Persuasive design is a popular topic in user experience these days. In fact, our posts on how your coffee mug (amongst other things) is controlling your feelings was one of our most talked about posts of the year.  For those that would like to take a deep dive into the psychology behind it, Psyblog have an 18 part blog series that’s worth checking out.

As you might expect, some are more easily relatable to UX than others (though it’s handy to know that you can help your cause in convincing someone by getting them wired on caffeine and talking into their right ear). Some of the more transferable tips include:

• If you’re trying to convince someone to do something, presenting a balanced argument will help. Repetition does too … so long as it’s in the background and reasonably believable.
• Men generally respond better to email messages than face-to-face; women are the opposite (thanks to gender conditioning).
• Or if you want the tl;dr version, there’s a list for you: 20 Simple Steps to a Persuasive Message.

Full series here. For those that want a more direct link to design, take a look at last year’s UX Mag piece on persuasive design, or some of our posts on persuasion profiles,  images, or  returning.

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Arrow image NC-BY-CC from Three Legged Cat

How does one end up in UX after counseling delinquent girls and brain injured individuals? This question is one I am asked frequently once people find out the somewhat unorthodox route I took towards my career in UX. With some explanation, the connection between the two areas becomes much clearer and there is greater understanding for how my background in psychology has laid the groundwork for a career in UX.

Others Who Have Followed A Similar Path

It is difficult to think of the connection between psychology and UX without thinking of Donald Norman, as he is the person who set the stage for incorporating aspects of Cognitive Psychology within Interaction Design, one area of User Experience.

Certain basic principles of cognitive psychology provide grounding for interaction design. These include mental models, mapping, interface metaphors, and affordances. Many of these are laid out in Donald Norman’s influential book The Design of Everyday Things.

from Wikipedia

Susan Weischenk, “The Brain Lady” also comes from a background in psychology. She has written books, including Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click?, online articles such as “The Psychologist’s View of UX Design” and has her own blog “What Makes Them Click” where she applies psychology to understanding people for better design.

What I Did

So, how exactly does Psychology relate to User Experience in the practical sense and why did I make the transition from helping people in one context to designing for them in the other? After earning my Masters Degree from Columbia University, Teachers College, I left New York City and moved back to Philadelphia where I worked briefly with juvenile delinquent girls, between the ages of 9 and 13 years old, living in a group home.  With a great mentor and supervisor, I learned how to provide the specific kind of counseling that these girls needed. Lurking beneath the “tough” girls who often threatened others with violence were artists, poets, and overall creative souls. The tough girl behavior was a defense mechanism and how they survived in their world. The girls learned to trust me and share their more tender side. Skills that I learned and started becoming comfortable with during my training in graduate school such as active listening, observation, empathy, and collaboration, I focused on and improved in this setting as well as in my next job. (For more on what dealing with delinquents can teach you about UX, see Brett Lutchman’s post on that very experience). My other job, and one I held for many years, was as an outpatient case manager and clinician in the Drucker Brain Injury Center’s Community Re-Entry Program at MossRehab Hospital. I managed care, therapies and provided counseling. These clients had transitioned from an inpatient stay and were ready to return to career, school, or activity pattern based on their prognosis and level of injury. Frequent collaborative meetings were held to discuss treatment plans and make changes as necessary. On a daily basis, I observed people in various settings, including their own natural home and work environments, to better understand what they were experiencing and their specific difficulties to develop a plan that would help improve their lives. These are the same approaches I bring to my work as a UX designer.

How I Moved Into UX

After the birth of my first child, I needed to find a career that offered more flexibility; one that did not take as much emotional energy and allowed me to work part-time. Working with a brain injured population was one of the most rewarding, yet difficult experiences I have ever had in my life, so the decision to leave did not come easily. I worked with incredibly smart, talented people from different disciplines, within a collaborative environment, much like the team I currently work with as a UX Designer. As I searched options, I decided that web design could be a fun and flexible career. I began taking classes at Penn State Abington for website design.I learned C++, Javascript, Flash, HTML, User Interface design, and usability (among other classes). Once I finished that program, I began to design and develop websites for small businesses. I learned more about user experience, an area related to what I was doing with web design, but involving what I had learned and practiced in the field of psychology. I realized that the skills I had used in my “other life” in Psychology were so aligned with what is practiced in UX that it was a very natural fit.

