That's an interesting piece - 'Design for Impulse' is another variation to reference!
I've been researching what I call 'Design with Intent' ( http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/what-is-design-with-intent/ ) for a few years now, more recently (for my PhD at Brunel in London) focused on influencing more sustainable use of products and systems ( http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/design-for-sustainable-behaviour/ ) rather than health issues, but many of the same techniques can be applied (and that's an important part of the research). The basic message is: "*We know that design influences behavior, so lets's try and do something good with that*." We're trying to develop a method for helping designers choose which techniques are most applicable to which kinds of desired behavior change, and which type of approach (enabling/motivating/constraining behavior) is most likely to succeed in different contexts. Compare also the work of BJ Fogg and others working on Persuasive Technology' as a discipline - http://captology.stanford.edu/ It's clear that behavioral economics, specifically a deeper understanding of cognitive biases and heuristics, can be immensely important for designing interactions and understanding how to influence users. Richard Thaler calls this 'choice architecture' ( http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2008/06/10/nudges-and-the-power-of-choice-architecture/) but in a sense it's what designers of many stripes have been doing for years. We all know that placing some item at eye level makes it more likely that people will choose it; we put chairs round a table if we intend that people sit down; we (not always!) make sure a handle has the perceived affordance of a handle if we want people to pull it. Yet as a principle - obvious as it is - it's not often taught explicitly to designers or architects (or human factors engineers / ergonomists, for whom it really could be a fundamental part of the profession). Buckminster Fuller understood this - *"I made up my mind... that I would never try to reform man — that's much too difficult. What I would do was to try to modify the environment in such a way as to get man moving in preferred directions" - but it's *quite rare to hear it expressed formally as part of a design course. This seems maybe a good time to announce a new discussion group - Design and Behavior (http://designandbehavior.com ) - to fellow IxDA members - myself and Debra Lilley from Loughborough University, set it up last month and we have about 100 members so far who are working in this kind of field of examining how the design of systems influences user behavior, and how this knowledge might be applied for social benefit. I was holding off on announcing it here until we had a few more discussions going, but please, anyone who's interested, feel free to have a look or get involved. Thanks Dave for bringing this up - if you *do* intend to include this sort of stuff on your course, I'd be happy to help! Best wishes Dan Lockton _________________________________________________________________ Dan Lockton MPhil BSc(Hons) FRSA | Cleaner Electronics Research Group Brunel Design | Brunel University | London | UB8 3PH | http://danlockton.co.uk ________________________________________________________________ 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
