Bureaucracy :: Architectures of Control

(Anti-)public seating roundup

Published July 24th, 2007 in Architecture, Architectures of Control, Art making a point, Bad design, Benches, Built Environment, Bureaucracy, Business model, Civil rights, Consumer rights, Creeping erosion of norms, Design, Design philosophy, Designed to be unpleasant, Discriminatory Architecture, Do artifacts have politics?, Embedding code, Interaction design, Political design, Protest, Public money, Restriction, Sneaky, Social engineering, Spatial, Urban, Usability and User experience. 12 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 staring at the same direction. What kind of sociality do particular product and service features afford and what not?

Comments on Ville’s photo on Flickr make it clear that preventing the homeless lying down is seen as one of the reasons behind the design (as we’ve seen in so many other cases).

The street finds its own uses for things. Photo from Stephanie Jenkins

Ted Dewan - the man behind Oxford’s intriguing Roadwitch project, which I will get round to covering at some point - pointed me to a fantastic photo of the vehemently anti-user seating in Oxford’s Cornmarket Street, which was covered on the blog last year. When I saw the seating, no-one was using it (not surprising, though to be fair, it was raining), but the above photo demonstrates very clearly what a pathetic conceit the attempt to restrict users’ sitting down was.

As Ted puts it, these are:

The world’s most expensive, ugly, and deliberately uncomfortable benches… Still, people have managed to figure out how to sit on them, although not the way the ‘designers’ expected. They might as well have written “Oxford wishes you would kindly piss off” on the pavement.

And indeed they were expensive - the set of 8 benches cost £240,000:

Benches in Oxford’s Cornmarket Street will now cost taxpayers £240,000 - and many have been designed to discourage people from sitting on them for a long time… the bill for the benches - dubbed “tombstones” by former Lord Mayor of Oxford Gill Sanders — has hit £240,000.

…

The seats, made of granite, timber and stainless steel, are due to be unveiled next week but shoppers wanting to take the weight off their feet could be disappointed, because they will only be able to sit properly on 24 of the 64 seats. There is a space for a wheelchair in each of the eight blocks, while the other 32 seats are curved and are only meant to be “perched” on for a short time… Mr Cook [Oxford City planning] said the public backed the design when consultation took place two years ago. He added: “There’s method in our madness. We did not want to provide clear, long benches both sides because we did not want drunks lying across them.”

But a city guide said the council had forgotten the purpose of seating. Jane Curran, 56… said: “When people see these seats and how much they cost, they are going to be amazed.

“They look like an interesting design, but seats are for people to sit on… the real function of a seat has been forgotten.”

Mrs Sanders, city councillor for Littlemore, said: “I said time and again that the council should rethink the design, because I don’t think it’s appropriate for Cornmarket. People who need a rest if they’re carrying heavy shopping need to be able to sit down. If they can’t sit on half the seats it’s an incredible waste of money.”

David Robertson, the county executive member for transport, said: “They have been designed so that the homeless will not be able to use them as a bed for the night.”

Matthew Hincman’s ‘bench object’ installed at Jamaica Pond, Boston, Mass. Photo from WBUR website

Following last week’s post on the ‘Lean Seat’, John Curran let me know about the ‘bench object’ installation by sculptor Matthew Hincman. This was installed in a Boston park without any permission from the authorities, removed and then reinstated (for a while, at least) after the Boston Arts Commission and Parks Commission were impressed by the craftsmanship, thoughtfulness and safety of the piece.

While this is probably not Hincman’s intention, the deliberately ‘unsittable’ nature of the piece is not too much beyond some of the thinking we’ve seen displayed with real benches.

Exeter St Davids station - photo by Elsie esq.

In a similar vein to the Heathrow Terminal 5 deliberate lack of-seats except in overpriced cafés, Mags L Halliday also told me about what’s recently happened at Exeter St Davids, her local mainline railway station:

There are no longer any indoor seats available without having to sit in the café, and the toilets are beyond the ticket barrier. So if you’re there waiting for someone off a late train, after the cafe has closed, you can only sit outside the building, and have no access to the toilet facilities (unless a ticket inspector on the barrier feels kind).
…
[First Great Western] are currently doing their best to discourage people from just hanging around waiting at Exeter St Davids. The recent introduction of barriers there (due to massive amounts of fare dodging on the local trains) has created a simply awful space.
…
If you take a look at the stats, FGW has lost over 5% points for customer satisfaction with their facilities in the last 6 months - I wonder why!