What I Brought With Me to UX

Ability to understand people’s motivations

Psychology is the study of people’s behavior. Behind that behavior are motivations why someone is doing what they are doing. UX is very similar. We need to understand the “why’s” to design for the behaviors we are trying to elicit, all while making the user feel good about their experience so that they repeat these behaviors.

Research

To understand behaviors that help make our product useful to our clients and their users, we need to conduct research. My background conducting research almost daily in graduate school helped me ease into this part of user experience.

Problem Solving

There is never just one way to solve a problem. Every problem has multiple solutions. Being able to think quickly and offer useful solutions to accommodate multiple variations and desires of the client while satisfying their users is a skill overlapping psychology and  UX. I had a brain injured client who revealed that following her brain injury, her partner began to abuse her. Helping her to develop a variety of options, quickly was important. While the solutions I am expected to come up with in UX are not life-threatening, they can help improve the interactions with a client’s product.

Listening

This skill is one of the most important to learn in life, and oh, so hard for many of us. To make a proper psychological assessment, use of active listening skills helps gain insight into someone’s motivations. Graduate programs in psychology provide a great deal of training and practice in the use of active listening, indicating the level of importance it brings to assessments and therapy. So too, in UX, listening and assessing what our users are saying (or not saying) is one of the most important skills used to assess their behaviors and motivations for performing certain actions.

Observation

As with listening, being able to observe behavior provides such important clues into what a person’s motivations are. Staying out of the users’ way and allowing them to figure things out is a very difficult thing to do, but necessary to see if our design is doing what it was intended to. The only way to do this is to observe and allow the natural process to occur without our influence confounding the results. Evaluations of incoming brain injured clients allowed me to practice this, as it was solely based on observation. The plan of action that needed to be taken became clear, just by watching someone engage in daily activities, such as trying (and often failing) to cook from a written recipe.

Staying out of the users’ way and allowing them to figure things out is a very difficult thing to do, but necessary to see if our design is doing what it was intended to.

Written and oral communication skills

The ability to communicate clearly and effectively is another skill where there is overlap between Psychology and User Experience. This enables an atmosphere of trust and respect to be created which helps get approval from clients concerning design recommendations that are made. The main difference between the two is in the mode of communication. Where I mostly wrote daily notes and reports in Psychology, I now design wireframes with annotations, prototypes, sketches, personas, and storyboarding to explain my process and thinking.

Empathy

Whether in a therapy session or designing for our users, identifying with them through empathy only makes us better at what we do by stepping outside our mindset and into that of another. Whenever I sincerely empathized with my clients and their particular situation, whether a teen girl trying to protect what she believed to rightfully belong to her or a brain injured person who could not remember a conversation he had the night before, it became evident that I cared about them and wanted to help. By demonstrating empathy, I gained a wealth of information that improved the therapeutic process. This naturally translates to UX as showing we care about how the user interacts with our products helps to improve how they interact with our products.

Whenever I sincerely empathized with my clients and their particular situation, whether a teen girl trying to protect what she believed to rightfully belong to her or a brain injured person who could not remember a conversation he had the night before, it became evident that I cared about them and wanted to help.

Collaboration

Probably one of the most enjoyable aspects has been the collaborative process, both on a transdisciplinary team of therapists and working as the user experience designer on a team with designers, developers, product managers and marketers. There is nothing like many individuals expressing themselves (much like a really large, loud family) in the design process to make it fun while coming up with the best solutions for the users.

Iteration

Any time there is a plan of action, there needs to be the ability to change course when things are not working as planned. This is true both in a therapeutic setting as well as when designing. Life is ever changing, as should our work.

Looking to Make the Move?

