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Design with Intent toolkit 1.0 now online

It’s been a long time coming, but a year after v.0.9, the new Design with Intent toolkit, DwI v.1.0, is ready. Officially titled Design with Intent: 101 Patterns for Influencing Behaviour Through Design, it’s in the form of 101 simple cards, each illustrating a particular ‘gambit‘ for influencing people’s interactions with products, services, environments, and [...]

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The Design with Intent Toolkit v.0.9

■ How to influence user behaviour ■ 12 inspirational design patterns in poster form (plus 35 more) ■ Grouped into 6 ‘lenses’ giving different perspectives Download the poster (it’s a 1.3 MB PDF) – now also includes A4 pages for each lens, for easier printing  [Alternative link] ***UPDATE*** The new 2010 Design with Intent toolkit v.1.0 is now available – [...]

Asides

• Apologies for the silence here, but I'm writing up my PhD thesis at present and trying to get as much as possible done before an exciting new project starts in August (which I will tell you about in due course!). I won't be able to get it all done before then, but am trying to get to a stage where the rest of it doesn't seem insurmountable. Writing up things you've been doing over the last 3 years is pretty boring. The trite advice given so often is to "write up as you go along" and while that might be partly wise, I've found that realistically, what I wrote 18 months ago is simply not usable in the thesis without massive alteration. Things change. The linear format of literature review -> planning the studies -> method -> results -> conclusion is very artificial when the studies you do end up leading you back to the literature, learning something else, doing more studies, and so on. I'm (re-)writing the literature review last of all in order to make it serve as a foundation for the later bits of the thesis, but I'm not entirely satisfied with this approach. It doesn't reflect how the work was actually done, which (to me) is an important part of science. But the need to produce a document which overall is a thesis rather than a story or collection of published papers (which is permissible in some countries) suggests that I need to put such concerns aside, at least for the moment. I suppose it depends on if your work falls neatly into sections or separate projects which are substantially independent, or not. Mine unfortunately hasn't worked out that way. Everything depends on everything else, pretty much. So the blog may be quiet for another couple of months. And when it comes back, I think it needs something of a 5th-birthday-restructure to fit better with how it's actually used. In the meantime, thank you so much to everyone who's downloaded the latest Design with Intent cards or bought printed sets so far. You keep me motivated! #
• I haven't blogged for a couple of months, which is not unusual, but I always feel I owe loyal readers an explanation! Primarily, I've been so wrapped up in PhD-related work (now in my final year, and desperately trying to get the thing finished by the summer), that most of my writing energy has been going into the thesis and some papers and articles for various outlets, rather than towards the blog. Our Applied Ergonomics article, 'The Design with Intent Method: A design tool for influencing user behaviour' (co-authored with my supervisors David Harrison and Neville A. Stanton) has just been published in the print version of the journal (I will put an open-access preprint version online soon), and I've written articles with Fergus Bisset and Nick Marsh for the next issue of the Service Design Network's Touchpoint journal - 'Designing Motivation or Motivating Design? Exploring service design, motivation and behavioural change' and 'Research in practice: Bringing behaviour change from lab to studio'. Look out for them in the April/May issue. There have also been a few other projects with which I've made an effort to get involved, mainly to secure my own future and enable expansion of research in this field once the PhD studentship runs out! I'm pleased to say that things seem to be progressing OK on that front, with some very exciting projects lined up, working with some very interesting people indeed. In parallel, DwI toolkit v.0.95, which I think I will henceforth name Design with Intent 1.0 (shows a bit more confidence!) is nearing a stage where I'm happy to release it. More on that very soon. As Richard Hamming said, "You have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There's no question about this." #
• The deadline's fast approaching (mid-day 17th Dec) for the UK Technology Strategy Board's 'User-centred design for energy efficiency in buildings' competition [PDF] - there's an introduction from Fionnuala Costello here. This is an exciting initiative which aims to bring together (in a 5-day 'sandpit') people from different disciplines and different sectors to address the problems of influencing user behaviour to improve the energy efficiency of offices and other non-domestic buildings, and generate commercially viable collaborative solutions to develop, some of which will then be part-funded by the TSB. Fionnuala's blog, People in Buildings has some great posts and discussions exploring aspects of how human factors and technology together might be used to help people use energy more effectively. If you or your organisation are interested in these kinds of issues - and using design to address them - it'd be well worth getting an application in over the next few days. #
• Design for Conversion: The Mobile Edition - taking place on 11th of December in Amsterdam - looks like a great conference. Organised by Arjan Haring, it's described as "a mashup of persuasive design, principles of persuasion and evidence based marketing" and brings together user experience design, analytics and online marketing, with a 'persuasion' focus. For this edition, it centres on using mobile technology, including speakers from Nokia, Symbian and Sagem and a multidisciplinary team-based challenge based on a real persuasive design problem - as Arjan puts it, "Design for Conversion is not for the faint at heart as there is no escaping the interactive nature of the format." (I understand a card-deck version of the Design with Intent toolkit, not yet released, will be involved in the team challenges - it's great to be able to help out like this, and have a different kind of audience try it out). Some of the testimonials from speakers at previous editions, such as Eric Schaffer, Andrew Chak and BJ Fogg are especially complimentary about how refreshing the interactive format is. All in all, Design for Conversion seems like a colourful, exciting, friendly and relatively intimate (150 people) event, and until 11th November there is a discounted early-bird registration fee. Thanks to Arjan for letting me know about this, and I hope it all works out well. Next year's edition, taking place in New York, also sounds interesting, with Dan Goldstein among the speakers. #
• Been a little busy round here, continuing for the next week or so, but in the meantime I thought I'd share a post I was invited to write for Greengaged, the fantastic programme of events at the Design Council on sustainability, which took place this week. Thanks to Kate Andrews for the opportunity. Next week: Design for Persuasion in Brussels; after that, I'll be back on a schedule more suitable for blogging, for a while at least, and hope to get round to some of the great suggestions and ideas readers have sent in. Thanks for your patience! #