Design with Intent

Cleaning up with carpets

By Dan Lockton ⋅ July 31, 2007 ⋅ 10 comments

Following the recent post looking at aspects of casino and slot machine design, in which I quoted William Choi and Antoine Sindhu’s study – “[Casino] carpeting is often purposefully jarring to the eyes, which draws customers’ gaze upwards toward the machines on the gambling floor” – Max Rangeley sends me a link to the Total [...]

Normalising paranoia

By Dan Lockton ⋅ July 27, 2007 ⋅ 12 comments

This is brilliant. Chloë Coulson, Erland Banggren and Ben Williams, three Ravensbourne graduates, have put together a project looking at the “culture of fear”, the media’s use of this, and how it affects our everyday state of mind.
The outcome is a catalogue, WellBeings™ [PDF link] accompanying a specially printed newspaper, The Messenger, designed [...]

Design & Punishment

By Dan Lockton ⋅ July 26, 2007 ⋅ 8 comments

Design and Punishment, by Ben Cunningham. Photo from the Arts Institute at Bournemouth’s 2007 Three Dimensional Design graduate directory.
Very neatly linking the themes of the last two posts (devices to make users aware of their energy use, and intentionally uncomfortable seating) is the Design and Punishment chair by Ben Cunningham, a Three Dimensional Design graduate [...]

(Anti-)public seating roundup

By Dan Lockton ⋅ July 24, 2007 ⋅ 13 comments

Single-occupancy benches in Helsinki. Photo by Ville Tikkanen
Ville Tikkanen of Salient Feature points us to the “asocial design” of these single-person benches installed in Helsinki, Finland. In true Jan Chipchase style, he invites us to think about the affordances offered:
As you can see, the benches are located a few meters away from each other and [...]

Making energy use visible

By Dan Lockton ⋅ July 24, 2007 ⋅ 11 comments

Photos courtesy of Harry Ward
We’ve looked recently at water taps with meters built in, the thinking being the ’speedometer’ approach to shaping users’ behaviour – making users aware of the scale/rate/level of some activity should cause them to adjust that behaviour.
A number of projects and initiatives also apply this approach to electricity use – [...]

Another charging opportunity?

By Dan Lockton ⋅ July 23, 2007 ⋅ 13 comments

Last month, an Apple patent application was published describing a method of “Protecting electronic devices from extended unauthorized use” – effectively a ‘charging rights management’ system.
New Scientist and OhGizmo have stories explaining the system; while the stated intention is to make stolen devices less useful/valuable (by preventing a thief charging them with unauthorised chargers), [...]

Learned down the gambling house

By Dan Lockton ⋅ July 20, 2007 ⋅ 2 comments

Michael Shanks’ Ten Things class at Stanford – which looks like a brilliant application of anthropological and archaeological thinking to design and technology – generated a very interesting project by William Choi and Antoine Sindhu analysing the architectures of control (psychological and physical) designed into both slot machines, and casinos themselves.
Slot machines
From ‘The psychology of [...]

Lean or mean?

By Dan Lockton ⋅ July 16, 2007 ⋅ 8 comments

Image from a flyer by Joscelyn Bingham.
The Lean Seat bench, by Joscelyn Bingham, a graduating 3D Design student from University College Falmouth, is a ‘traditionally’ styled slatted wooden alternative to the (usually) unattractive anti-sit perches often found in public places. Note: the surface of the seat is very definitely tilted, and while the slats certainly [...]

Smile, you’re on Countermanded Camera

By Dan Lockton ⋅ July 9, 2007 ⋅ 13 comments

Image from Miquel Mora’s website
We’ve looked before at a number of technologies and products aimed at ‘preventing’ photography and image recording in some way, from censoring photographs of ‘copyrighted content’ and banknotes, to Georgia Tech’s CCD-flooding system.
Usually these systems are about locking out the public, or removing freedoms in some way (a lot of [...]

The Terminal Bench

By Dan Lockton ⋅ July 6, 2007 ⋅ 19 comments

Mags L Halliday – author of the Doctor Who novel History 101 – let me know about an ‘interesting’ design tactic being used at Heathrow’s Terminal 5. From the Guardian, by Julia Finch:
Flying from the new Heathrow Terminal 5 and facing a lengthy delay? No worries. Take a seat and enjoy the spectacular views through [...]

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Archive for July, 2007