With an open mind and a great deal of willingness to learn new skills and improve existing ones, transitioning from Psychology to UX can be smooth. My best advice is to network, find a mentor, participate in local groups, attend conferences and read. No matter what discipline you may be coming from, think about the tasks you performed in a generalized way and how they may transition to the field of UX. —- Brain image CC-by-NC from labguest

We always have these thought provoking articles. And other sites always have top 10 UX books… so I thought I’d introduce some lighter material: 10 non-UX books you should read

It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be – Paul Arden

Get the book: Amazon

Without a single doubt I can say that this is for me the best book around when it comes to attitude-changing books. In ‘It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be’ Paul Arden tells a simple, yet powerful story about the importance of doing what you believe in. It explains his attitude and beliefs when it comes to wanting to be the best in what you do. Like the back cover says, it’s “a pocket ‘bible’ for the talented and timid to make the unthinkable thinkable and the impossible possible.”

For me the best quotes in the book (I have tried them and they worked) are:

• “Do not seek praise. Seek critisism.” – because when you seek critisism you are able to improve;
• “It’s all my fault” – only by not pointing to others, but by making mistakes your own are you able to solve problems;
• “Do not covet your ideas” – share your ideas and more will come back to you.

Yotsuba&! – Kiyohiko Azuma

Get the book: Amazon

Each time an intern of mine leaves the company I give him or her a copy of Yotsuba&! Why? Because the stories in the book are a reminder that we are not the user…

Yotsuba&! is a manga series from Japan about a little girl with green hair called Yotsuba. As a reader you follow her around while she discovers the world. You see her go to a festival for the first time, see what she thinks of a washer and many other things. Her innocence and direct response to these things are for me a great reminder that we as designers are not the user and must always design for both the experienced and first time users. And besides: the stories are fun to read.

By now there are a total of 8 manga books published with the stories. They are available in English and are definitely worth your time.

Blink – Malcolm Gladwell

Get the book: Amazon

People make decisions all the time, but what we don’t know is that many of them are made by our subconscious. In a split second it’s possible for us to make great decisions, while our conscious decisions that follow afterwards can be wrong. In this book Gladwell takes us through a series of interesting stories while making slowly making his point about these subconscious decisions. One of the best examples he gives: a museum buys an extremely expensive mummy after months of deep analysis. But the first second an expert sees it he gets the feeling that it is a fake. After a long period they find out that it is in fact a fake mummy.

The book builds up to a theory that Gladwell calls thin-slicing. According to the author it is all about reducing the amount of information so that an easy decision can be  made. By picking out the slice that is relevant to you (with your specific expertise) it is possible to make decisions in a blink.

Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino

Get the book: Amazon

Invisible Cities is a book that is experienced, rather than read. Not in an expansive, descriptive way – the novel is a mere 166 pages – rather, as if Mozart had been a writer. Taking place as a series of conversations between the explorer Marco Polo and emperor Kublai Kahn, the book has the feeling of the state of mind between dreams and reality – evocing deeper meanings without ever being too clever about it  (though apparently the structure of the novel is very clever indeed, employing such techniques as the Fibonacci sequence and sine waves). We’re never entirely sure if the cities that are talked about – the titular Invisible Cities, Cities and the Dead, Hidden Cities – are ones that Polo believes he has visited, or fables for the grumpy emperor.

If I had to suggest a book that captured what magic was, it’d be this one.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat – Oliver Sacks

Get the book: Amazon

Just as truth can be stranger than fiction, the workings of the human mind can be more engrossing than any novel. ‘The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat‘  brings together case studies (but think observations rather than papers) from neurologist Oliver Sacks‘ patients into an engaging insight into the effects of maladies of the mind – the title comes from a patient with visual agnosia (unable to recognise faces, he once mistook his wife’s head for a hat), while other interesting cases include synaesthesia and priopreception.

While Sacks has written many other interesting books that give the layman access into psychology, this remains my favourite because of its range of studies (his later books tend to focus on one subject, such as music).

Enchantment – Guy Kawasaki

Get the book: Amazon

How come that companies like Apple are able to create such enchanting products while others fail? How can one person with the same message get agreement from a crowd while another doesn’t even get their attention? In this book Guy Kawasaki explains to us the power of enchantment, which is “the art of changing hearts, minds, and actions.”

