I like the term ‘architectures of control’ for it’s alarming qualities which certainly have an immediate impact. It reminds me a bit of ‘information architecture’, another modern term, but with a far more Orwellian flavor.

However, control is a strong word and things like “pig ears”, for example, don’t actually control skateboarders - but they certainly are effective inhibitors which challenge skaters to either play along or try harder in order seek ways to subvert the intented instruction that they are expected to interpret from the design. Skaters most likely adapt, and rather than slide such rails, do tail stalls or other tricks that leverage the space between the ears. In the end, they aren’t necessarily controlled, they just aren’t doing lengthy slide tricks.

So I thought it would be fun to take your challenge to think of alternative terms. What seemed most familiar to me was the practice related to industrial design that focuses on creating a working product and is typically referred to as “functional engineering”. Therefore, I got to thinking of some terms and the following came to mind:

- ‘restrictive engineering’
- ‘regulatory engineering’
- ’supervisory engineering’

These terms seemed to allow for some power still to be had by those interacting with end products being highlighted by this blog, as opposed to the powerlessness that any ultimate ‘control’ may seem to imply.

Then I was reminded of the iconic “OBEY” (http://www.obeygiant.com/) effort and that make me think of my favorite possibility:

- ‘obedience engineering’

Regards
J.

As such I’ll be making some modifications to the blog design, masthead, etc, in the next few days, probably also tidying up the links, making the categories clearer, and integrating the ‘pages’ more closely with the posts.

@Anonymous: Which word in the title is a pronoun?

@Robin: Forcing functions, interlocks, etc (and poka-yoke) as Don Norman describes are of course an important (and usually user-beneficial) subset of architectures of control - see ‘Everyday things and persuasive technology’ and ‘Simple control in products’ - but a large proportion of the examples on this site go beyond the usability/safety-enhancing intent that Norman implies in his examples.

You could omit the “in design” if only because “design” has so many specific senses that people might misconstrue it to mean a particular field of design at first glance. But it is not redundant if one understands “architectures” in the proper sense. And it reaches out to people who are interested in design in all its many forms. I would leave it.