I've been following this discussion with interest but haven't had time to contribute what I'd like (seriously, there's a whole book to write about this subject!). But Josh's mention of the power of defaults as a influence technique tipped me into a quick response.
I'm researching *how design can be used to influence behaviour* - specifically, for social benefit, more specifically, for reducing the environmental impacts of product/service use, but also, in general, what techniques have been used, in what contexts, and how they might be applied elsewhere. Over the last year or so I've tried to compile a set of design pseudo-patterns for influencing user behaviour - The 'Design with Intent' Toolkit - http://designwithintent.co.uk - and am currently running workshop sessions with designers applying some of these ideas to particular briefs, to see what sort of product/service concepts they inspire. The stage after that is going to be prototyping and running user trials with some of the concepts developed, to get some data on which ones are actually most effective in practice at influencing users, in what contexts, and why. Hopefully this will be a useful contribution to the interaction design literature, and something that's actually applicable in the early stages of a design (or redesign) process. The "behaviour is our medium" debate eloquently stirred up by Frog's Robert Fabricant recently - to which Brad's post on Johnny Holland is a great companion piece - draws on aspects of fields such as behavioural economics, ethnography, persuasive technology and science and technology studies in discussing the ethical implications of designers being the 'puppet masters', and there is quite a lot of precedent in the ethical issues, including Thaler & Sunstein's "Libertarian Paternalism is not an Oxymoron" ( http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=405940 ) and Berdichevsky et al's "Analyzing the Ethics of Persuasive Technology" ( http://credibility.stanford.edu/captology/notebook/archives.new/2006/06/ethics_of_persu.html). In a long post responding to Robert ( http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2009/06/14/frog-design-on-design-with-intent) I try to make the point that no design is ever going to be neutral: whether a default is chosen with helpful intent, manipulative intent, or without any real thought at all, it's still going to influence user behaviour. This seems obvious and trivial, but the effects can be large down the line. So we ought to think about it. Anyway, having just seen Dave Malouf's post I should stop myself going any further off on this subject, but it's a great debate and, I feel, going to be heard increasingly often as the power of interaction design to influence (rather than simply *support*) what users do is realised explicitly by more companies (and governments). Dan ______________________________________________________________________________ Dan Lockton MPhil BSc(Hons) FRSA | Cleaner Electronics Research Group | Brunel Design Brunel University | London | UB8 3PH | http://danlockton.co.uk |<http://designandbehaviour.com/> @danlockton <http://twitter.com/danlockton> Google Group on Design & Behaviour: http://designandbehaviour.com p.s. I apologise for the odd [column width="..."] bits in some of my blog posts - they're formatting for a WP plugin which appears to have just broken with the update to 2.8.2. I'll fix them when I can. > If we agree that influence means "to effect behavior" (as it does in my > dictionary), then defaults are indeed influential. > > In fact, defaults are one of the most powerful ways to influence someone > (as evidenced by the organ donation example) > > If a user *doesn't* have choice...that's something altogether different > (such as coercion) > > > Josh ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