Waiting outdoors for late-night trains, with the cold wind howling through the station, is never pleasant anywhere, but I seem to remember St Davids being especially windy (south-south-west to north-north-east orientation). This kind of tactic (removing seats) might not be deliberate, but if it isn’t, it demonstrates a real lack of customer insight or appreciation. Neither reason is admirable.

UPDATE: Mags has posted photos (slideshow) of the recent changes at Exeter St Davids, along with notes - which also show other poor thinking by First Great Western, alongside the obvious removal-of-seating:

Click to see more notes

This is the only seating freely available at Exeter St Davids if you do not have a ticket (i.e. if you are waiting for someone). Note that one of the two benches is delightfully occupied.

Click to see more notes

Exeter St David’s no longer has any freely accessible indoor seating. This is the view of the increasingly encroached concourse area where you can wait for people. The only toilets are beyond the barriers.

Click to see more notes

Having walked into the main concourse, you have to turn 180 degrees in order to see the departures screen, then 180 degrees back to go through the gates.

What an attractive meeting point!

The right to click

Published July 4th, 2007 in Analog hole, Arbitrary, Architectures of Control, Bad design, Britain, Bureaucracy, Children, Circumvention, Civil rights, Consumer rights, Copyfight, Copyright, DRM, Design, Design attitudes, Design philosophy, Digital rights, Do artifacts have politics?, Education, Intellectual property, Interaction design, Intrusive technology, Killjoy technology, Philosophy of control, Political design, Public money, Restriction, Software, Technical protection measures, Technology policy, Technology underclass, User experience and Your property. 13 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 trap of trying to restrict public engagement rather than make it easy. Yes, someone specified the old ‘right click disabled‘ policy:

English Heritage Viewfinder: right-click disabled
Screenshots of this page, launched from this page.

Now, the image in question - here’s a direct link - which happens to be an engraving of the former Datchet bridge**, in 1840 according to this page (with a colour image) is, even taking English Heritage’s “1860-1922” suggested date range, surely out of copyright, so presumably there cannot be any ‘legal’ question over ‘letting’ people save a copy (which is easiest to do by right-clicking on the most common operating systems and browsers). Using Javascript to remove the browser toolbars and menus also hides the ability to print the image for most users, presumably also deliberately.

Yes, of course, many (most?) readers of this post will know how to get around the no-right-click architecture of control, but you’re reading a technology blog; think of whom the site is presumably aimed at. It is supposed to be a resource to encourage public engagement with history and heritage. Most users will be computer-literate enough to know how to search and probably familiar with right-clicking, but not to mess round with selectively disabling Javascript. Why should they have to? Incidentally, if you do disable Javascript entirely, you can’t even view an enlarged image at all:

English Heritage Viewfinder

What actual use to the public, other than for momentary on-screen interest, is a photo archive website where nothing can be ‘done’ with the images? What is a child doing a local history project supposed to do? Order a print at £18.80 for each photo and then scan it in? Does English Heritage really think that the ability for someone to save or print or e-mail a low-resolution 72 dpi image is going to devalue or compete with the organisation in some way?

It’s ridiculous: such a short-sighted, narrow-mindset policy removes a significant proportion of the usefulness of the site. I don’t know whether the site developer did this with or without English Heritage’s instruction or cognizance (and it was in 2002, so perhaps different thinking would apply today), but it seems that no-one bothered to think through what an actual user might want to get from interacting with the site.

In fact, regardless of the fact that this particular image (as with many others on the site) is in the public domain, even the images which are still under copyright (or “© English Heritage.NMR” as the site puts it, NMR being the National Monuments Record) should, of course, be freely downloadable, printable, and do-whatever-you-want-able. Their acquisition, preservation and cataloguing were paid for by the public, and they should all be available as widely, and easily, as possible. As it is, I would call the website a waste of public money, since it does not appear to offer what most intended users would expect and need.

Still, at least the site’s not one giant bundle of Flash. That would make it marginally more hassle to extract the images.

*Partially funded by the Big Lottery Fund, and thus not entirely directly taxpayer-funded, unless one regards the National Lottery as an extra tax on the hopeful and desperate, which some commentators would.
**Almost exactly the spot where I’ve been testing a prototype radio-controlled toy for a client this very afternoon, in fact, though the bridge is long gone.