Through many different examples Kawasaki shows us what it takes to become an enchanting person. He gives tips about the clothes you must wear depending on the people you interact with. The stuff you say and moments you can swear and get away with it. And he jumps into the use of social media, where presentations, Twitter and e-mail are great push technologies and Facebook, Youtube and LinkedIn are pull technologies to pull the crowd in.

A very fun book to read that will not make you enchanting in an instant, but it will definitely put you on the right track.

Fun fact: did you know it took 260 designers to come up with the book cover? Check the story behind Enchantment’s cover.

101 Things I Learned in Architecture School – Matthew Frederick

Get the book: Amazon

We know like nobody else that we can learn much from other fields, among which archicture must be one of the most inspirational. So can you imagine what a wealth of knowledge is packed in this tiny book? Matthew Frederick wrote down no less than 101 learnings that he wants to share with us. He presents each thought with a short description and one image, making it very easy to scan and function like a little book filled with zen.

In the book he jumps from one level to the other, describing things about drawing techniques, ways of thinking, presenting, and of course how to create better architecture. And a lot of the ideas in this book are very usable for any designers. It absolutely inspired me the first, second and third time I read this book. Some of his learnings:

• An effective oral presentation of a studio project begins with the general and proceeds toward the specific;
• A static composition appears to be at rest;
• A dynamic composition encourages the eyes to explore;
• An architect knows something about everything. An engineers knows everything about one thing;
• Properly gaining control of the design process tends to feel like one is losing control of the design process.

We all seem to be talking about changing behaviour through good design…but changing behaviour is actually really hard.  Working as a psychologist in a detox unit at the start of my career has admittedly shaped my view of what it takes to change someone’s behaviour; and whilst I learnt it certainly isn’t impossible, it often takes time. Combine this with the fact that most human behaviour is not considered to be overly planned, with ‘conscious thought’ playing, at best, a small role in shaping our choices…things start to become a little tricky for us as designers.  So how do we start to make sense of what influences someone to change their behaviour, given we are often charged with creating designs that are ultimately intended to encourage, if not drive, some form of behaviour change?

Behaviour Change, One Step at a Time(r)

An egg timer – the catalyst of change

Can you recall when you last changed your behaviour and maintained that change for an extended period of time?  The last time I can recall was triggered a few years ago when I received a four minute egg timer in the post.  Our state was then in the height of a drought, and a local government agency (Melbourne Water) had sent the egg-timer out to encourage sustainable water use.

When I first opened the envelope I promptly put it next to our bathroom sink in the hope it would make my young children brush their teeth longer than their current ten second swill.  Not surprisingly, it didn’t.  So it sat near the sink for several months until one day I looked at it and thought, “how about I actually put this in the shower…”.

Almost immediately some things happened.  Firstly I had to learn to shower within the four minutes it allowed.  This took a surprising amount of time and effort.  However, once I had mastered that, I felt incredibly guilty if I stayed in the shower for any longer than the time it allowed, and so was compelled to the timer. (Now, for the few rare times I am under the shower for longer than four minutes, I have a mental bank of time in credit so I can justify the extravagance.)

What’s fascinating is that while it took a while for the device to find its way to the intended context, once it was there the initiative to change was almost immediate, and the result easy to maintain.  The presence of such a small thing, positioned in the right context, made such a huge impact on my behaviour.

Why It Matters to Designers

Design has always facilitated change in behaviour, especially in the area of technology, but it seems lately that design for behaviour change is in the forefront of people’s awareness.  Part of the challenge is understanding what actually influences someone to change their behaviour in the first place.

As experience design researchers we quite often focus on what people do, and why they do it, so we can incrementally design better products, services and systems to ultimately improve the customer perception of a client’s brand.  However, one of the most important things we need to be mindful of when designing for behaviour change is that we must also focus on the ‘future’ view of how we want people to behave with what we create.  We need to consider the end-state behaviour ideals that we are aiming for when we are designing.

As Henry Ford says, “if I had have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse”: people can’t project beyond their current experience to meet a future need.  That’s the designer’s job.  The following models of behaviour change are useful to consider when working on projects.

