Following on from our recent look at the strategic design of public benches, BBC London’s Jimmy Tam let me know about this story in the Camden New Journal: A public bench has been removed from outside West Hampstead Library [photo from Pashmin@’s Flickr] after it […]
All posts filed under “Social engineering”
Mosquito controversy goes high-profile
The Mosquito anti-teenager sound device, which we’ve covered on this site a few times, was yesterday heavily criticised by the Children’s Commissioner for England, Sir Albert Aynsley-Green, launching the BUZZ OFF campaign in conjunction with Liberty and the National Youth Agency: Makers and users of […]
Towards a Design with Intent ‘Method’ – v.0.1
As mentioned a while back, I’ve been trying to find a way to classify the numerous ‘Design with Intent’ and architectures of control examples that have been examined on this site, and suggested by readers. Since that post, my approach has shifted slightly to look […]
Architecture, urbanism, design and behaviour: a brief review
by Dan Lockton Continuing the meta-auto-behaviour-change effort started here, I’m publishing a few extracts from my PhD thesis as I write it up (mostly from the literature review, and before any rigorous editing) as blog posts over the next few months. The idea of how […]
Designed environments as learning systems
How much of designing an environment is consciously about influencing how people use it? And how much of that influence is down to users learning what the environment affords them, and acting accordingly? The first question’s central what this blog’s been about over the last […]
Anti-teenager “pink lights to show up acne”
In a similar vein to the Mosquito, intentionally shallow steps (and, superficially at least–though not really–blue lighting in toilets, which Raph d’Amico dissects well here), we now have residents’ associations installing pink lighting to highlight teenagers’ acne and so drive them away from an area: […]
On ‘Design and Behaviour’ this week: Do you own your stuff? And a strange council-run ‘Virtual World for young people’
GPS-aided repo and product-service systems Ryan Calo of Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society brought up the new phenomenon of GPS-aided car repossession and the implications for the concepts of property and privacy: A group of car dealers in Oregon apparently attached GPS devices to […]
{In|Ex}clusive Design
Giving with one hand, and taking away with the other. The juxtaposition of hand rails and anti-sit spikes outside this church in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire suggests a particular configuration of design priorities: helping people climb the steps, but forbidding anyone sitting on the wall. Are the […]
Anti-homeless ‘stools’
Stuart Candy of the brilliant Sceptical Futuryst let me know about authorities in Honolulu replacing benches with round ‘stools’ to prevent homeless people sleeping at bus stops (above image from Honolulu Advertiser story): So far, the city has spent about $11,000 on the seating initiative, […]
The Anti-Sit Archives
Transfer has an amazing collection of images of ‘Anti-Sit’ devices, mostly in New York but also internationally.
New Scientist : Crowds silenced by delayed echoes
Via Boing Boing – ‘Hooligan chants silenced by delayed echoes’, a New Scientist story looking at the work of Dutch researchers who are using out-of-sync replayed sound to disrupt synchronised chanting at football matches. “Soccer hooligans could be silenced by a new sound system that […]
Another possible avenue for the Mosquito
Hot on the heels of the news that Cooper-Menvier/Fulleon is to take on global manufacture and distribution of the Mosquito, my server logs show that someone found this site through looking for mosquito download mobile phone free high frequency. Now, he or she might simply […]