Design with Intent | 2007 August

On the level

By Dan Lockton ⋅ August 24, 2007 ⋅ 2 comments

A tilt-detector from this 1984 US patent, with intended application on a packing box.
The liquid detection stickers in mobile phones, which allow manufacturers and retailers to ascertain if a phone has got wet, and thus reject warranty claims (whether judiciously/appropriately or not), seem to be concerning a lot of people worldwide. Around a quarter of [...]

Unscheduled intermission

By Dan Lockton ⋅ August 20, 2007 ⋅ 10 comments

I know, I know a third of all blog posts indexed by Technorati are “apologies for the lack of posts recently,” and this is no exception.
I haven’t posted on the blog in the last week, mainly due to being very busy with work – I’ve unexpectedly been back at Tangerine in London (left) helping [...]

Detailing and retailing

By Dan Lockton ⋅ August 13, 2007 ⋅ 6 comments

The dazzle painting of HMS Furious, c. 1918. Image from A Gallery of Dazzle-Painted Ships
A couple of weeks ago we looked at casino carpet design – a field where busy, garish graphic design is deliberately employed to repel viewers, and direct their attention somewhere else. Ben Hyde commented that deliberately unattractive “background music, lighting, seating, [...]

Freelancing Part 3: The Ben Wilson Interview

By Dan Lockton ⋅ August 12, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

In Parts 1 and 2 of this series I looked at some aspects of what it’s like being a freelance designer / engineer / maker, and some of the things I’ve learned along the way. Lots of freelancers have blogs, and sites such as Freelance Switch and Sologig News draw together some very interesting (and [...]

Electro-Bonding: Part 1 of many

By Dan Lockton ⋅ August 11, 2007 ⋅ 2 comments

While it hasn’t often come across on this blog, due to most of the focus being on architectures of control, I am, both personally and professionally, very interested in lightweight transport – its design, use and potential.

In default, defiance

By Dan Lockton ⋅ August 8, 2007 ⋅ 9 comments

‘Choice of default’ is a theme which has come up a few times on the blog: in general, many people accept the options/settings presented to them, and do not question or attempt to alter them. The possibilities for controlling or shaping users’ behaviour in this way are, clearly, enormous; two interesting examples have recently been [...]

Dishonourable discharge?

By Dan Lockton ⋅ August 7, 2007 ⋅ 4 comments

Long overdue, I’m currently reading Bruce Schneier’s excellent Beyond Fear, and realising that in many ways, security thinking overlaps with architectures of control: the goal of so many systems is to control users’ behaviour or to deny the user the ability to perform certain actions. I’ll post a fuller comparison and analysis in due course, [...]

Pier pressure

By Dan Lockton ⋅ August 3, 2007 ⋅ 2 comments

Deliberately routing users via a longer or more circuitous route is found in many forms (with a variety of intentions) from misleading road signs, to endless click-through screens, splitting up articles, periodic rearrangement of supermarket shelves, and so on. This kind of forcing function can also be used to increase the likelihood of users reading [...]

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Archive for August, 2007