The A B C of behaviour

The most basic tenet of behavioural analysis is to view behaviours as a function of a person and their environment.  That is, something happens to precede behaviour (the antecedent) which in effect causes or influences the behaviour, resulting in a consequence.  We can’t change a person, but we can influence the way they behave by shaping the environment they function within.

What this model shows us is we can shape behaviour, and generally the easiest way to do this is through some form of positive reinforcement or removal of a negative.

As designers, the important part of this basic model when applied to behavioural observations is that your design is the positive reinforcer, or the negative affect; meaning the behaviour you are observing is quite often a direct result of your design.

This shows us through good design we have the ability to shape and influence someone’s behaviour. (Unfortunately this is true for bad design too!)

We can’t change a person, but we can influence the way they behave by shaping the environment they function within … through good design we have the ability to shape and influence someone’s behaviour.

The Theory of Planned Behaviour

The Theory of Planned Behaviour, proposed by Icek Ajzen, (and a modification of Ajzen & Fishbern’s earlier model called the Theory of Reasoned Action) explains the link between attitudes and behaviours; it essentially proposes a model for how human action is guided.  Today, it is thought to be one of the most predictive persuasion theories.

The Theory of Planned Behaviour by Icek Ajzen

The model highlights what influences a persons decisions, and attempts to reveal why we might make certain choices. The model suggests that in order to predict whether a person intends to do something, we need to know:

• Whether the person is in favour of doing it (attitude);
• How much the person feels social pressure to do it (subjective norm);
• Whether the person feels in control of the action in question (perceived behavioural control).

Without going too deeply into the cognitive side of things, it’s important to keep in mind that behaviour is often not intentional or controlled at all.   With conscious thought believed to play a small role in the decision making process.

Nevertheless, we need to keep this model in mind, because if we can understand the attitudes of customers and what influences the choices they make, we are better able to use this information to design solutions that will resonate with their belief system, and ultimately, have a greater chance of influencing them to change their behaviours.

The Stages of Change Model

Another useful model is the Stages of Change Model proposed by Prochaska & DiClemente, which is arguably one of the most dominant models of health behaviour change.  This model outlines several steps in the behavioural change process, and assists to gauge an individual’s readiness to act on a new healthier behavior, and provides strategies or processes of change to assist someone move through the stages of change toward action and long-term maintenance (i.e., sustained change).

The model broadly suggests that people can cycle in and out, and around several times before sustained change is realised, then maintained for the long term.

Stages of Change Model by Prochaska & DiClemente

The stages in the change cycle are broadly noted to be:

• Pre-contemplation
• Contemplation
• Preparation or determination
• Action
• Maintenance
• Termination (100% self efficacy)
• Relapse (cycle back to an earlier stage).

Taken together, the models can help us as designers understand how people might make certain choices (Theory of Planned Behaviour), and consider ‘where’ in the cycle of change an individual may be (Stages of Change Model), in order to assist them move through these stages toward a new behaviour.

The Models in Real Life

The Models can be tied back to my egg timer experience. An environmental trigger (the water crisis) was accompanied by social norms of the time around saving water in Melbourne, so my senses were highly attuned to this and my motivation to comply was high.  I thought I was incredibly conscious of the amount of water I was using, however, the real game changer was the arrival of the egg timer in the post; this tool forced me to see how long I actually took when I was in the shower.

Applying the models to my situation of behaviour change

Once this tool was placed in the correct context I observed a dramatic change in my water conserving habits, so clearly I was ready for ‘action’, according to the Stages of Change model.  What is more, internalisation of this behaviour has resulted, and behaviour change has been maintained across a substantial period of time.

So looking at basic behavioural analysis – or the ABC of my behaviour – the tool was the Antecedent, and the Consequence was that I felt better about having a shorter shower and saving water…less guilt if you like.  So the result was that I adjusted my behaviour to shower in less time, and quite rapidly too.

What else can influence behaviour change?

Don’t Forget Rules …

Melbourne Bike Service

Rules undoubtedly affect mass behaviour change.  However, the change they make may not always be what is expected.

