Design with Intent | Bad design

How to fit a normal bulb in a BC3 fitting and save £10 per bulb

By Dan Lockton ⋅ July 21, 2008 ⋅ 42 comments

Standard 2-pin bayonet cap (left) and 3-pin bayonet cap BC3 (right) fittings compared
Summary for mystified international readers: In the UK new houses/flats must, by law, have a number of light fittings which will ‘not accept incandescent filament bulbs’ (a ‘green’ idea). This has led to the development of a proprietary, arbitrary format of compact fluorescent [...]

User intent and emergence

By Dan Lockton ⋅ June 1, 2008 ⋅ 3 comments

Something which came out of the seminar at Brunel earlier this week (thanks to everyone who came along) was the idea that any method of selecting ways to design products that aim to shape or guide users’ behaviour really must incorporate some evaluation of users’ actual goals in using the product – users’ intent – [...]

Un-hiding an affordance

By Dan Lockton ⋅ May 29, 2008 ⋅ 7 comments

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. [...]

Towards a Design with Intent ‘Method’ – v.0.1

By Dan Lockton ⋅ January 5, 2008 ⋅ 11 comments

As mentioned a while back, I’ve been trying to find a way to classify the numerous ‘Design with Intent’ and architectures of control examples that have been examined on this site, and suggested by readers. Since that post, my approach has shifted slightly to look at what the intent is behind each example, and hence [...]

Biting Apple

By Dan Lockton ⋅ September 28, 2007 ⋅ 8 comments

Interesting to see the BBC’s summary of the current iPhone update story: “Apple issues an update which damages iPhones that have been hacked by users”. I’m not sure that’s quite how Apple’s PR people would have put it, but it’s interesting to see that whoever writes those little summaries for the BBC website found it [...]

(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 [...]

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), [...]

The right to click

By Dan Lockton ⋅ July 4, 2007 ⋅ 14 comments

English Heritage, officially the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England, and funded by the taxpayer and by visitors to some of its properties, does a great deal of very good work in widening public appreciation of, and engagement with, history and the country’s heritage.
But its ViewFinder image gallery website* sadly falls into the [...]

Bad profits

By Dan Lockton ⋅ July 2, 2007 ⋅ 7 comments

The Gillette Sensor Excel not only comes with a dummy blade, it also only comes with two out of five possible blade slots filled. Images from Sevenblock on Flickr.
The razor-blade model in general is something of an old chestnut as far as architectures of control go, and we’ve covered it in a number of [...]

Deliberately creating worry

By Dan Lockton ⋅ June 15, 2007 ⋅ 5 comments

Swedish creativity lecturer Fredrik Härén mentions an interesting architecture of control anecdote in his The Idea Book:
One of the cafés in an international European airport was often full. The problem was that people sat nursing their coffees for a long time as they waited for their planes to depart. The café asked itself: How can [...]

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