Design with Intent

Stuff that matters: Unpicking the pyramid

By Dan Lockton ⋅ January 14, 2009 ⋅ 5 comments

Most things are unnecessary. Most products, most consumption, most politics, most writing, most research, most jobs, most beliefs even, just aren’t useful, for some scope of ‘useful’.
I’m sure I’m not the first person to point this out, but most of our civilisation seems to rely on the idea that “someone else will sort it out”, [...]

How to enjoy taking notes and revising things

By Dan Lockton ⋅ October 1, 2008 ⋅ 2 comments

It occurs to me that it’s now October, and in Britain that really means the summer’s over (though as I write this it’s pleasantly sunny and crisp outside). And despite attending a lot of very interesting talks and events over the past few months, I’ve been very lax at writing them up for the blog. [...]

Exploiting the desire for order

By Dan Lockton ⋅ June 13, 2008 ⋅ 5 comments

I met a lot of remarkable people in Finland, and some of them – they know who they are – have given me a lot to think about, in a good way, about lots of aspects of life, psychology and its relation to design. Thanks to everyone involved for a fantastic time: I was kind-of [...]

Lights reminding you to turn things off

By Dan Lockton ⋅ June 12, 2008 ⋅ 4 comments

Duncan Drennan, who writes the very thoughtful Art of Engineering blog, notes something extremely interesting: standby lights, if they’re annoying/visible enough, can actually motivate users to switch the device off properly:
Our DVD player has (to me) the most irritating standby light that I have ever seen on any device. When on, the light is constantly [...]

The Rebound Effect nicely illustrated

By Dan Lockton ⋅ May 17, 2008 ⋅ 5 comments

The Rebound Effect is a significant problem in energy policy and sustainable design: if new devices are more energy efficient, will users simply use them more, or leave them on for longer? (A kind of Jevons’ Paradox). This UK Energy Research Centre report (PDF, 5 Mb) looks to be a comprehensive, interesting and readable treatment [...]

Do you really need to print that?

By Dan Lockton ⋅ November 6, 2007 ⋅ 13 comments

This is not difficult to do, once you know how. Of course, it’s not terribly useful, since a) most people don’t read the display on a printer unless an error occurs, or b) you’re only likely to see it once you’ve already sent something to print.
Is this kind of very, very weak persuasion – actually [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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