One example comes from Melbourne’s new bike share service – and the problems caused by the government’s laws requiring users to have and wear a helmet while using it. From a behavioural perspective, how about considering the behaviour the government were hoping to change with the introduction of helmet laws in the 1990’s, and how it’s fared?

Helmets laws were first introduced as a way to assist lower the level of head injuries sustained by cyclists.  And as with many behaviour change initiatives, we are now – some time down the track – in a position to assess if the laws assisted, by comparing injury rates before and after the laws were introduced.

Graphs of cyclist hospital injuries in Victoria with and without head injuries (1995) show that while head injuries were reduced, so were non-head injuries – so perhaps all they did is reduce the number of cyclists?  If anything, the peaks and troughs show that seasonal variation (i.e., winter), appears to have had the greatest impact of all, and that helmet laws have done little, if anything, to improve safety.

Cyclists hospital admissions in Victoria with and without head injuries

Today we want to design services and provide infrastructure that encourages use of bikes, and unfortunately, when we reflect on it from a behaviour change perspective, having to wear helmets appears to have caused a decline in the number of cyclists.

The assumption that all cyclists would adopt helmets because it was the law appears to have caused behaviours within the wider population that were very different from those initially expected.

… Or Fun!

Fun – children understand it!

But what if there are no rules (the world most of us work within)?

It is possible to change someone’s behaviour, particularly through fun.

Ralph Koster’s book A Theory of Fun for Game Design (2004) looks into the meaning and significance of fun. He suggests that fun is the element of life that is enjoyable and frees us from the normal stresses of the everyday – and also the means by which we retrain our brain to learn new patterns of behaviour.

Fun is the means by which we retrain our brain to learn new patterns of behaviour.

The explosion of games and apps on mobile phones show that games present a real opportunity to change people’s behaviours and habits. Examples include Frog’s Tempt’d (resisting the temptation of unhealthy eating through leaning on your social network as DesignMind explains), and Runkeeper (a way to track, measure and improve your workouts).  I’ve also heard of great ideas for encouraging people to save money, water and energy  through a game-like applications.  Watch this space! The game explosion and their application for driving positive behaviour change is going to intensify.

Design for Behaviour Change? Yes We Can.

So, we can change behaviour through design of products, services and systems, and the best way to do this is to first consider the customers culture and context, before we even start on ideas.

However, if we hope to design behavioural change, we’ll need to focus beyond what is happening right now.  One way to ensure we are looking ahead is to be mindful of the behaviour we want to observe in the future. Set behavioural goals, just as you would set design goals, and let this guide your strategy and design process.

Here are a few takeaways to consider when you are designing solutions that need to drive behaviour change.

1. Define the desired behaviour change you want to observe;
2. Feed this into the business strategy and design process, let it guide these processes;
3. Define your target audience, then go a bit outside the norm.  You often learn more from those who don’t meet your assumed or expected specifications;
4. Conduct research and understand the behavioural predictors of the population (attitudes, norms, control, stages of change).  Qualitative and quantitative data is needed here;
5. Monitor, measure and modify.  Remember, changing a behaviour can take time, so let’s be patient!

References

• Stages of Change Model, Prochaska & Diclemente (1982).
• The Theory of Planned Behavior, Icek Ajzen (1985). [PDF]
  
• The Theory of Reasoned Action, Fishbein & Ajzen (1975).
• Evaluation of the bicycle helmet wearing law in Victoria during its first four years; D. Carr, M. Skalova & M.H. Cameron (1995).
• A Theory of Fun for Game Design, Ralph Koster (2004).
• Tempt’d (site, soon to be app). More information on the initiative on DesignMind.
  
• Runkeeper (app/site)

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Image Credits:

• Egg timer in shower –  Source: Jannygirl on Flickr.
• ABC blocks, Change Model and Theory of Planned Behaviour Model courtesy of Symplicit.
• Melbourne Bike Share System – Source: Mikael Colville-Andersen on Flickr.
• Head injuries [graph] – Source: D. Carr, M. Skalova & M.H. Cameron (1995).
• Girl – Source: Crackpotstudio on Flickr. © Royalty-Free/Corbis.

