What sort of behaviour?
The different patterns (initially just those featured on the poster) have each been given a badge (or two) showing whether they have the effect of enabling, motivating, or constraining user behaviour:
Enabling behaviour
Enabling ‘desirable’ behaviour by making it easier for the user than the alternatives
Motivating behaviour
Motivating users to change behaviour by education, incentives and changing attitudes
Constraining behaviour
Constraining users to ‘desirable’ behaviour by making alternatives difficult or impossible
This way of classifying the patterns can be useful to think about when you’re coming up with concepts and evaluating them. What are you trying to achieve in terms of influencing behaviour? How would you react, as a user, faced with the design? Would it influence your behaviour? Why?
Much work in Persuasive Technology has taken the approach of motivating behaviour, with attitude change usually a precursor, but BJ Fogg’s reduction and tunnelling (Fogg, 2003) are arguably also about enabling particular behaviours by making them simpler (see also Maeda, 2006). Buckminster Fuller’s ‘trimtab’ concept—“modify[ing] the environment in such a way as to get man moving in preferred directions” (Krausse & Lichtenstein, 2001)—also accords with the enabling approach and provides a link to the wider field of design for social benefit. Human factors strategies aimed at influencing behaviour in a health and safety context often employ a constraining approach.
The approach used in practice—and hence the patterns and concepts chosen for further development—may, of course, be dictated by the client or other stakeholders rather than being the designer’s decision.
P.S. If you can come up with better icons (the ‘Constraining’ one does look rather intestinal), or your own classifications, please do let us know in the comments below…
Next: the patterns
Architectural lens
Errorproofing lens
Persuasive lens
Visual lens
Cognitive lens
Security lens
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The Design with Intent Toolkit v0.9 by Dan Lockton, David Harrison and Neville A. Stanton
Introduction | Behaviour | Architectural lens | Errorproofing lens | Persuasive lens | Visual lens | Cognitive lens | Security lens
Your set of primitives resemble the concepts of “force dynamics” that I was influenced by when I did my Ph.D. in cognitive science. A brief description is in the Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_Dynamics
If this is interesting for you, please contact me via email, and I’ll explain further.
Whatever formal notation you choose I think this is really interesting research.
Great site Dan. I’ve just started to dig through your material, it’s really inspiring. RE: The above taxonomy
Enabling = Carrot
Constraining = Stick
Motivating = Carroty stick
?
Thanks Simon & Nick.
Simon – I’ll be in touch.
I like the idea of the carroty stick! I think I’d say that while a stick fits well with constraining, the carrot would be better for motivating than enabling. I don’t know where enabling would fit in the donkey-control framework!
But these are only ideas. Enabling / motivating / constraining might not be the best way to split it up anyway. Chris Vanstone (formerly of the Design Council’s RED) used the scheme “stick, carrot, speedometer” which I tried to explore a bit in this post a couple of years ago, though my thinking’s evolved a bit since then.
[...] See the next page… [...]
[...] some fields, of course, design’s aim really is to constrain and direct behaviour absolutely – e.g. “safety critical systems, like air traffic control [...]
I’ve just noticed that the enabling / motivating / constraining distinction has some precedent in research about how regulation affects small businesses (e.g. this PowerPoint presentation and this PDF from Kingston University). Shlomo Angel, one of Christopher Alexander’s collaborators on A Pattern Language also uses the distinction in a book about housing policy.
[...] thinking about users – models, if you like – that are relevant here. (These are distinct from the enabling / motivating / constraining [...]
[...] with Intent Toolkit v0.9 by Dan Lockton, David Harrison and Neville A. Stanton Introduction | Behaviour | Architectural lens | Errorproofing lens | Persuasive lens | Visual lens | Cognitive lens | [...]
[...] with Intent Toolkit v0.9 by Dan Lockton, David Harrison and Neville A. Stanton Introduction | Behaviour | Architectural lens | Errorproofing lens | Persuasive lens | Visual lens | Cognitive lens | [...]
Carrot, stick and speedometers are all motivations; as you make a choice I send you information that biases your decision; speedos make the decision clearer, and carrots and sticks adjust the results of the decision by adding new conditions.
Constraining and enabling actually refer to adjusting the mechanics underlying the choice; a person in solitary confinement gives up stealing not because of the penalty, but because it is really hard! Enabling would mean that he generally doesn’t steal because people give him food if he asks for it. It is about interfering with the possibilities in the choice itself, and requires you to dig under the person you are dealing with and change the ground he works on, easiest in online situations like MMORPGS or forums, but sometimes possible in heavily constructed social situations too.
But beware of hacking; if the prisoner escapes, then the lack of penalty becomes a problem. In the same way, people can dig under your finely constructed economic system with their own black market. Succeeding at enabling requires you to be more in tune with the structure of the world than those you seek to regulate.
[...] intención Toolkit v0.9 por Dan Lockton, David Harrison y Neville A. Stanton Introduction | Behaviour | Architectural lens | Errorproofing lens | Persuasive lens | Visual lens | Cognitive lens | [...]