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…

Seminar Announcement:
Using design to shape user behaviour:
Design with Intent and Persuasive Technology
Dan Lockton, Cleaner Electronics Research Group
27th May 2008, 11.00a.m. (Approx. length 45 mins)
Room TA049 – Tower A, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex UB8 3PH
Everyone welcome.
Design can be used to persuade, guide and shape users’ behaviour. Anything designed for user interaction can be designed to embody intended ‘target’ behaviours, whether for socially beneficial or purely commercial reasons.
The emerging interaction design field of Persuasive Technology incorporates some of these ideas, mainly applying them to software and motivational games which guide users to change their behaviour for socially beneficial reasons, e.g. keeping fit (Brunel’s Gillian Swan’s ‘Square-Eyes‘ project has been cited in some of the literature) or giving up smoking.
Taking a much broader look across product design, engineering, architecture and computer science, a range of approaches to designing for intended behaviour emerges, and a more general concept of ‘Design with Intent’ can be identified, with techniques from one discipline being applicable in others. My research specifically involves guiding more environmentally friendly product use — Design for Sustainable Behaviour — but the development of a general model for Design with Intent, matching target behaviours with suggested design solutions, is an important part of this.
The seminar comprises two short presentations I’ll be giving at Persuasive 2008, in Oulu, Finland, in the first week of June. It’s a practice run, if you like, but it will be extremely useful to get feedback and reaction from a Brunel audience, and I hope it’ll be interesting and inspirational.
1. Design with Intent: Persuasive Technology in a Wider Context
This is a paper to be presented at the conference, and appearing in H. Oinas-Kukkonen et al. (eds.): Persuasive 2008, LNCS 5033. Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2008. pp. 274 — 278
2. Kairos: Just-in-Time Feedback as a Design with Intent technique
This is an invited presentation to be given at the doctoral consortium which forms part of the conference.
Dan Lockton (Year 1 PhD student)
Daniel.Lockton@brunel.ac.uk | http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk (research blog)
Supervisors: Professor David Harrison, Professor Neville Stanton

Thanks to Lyn Edgecock and everyone who’s helped set this up.