This is a good discussion. B. J. Fogg's book, Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What we Think and Do (2003) addresses the issue of making our products persuasive. He addresses questions of ethics in Chapter 9. He highlights a heuristic for analyzing the ethics of persuasive technologies. The persuasiveness of a product is definately part of the user experience. Much of the work in social psychology on the principles of persuasion apply to computer technologies. Nearly any product involves either implicit or explicit persuasive design since you want people to read something, buy something, change attitudes about something, etc. If you are a consultant and you list papers that people can access, that is persuasiveness technology to get you to hire that consultant or use the consultant's products or change your attitudes toward the consultant's expertise.
You might want to read Robert Cialdini's book on persuasion where he delves into the real world application of social psychological principles of persuasion to show how we are all susceptible to those principles. His book is: Cialdini, R. B. (2001). Influence: Science and Practice. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Cialdini describes how persuasion is enhanced by "likability", for example -- we are more persuaded by a person or product that we like because of attractiveness, simillarity to us in some way, compliments, and even constant contact. These are all things that we try to design into our products. Fogg created the term "captology" to refer to "computers and persuasive technology" and he and his students have been doing project on how to effectively apply principles of persuasion to the design of computer products. If you do a search on Captology, you'll find other examples of persuasive design. These same principles apply to the relationships that we have with our colleagues and can be used to make our recommendations more persuasive. I wrote about this a few years ago in "interactions" magazine (SIGCHI magazine). This is a very important topic and worth some discussion or perhaps a session at the IxDA conference in Vancouver. Chauncey On Sun, Jul 6, 2008 at 8:40 PM, Steve Baty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Robert, > > I'm detecting an undertone of cynicism in the references to 'persuasive' > generally in this thread, and I don't agree with that basic premise. Let me > be really clear: all commercial sites - and by that I mean a broad > definition of 'commercial' as being that where a transaction of some sort > occurs - should be designed as a balance between business and user > interests. As UX professionals we *should not* delegate authority for a > major component of the experience to another team - we should be just as > interested in the execution of those business imperatives as we are with the > user imperatives. > > If mean 'persuasive' in a perjorative sense then I think this is an ethical > decision we would each need to make individually in the circumstances. For > example, if a company or client wishes the UX design to deliberately > obfuscate or misrepresent some information so as to increase the likelihood > of a conversion. > > Regards > Steve > > 2008/7/7 Robert Hoekman Jr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > >> ... But it makes me wonder: >> >> Should the persuasive elements of a site design be left to marketers? >> Assuming you work for a company who has a marketing department and a UX >> team >> that are separate from each other, how much should the UX team be involved >> in the design of persuasive elements? >> >> -r- >> > > > > -- > ---------------------------------------------- > Steve 'Doc' Baty B.Sc (Maths), M.EC, MBA > Principal Consultant > Meld Consulting > M: +61 417 061 292 > E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > UX Statistics: http://uxstats.blogspot.com > > Member, UPA - www.upassoc.org > Member, IA Institute - www.iainstitute.org > Member, IxDA - www.ixda.org > Contributor - UXMatters - www.uxmatters.com > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