Ticket off (reprise)

Published June 30th, 2007 in Architectures of Control, Built Environment, Bureaucracy, Business model, Consumer rights, Corruption, Design, Design philosophy, Designed to be unpleasant, Distasteful corollary, Do artifacts have politics?, Entropy, Fightback Devices, Forcing functions, Gravy train, Hidden persuaders, Interaction design, Intrusive technology, Monopoly, Motoring, Political design, Public money, Rent-seeking, Sneaky, Urban and User experience. 7 Comments

Last year we looked at the way that the pricing structure of no-change-given ticket machines is often - apparently - designed to lead to overpayment, and I posed the question of whether councils/car park operators actually draw up their budget based on a significant proportion of customers overpaying.

Parking ticket machine in Totnes, Devon

I’m still no closer to answering that last question, but I was reminded again of this ‘the house always wins’ idea last week by this ticket machine (above) in Totnes, Devon. Look at the price intervals: 25p, 90p, £1.70, £2.55, £4.20, £5.75 - those are some rather odd figures. The price jumps - 65p, 80p, 85p, £1.65 and £1.55 - are odd in themselves, but given that the machine does not give change, it’s a fairly safe bet that,unless they carry a lot of change, many people parking for 1 hour will pay £1.00 rather than 90p, many 2 hour customers will pay £2 instead of £1.70, and many 3 hour customers will pay some amount larger than the very awkward £2.55. Why not £2.50? What’s the logic behind that extra 5p if not to force overpayment by people not carrying a spare fivepence?

One car park visitor was clearly sufficiently irritated to label the machine with exactly what he or she thought of the pricing policy (third photo above)!

Dublin Bus ticket details at Dublin Airport

An interesting case: Dublin Bus

One detail which was thrown up in the comments last time by Undulattice is that at least one no-change-given policy, that of Dublin Bus, is accompanied by the ability to get a refund if you really want, by taking your receipt to Dublin Bus’s headquarters (which are at least located in a fairly prominent place in the city centre), as explained on signs such as the above (photographed at Dublin Airport earlier this year):

Dublin Bus have operated an ‘Exact Fare - No Change’ policy for years now. In the case of over-payment, they issue a ticket receipt which can be exchanged at Dublin Bus HQ.
Oh, and they don’t accept notes either!

and Damien added this:

I can’t remember which one, but there was a charity in Dublin that started collecting the Bus refund receipts and cashing them as donations. Great idea.

The Jack and Jill Children’s Foundation, St Francis Hospice and Barnardos are among the charities actively asking for the receipts - as Barnardos says:

Did it ever occur to you that you are throwing away real money – and lots of it!

As much as €750,000 a year is going into rubbish bins across the county!!

In 2004 there were over 150 million passenger journeys on Dublin Bus routes right across the city. If ONLY 1% of those journeys were over–paid by 5c that’s a total of €750,000 that often ends up in the bins!

This forum discussion from 2004 suggests (how accurately, I don’t know) that Dublin Bus has more than €9 million in unreturned change. As with the car parking overpayments, how do accounting standards deal with this kind of overpayment arrangement? Can budgets be drawn up based on projections of massive overpayments along these lines? Are there businesses (bus companies, car parks, etc) that are only profitable because of the scale of overpayment? Some forum posts suggest that drivers may pocket and redeem a lot of the receipts themselves, which may further complicate the picture further.

The charity initiatives are a fascinating way to ‘fight the system’ and achieve some good - a mechanism for recovering overpayment en masse - and it does make me wonder just how much overpayment Transport for London’s bus ticket machines receive each year, and how that money is accounted for.

A different strategy

Back to parking ticket machines, Carrie McLaren of the brilliant Stay Free! commented that:

…in New York, like most major cities in the US, parking meters are priced way below their market value - so “the house always wins” claim wouldn’t apply here. Anyone able to find a metered spot is getting a real bargain, even if they don’t have the right change.

This is an interesting strategy, very different to that used by most car parking operations in the UK. Restricting the number of spaces and not deliberately overcharging for them seems to be clearly targeted at discouraging drivers from even thinking of driving into the city, while not ripping off those who need to do so. This generally does not happen in the UK, where parking charges (and fines) are a major revenue source for councils and private operators, and while high charges (and forcing overpayment) may pay lip-service to ‘discouraging traffic’, the still-full car parks would tend to show up that this does not work. I’ll look further at this, and ‘architecture of control’ strategies for parking, in a future post.

Anti-user seating in Oxford

Published March 6th, 2007 in Architecture, Architectures of Control, Bad design, Benches, Britain, Built Environment, Bureaucracy, Consumer rights, Control, Design, Design attitudes, Design engineering, Design philosophy, Designed to be unpleasant, Designers, Do artifacts have politics?, Embedding code, Engineering design, Interaction design, Political design, Product design, Public money, Shopping, Social engineering, Spatial, Urban, Usability and User experience. 19 Comments

Top two photos: A bench on Cornmarket Street, Oxford; Lower two photos: A bus stop ~~seat~~ perch on Castle Street.

