All posts filed under “User experience

Report: Most people just trying to get by

Report: Most people just trying to get by

Most people, for most of their day, are trying to get by. Every day is essentially a series of problems, some minor, some major, some requiring more thought than others. Some we care a lot about; some we wish we didn’t have to. Some are […]

If…

If…

(introducing behavioural heuristics) EDIT (April 2013): An article based on the ideas in this post has now been published in the International Journal of Design – which is open-access, so it’s free to read/share. The article refines some of the ideas in this post, using […]

dConstructing a workshop

dConstructing a workshop

A couple of weeks ago, at dConstruct 2011 in Brighton, 15 brave participants took part in my full-day workshop ‘Influencing behaviour: people, products, services and systems’, with which I was very kindly assisted by Sadhna Jain from Central Saint Martins. As a reference for the […]

Thoughts on the ‘fun theory’

Thoughts on the ‘fun theory’

The ‘Piano Staircase’ from Volkswagen’s thefuntheory.com The Fun Theory (Rolighetsteorin), a competition / campaign / initiative from Volkswagen Sweden – created by DDB Stockholm – has been getting a lot of attention in the last couple of weeks from both design-related people and other commentators […]

Cialdini on the Beach

Cialdini on the Beach

Self-monitoring is one of the most common persuasive techniques used in interface design: basically, giving people feedback on what they’re doing and what they’ve done. There are lots of issues about which kinds of feedback work best, in what circumstances, pairing it with feedforward, i.e. […]

Sort some cards and win a copy of The Hidden Dimension

Sort some cards and win a copy of The Hidden Dimension

UPDATE: Thanks everyone – 10 participants in just a few hours! The study’s closed now – congratulations to Ville Hjelm whose book is now on its way… If you’ve got a few minutes spare, are interested in the Design with Intent techniques, and fancy having […]

Modelling users: Pinballs, shortcuts and thoughtfulness

Modelling users: Pinballs, shortcuts and thoughtfulness

The different approaches to influencing people’s behaviour outlined in the Design with Intent toolkit are pretty diverse. Working out how to apply them to your design problem, and when they might be useful, probably requires you, as a designer, to think of “the user” or […]

frog design on Design with Intent

frog design on Design with Intent

Robert Fabricant of frog design — with whom I had a great discussion a couple of weeks ago in London — has an insightful new article up at frog’s Design Mind, titled, oddly enough, ‘Design with Intent: how designers can influence behaviour’ — which tackles […]

Two events next week

Two events next week

Next Wednesday evening, 27th May, I’ll be giving a presentation about Design with Intent at SkillSwap Brighton’s ‘Skillswap Goes Behavioural’ alongside Ben Maxwell from Onzo (pioneers of some of the most interesting home energy behaviour change design work going on at present). I hope I’ll […]

The ‘You Are Here’ Use-mark

The ‘You Are Here’ Use-mark

Who really needs a “You Are Here” marker when other visitors’ fingers have done the work for you? (Above, in Florence; below, in San Francisco) Use-marks, like desire paths, are a kind of emergent behaviour record of previous users’ perceptions (and perceived affordances), intentions, behaviours […]

What is demand, really?

What is demand, really?

In a lot of the debate and discussion about energy, future electricity generation and metering, improved efficiency and influencing consumer behaviour – at least from an engineering perspective – the term “demand” is used, in conjunction with “supply”, to represent the energy required to be […]