.” That, succinctly, is what this website’s about: design as something to restrict and control the user, rather than empower and enable. Products that enable […]
Is there a better term than “architectures of control”?
Welcome, readers from Metafilter and del.icio.us. One point raised in the Metafilter discussion is whether the term ‘architectures of control’ is a sensible one for this phenomenon, and whether ‘architectures of control in design’ is a good title for the blog. I understand the issue; […]