While from a very narrow specification point-of-view ‘they do their job’, what utter contempt for users these two seating examples demonstrate! The benches on Cornmarket Street are clearly intended to prevent anyone lying down on them (armrests, small radius of curvature) or indeed sitting for very long at all in comfort (height off the ground, vertical backrest, small radius of curvature). Why? Why despise the public so much?

The designer must have been given a specification requiring all the above features: I can’t believe they just arose out of aesthetic or manufacturing considerations. That bench has been engineered to restrict, control and discipline users. Was it really necessary? Does forcing the homeless to lie on the ground instead, or preventing people sitting comfortably and watching the world go by really ’solve’ any problems?

The bus stop perch - in this particular location intended at least partially for Park & Ride users - is perhaps even worse. It’s angled such that a young child couldn’t easily sit on it without sliding off. An adult has to stretch out his or her legs just to perch. A parent couldn’t sit next to a young child. A shopper would have to put down his or her bags on the ground, since they’d slide off the perch. My girlfriend and I couldn’t rest our drinks on the bench next to us; we had to put them on the ground. OK, that’s not much of a hardship, but it’s just frustrating design, intended to serve objectives other than the users’ benefit or convenience.

You wouldn’t want to wait any longer than necessary at that bus stop. If you were making the decision about whether to drive into Oxford or take the bus to go shopping (assuming cycling not to be an option for this) the unattractiveness of perching at an angle for 15 minutes on that mean strip of perforated sheet would begin to weigh heavily against the public transport option. Sure, you might end up sitting in your car in heavy traffic for 15 minutes, but it’s your car. The seats are comfortable, it’s warm, and you can shape and adjust the environment to suit you.

I don’t want to go off on one here about solving (or easing) Britain’s transport problems, but I do feel that this kind of situation embodies some of the very important issues. By making bus users feel unwanted - despised even - you don’t enhance the image or desirability of the mode of travel. Little details such as this can make a huge difference to perceptions. The buses themselves are great, but if the experience of using the service seems to demonstrate contempt for the user, the user may develop contempt for the service.

Japan may have some of the most explicitly user-unfriendly public benches we’ve come across so far, but there’s also something rather disturbing about the sheer blandness of the bench implementations shown above. Their starkness embodies the thinking behind the design: all possible interaction methods to be reduced down to one sole, pre-defined utility function, with the user not permitted to do anything outside that intentionally myopic definition.

(Incidentally, to be fair, there were some lower seats with horizontal platforms on the other side of the bench in Cornmarket Street. They still had armrests to prevent lying down (or even sitting close to someone), but were not as awful as the curved ones.)

West Coast code meets Far East code

Published March 5th, 2007 in 1984, Architectures of Control, Blogosphere, Bureaucracy, Censorship, China, Civil rights, Communication, Control, Do artifacts have politics?, Exclusion, Hidden persuaders, Indoctrination, Intrusive technology, Orwellian, Political design, Privacy, Propaganda, Regulation, Restriction, Social engineering, Surveillance, Technology policy and Worldwide. 5 Comments

Thanks to Mr Person at Text Savvy, I’ve just learned that this blog is blocked in China:

Images from the Great Firewall of China test.

I don’t know if that’s good or bad. From a censorship point of view, it’s bad, but it’s certainly interesting to be able to say that the blog’s blocked in China, even if it’s just for a rather prosaic reason (using Wordpress?) as Mr Person suggests, and not the incendiary demagoguery contained within these posts and comments.

(Additionally interesting is that as the whole of danlockton.co.uk seems to be blocked, I might not have any more of my portfolio items appearing on Chinese design sites. One site even had me listed alongside Karim Rashid for a while, which was odd and flattering, perhaps, though I don’t think he’ll be losing sleep over it!)

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What are Architectures of Control?

Audi A2 : The user cannot open the bonnet; Bench designed to prevent lying down: 'redesigned to face contemporary urban realities'; Some HP printers shut down the cartridges at a pre-determined date regardless of whether they are empty

Increasingly, many products are being designed with features that intentionally restrict the way the user can behave, or enforce certain modes of behaviour. The same intentions are also evident in the design of many systems and environments.

This site aims—with readers’ input—to examine and analyse the ideas and techniques of these architectures of control in design, through examples and anecdotes, and by keeping up-to-date with relevant developments... More