“Steps are like ready-made seats” (so let’s make them uncomfortable)

Adrian Short let me know about something going on in Sutton, Surrey, at the same time both fundamentally pathetic and indicative of the mindset of many public authorities in ‘dealing with’ emergent behaviour:
An area in Rosehill, known locally as “the steps”, is to be re-designed to stop young people sitting there.
Not only will the steps [...]

links for 2008-05-30

Living Streets
Creating better streets and public spaces for people on foot
(tags: urban urbanism spatial architecture pedestrians livingstreets)

Tripping over the barrier
Emergent behaviour… Thanks to Max Kashner for sending me this!
(tags: barrier art protection emergent behaviour unintended interaction interactiondesign gallery museum)

Canadian airport security screener confiscates blocks tiny gun-shaped necklace charm – Boing Boing
“Hey, Guy? If I could [...]

links for 2008-05-29

Uselog – product usability weblog
(tags: blog design usability interaction interactiondesign delft)

The Skateboard, The City, and Socio-Spatial Censorship
via http://www.blackbeltjones.com/work/ : “Skateboarders have encountered a politics of space similar to the experiences of the homeless… [they] occupy urban space without engaging in economic activity of interiors, to the annoyance of building owners a
(tags: skateboarding discriminatory architecture architecturesofcontrol [...]

Un-hiding an affordance

These (pretty shallow) steps in Dawlish, Devon, have been labelled as such, presumably because without this, some visitors wouldn’t notice, and would run, cycle or wheelchair down them and hurt themselves or others. Painting a white line along the edge is a common way of improving visibility of steps, but actual labelling is fairly unusual. [...]

User-Centred Design for Sustainable Behaviour

TU Delft’s Renee Wever and Jasper van Kuijk (who runs the insightful Uselog product usability blog), together with NTNU’s Casper Boks, have produced a very interesting paper, ‘User-Centred Design for Sustainable Behaviour’ [PDF, 400 kb] for the International Journal of Sustainable Engineering (indeed, probably in the same edition as my own paper addressing many similar [...]

links for 2008-05-28

Cities and Ambition
“I’d always considered ambition a good thing, but I realize now that was because I’d always implicitly understood it to mean ambition in the areas I cared about. When you list everything ambitious people are ambitious about, it’s not so pretty.”
(tags: paulgraham cities place ambition location technology startup universities urbanism)

One-way turn of the screw

One-way screws, such as the above (image from Designing Against Vandalism, ed. Jane Sykes, The Design Council, London, 1979) are an interesting alternative to the usual array of tamper-proof ’security fasteners’ (which usually require a special tool to fit and remove). There’s a very interesting illustrated listing of different systems here.
A fastener requiring a special [...]

Best bitter

Bitrex, the world’s most bitter substance, is what’s known as a taste aversive – added to products which might seem tasty to humans (especially children) to persuade them not to drink them, or to spit out what they’ve already drunk. It’s a similar idea to the use of bitter coatings to break a [...]

Ann Thorpe: Can artefacts be activists?

Ann Thorpe, author of the intriguing-sounding Designer’s Atlas of Sustainability – is pursuing an interesting investigation into design activism:
Some of the basic issues around design activism include:
# isn’t all design activism?
# how much design should be activist – aren’t designers supposed to be meeting client needs?
# are there best practices for design activism?

Low bridge in [...]

links for 2008-05-20

Berkeley Path Gallery
More ‘desire paths’ – thanks to Ariel Guersenzvaig (http://interacciones.org ) for the tip
(tags: desirepaths Berkeley architecturesofcontrol, desire paths interaction use usemark)

Metaverse Territories
Mixed realities
(tags: metaverse SecondLife architecture architecturesofcontrol, design reality)

CFP: The Psychology of Facebook
This looks to be an interesting book on Facebook’s use of persuasion techniques, compiled by B J Fogg and his team.
(tags: [...]