Very interesting discussion going on right now on the IxDA forums on designing for behavioural change - specifically with a sustainability emphasis - but unfortunately, Brunel University blocks the site (due to Websense), so I can only read/post via e-mail or at home (requests for unblocking “may take up to a week”).
Interaction design and behaviour change
Published May 2nd, 2008 in Architectures of Control, Blogosphere, Brunel, Censorship, Design, Interaction design and Signal blocking. 0 CommentsDesign-Behaviour website launched
Published April 30th, 2008 in Architectures of Control, Blogosphere, Design, Design philosophy, Designers, Environmental, Good design, Interaction design, PhD, Product design, Sustainability, Techniques of persuasion and Technology policy. 0 Comments
Loughborough’s Dr Debra Lilley, who has done extensive research into designing for behavioural change, has just launched an excellent new website, Design-Behaviour, which brings together her research findings and some great examples of behaviour-changing products from different fields to illustrate the approaches identified. The site is:
[A] resource specifically developed to support designers and engineers in exploring how design (in its broadest sense) can influence user behaviour to reduce the social and environmental impacts of products during use… You can use this site to find information about design-led approaches for behavioural change and learn how others have applied these approaches in practice.
Most of the examples on the site relate to design for sustainable behaviour, but there are also some aiming to curb ‘inappropriate’ social behaviour, such as impolite mobile phone use. The next step planned for the site is a discussion of some of the ethical issues surrounding behaviour change and the persuasion-coercion dimension - this is especially important and will be a welcome addition.
Thanks to Debra for letting me know.
Apologies for the delay to this service
Published April 22nd, 2008 in Architectures of Control, Battery vehicles, Blogosphere, Bond Minicar, Brunel, Design, Electric vehicles, Internet economics, PhD, Software and Vague rhetoric. 4 CommentsYou’re owed an apology, dear reader, for the 2-month hiatus with the blog. It’s down to a variety of reasons compounding each other, and alternately forcing me to prioritise other pressing problems, then when I tried seizing the initiative again, frustrating me with technical issues and actually preventing posting. You probably never noticed it, due to the nature of the exploit, but this blog was drawn into this nightmare of invisible insertion of hundreds of spam links into the header and footer, incorporating the URLs of dozens of other similarly attacked Wordpress blogs, redirecting to the spammers’ intended destination.
Continue reading ‘Apologies for the delay to this service’
1st Ballardian Festival of Home Movies
Published February 11th, 2008 in Architectures of Control, Ballardian and Blogosphere. 0 Comments
Simon Sellars, proprietor of the endlessly fascinating Ballardian, has organised a ‘Festival of Home Movies’, inviting mobile phone videos on the ‘Ballardian’ theme, including but not limited to “dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes & the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments”:
In 1984 J.G. Ballard called for a ‘Festival of Home Movies’ and 24 years on we’re happy to oblige: announcing our latest competition, to promote JGB’s forthcoming autobiography, Miracles of Life.
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Closing date for submissions: February 20.
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Selected entries will be hosted on the site and the winner will receive a copy of Miracles of Life along with the forthcoming HarperCollins reissues of Ballard’s Millennium People, The Drought, The Crystal World, The Drowned World and The Unlimited Dream Company.
I’ve been reading Miracles of Life over the last few days, though not in a strictly chronological order (rather, like The Atrocity Exhbition, opening it, finding a paragraph that catches the eye, and continuing in that way). It’s quite poignant, given JGB’s current illness, but somehow very inspiring.
J G Ballard & Architectures of Control
Published January 5th, 2008 in Architecture, Architectures of Control, Articles, Ballardian, Blogosphere, Built Environment, Essays and Spatial. 0 Comments
Over at the brilliant Ballardian, editor Simon Sellars has just published my article ‘J.G. Ballard & Architectures of Control‘, where I take a brief look at how Ballard’s work repeatedly examines ‘the effect of architecture on the individual’ - something central to both the physical and psychological aspects of my research. Many thanks are due to Simon for giving me the opportunity to write for this (very knowledgeable) audience, and I hope I’ve done the subject justice.
Surveillance cameras hung like gargoyles from the cornices, following me as I approached the barbican and identified myself to the guard at the reception desk… High above me, fluted columns carried the pitched roofs, an attempt at a vernacular architecture that failed to disguise this executive-class prison. Taking their cue from Eden-Olympia and Antibes-les-Pins, the totalitarian systems of the future would be subservient and ingratiating, but the locks would be just as strong.
Super-Cannes, chapter 15.
