Design with Intent | advertising

Thoughts on the ‘fun theory’

By Dan Lockton ⋅ November 3, 2009 ⋅ 5 comments

The ‘Piano Staircase’ from Volkswagen’s thefuntheory.com
The Fun Theory (Rolighetsteorin), a competition / campaign / initiative from Volkswagen Sweden – created by DDB Stockholm – has been getting a lot of attention in the last couple of weeks from both design-related people and other commentators with an interest in influencing behaviour: it presents a series of [...]

Persuasion & control round-up

By Dan Lockton ⋅ October 10, 2007 ⋅ 6 comments

New Scientist: Recruiting Smell for the Hard Sell
Samsung’s coercive atmospherics strategy involves the smell of honeydew melon:
THE AIR in Samsung’s flagship electronics store on the upper west side of Manhattan smells like honeydew melon. It is barely perceptible but, together with the soft, constantly morphing light scheme, the scent gives the store a blissfully relaxed, [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 ⋅ 11 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 [...]

Portioning blame

By Dan Lockton ⋅ June 27, 2007 ⋅ 4 comments

McDonald’s, Toledo, Ohio, 1967. Image from DRB62 on Flickr.
We’ve looked previously at the effect of portion/packaging sizes as a ‘choice of default’ architecture of control, and I’m aware that I have not yet reviewed Dr Brian Wansink’s excellent Mindless Eating, which examines this and other psychological aspects of the way we eat. I will do [...]

Incompati-babel

By Dan Lockton ⋅ January 21, 2007 ⋅ 2 comments

A clever comment on incompatible (and DRM’d) formats by eboy’s flunters. (Via rss.euge.de)

Coercive atmospherics reach the bus shelter

By Dan Lockton ⋅ January 16, 2007 ⋅ 3 comments

Jonathan Zittrain discusses scented advertising in bus shelters: the California Milk Processor Board recently tried a campaign with chocolate-chip cookie-scented “aromatic strips”, intended to provoke a thirst for milk, in San Francisco before having to remove them after allergy/chemical sensitivity concerns.
The use of scent (fresh bread, coffee, ‘new car smell’ etc) as a persuasion method [...]

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