As interaction designers, we’re keenly aware of the explicit meanings in words and images. But how many of us also focus on the what is suggested by our words and images?

What does a "base camp" make you think of?

Consider Basecamp. For a project management tool aimed at “the Fortune 5,000,000,” it would be difficult to find a better a product name than “Basecamp.” With one simple word, so much is suggested: A base camp is the safe place from which to plan your trek to the summit. Base camps are positioned to be safe from the harsher conditions above. It’s where you return to. And think of the folks who’d be staying in a base camp—likely a small, adventurous team. It’s the perfect product name to appeal to the small businesses who use 37 Signals’ project management tool.

We’re all keenly aware of the explicit meanings in words and images—we talk ad nauseam about everything from clean button labels to accessible content. But how many of us also focus on what is suggested by our words and images?

Great poets are masters of imagery. Skilled speakers know how to phrase and frame their arguments in a way that is difficult for their listeners to resist. Artists and comedians thrive or fail based on our ability to connect the dots. Words, images, animations—these elements all work on a suggestive level that (whether we’re aware of it or not) affects our recall, judgment, and decision making.

A Little Psychology

Here’s a little trick from psychology. Let’s say we’re having a conversation and I want to nudge the conversation in a certain direction; I want to influence what comes to mind for you. To do this, I might try using associative priming. Basically, I’ll tell a few stories or inject specific language into our conversation that your brain will pick up on, bringing associated mental objects into short term memory. A few minutes later, I might ask you a certain question. If I’ve done a good job at priming, there’s a good chance I can predict how you might respond (I suspect this is one way magicians are able to predict what someone is thinking!).

For example, let’s suppose I asked you to name some kinds of “blue boxes.” If a few minutes earlier we had been talking about wedding bands and jewelry, you’re much more likely to think of Tiffany’s blue box. If instead we were talking about science fiction and time travel, you’re much more likely to think of Doctor Who’s iconic telephone box, the Tardis. Our brains are constantly working to make associations. Assuming you’re familiar with Tiffany’s or (a riskier assumption) Doctor Who, our earlier discussion would have “primed” your brain, making it much easier for you to recall a thought or idea not entirely of your own choosing.

Here’s a simpler example: If I was to say “the dog was chasing the ____,” what word comes to mind? If you said “cat,” that’s consistent with most of the population. Our brains think and learn by associations and analogies. Even if the rest of that sentence was “squirrel” or “piece of trash being blown by the wind,” our brains are primed to think “cat” is what comes next. If you can make a reasonable guess about the associations your audience might make, priming can be a powerful tool, as evidenced by politicians and other kinds of persuasive speakers.

Most studies I’ve seen focus on linguistic priming, but what about ways we can use visuals to prime an audience?

Visual Priming and Semiotics

Classic advertisement for Panzani pasta

Our brains are trained to make associations. This is a basic way we learn and acquire knowledge, leveraging what we already know to make sense of new information. Just as specific words or phrases might trigger an association, images can do the same thing. This idea is nothing new to advertisers.

Our brains are trained to make associations. This is a basic way we learn and acquire knowledge, leveraging what we already know to make sense of new information. Just as specific words or phrases might trigger an association, images can do the same thing.

In 1964, the French philosopher Roland Barthes published his paper “The Rhetoric of Image,” which deconstructs an ad into three messages: the “linguistic” message, the “coded iconic” message and the “non-coded iconic” message. What we’re talking about here are the “coded iconic” messages associated with specific images, that is, those things suggested or associated with the literal objects pictured. In Barthes’ example, he discusses how the choice to show beautiful, fresh vegetables (and a box of pasta displaying a brand name) in a mesh grocery bag suggests freshness, plenty, and even “Italianicity” (in the yellow, green, and red of the tomato and peppers). A certain still-life aesthetic is also suggested. All in all, these are very positive brand associations. That’s nice for selling things. But how might we use this idea help us design better interactions?

When Decoration Isn’t

I’ve been working on an application focused on formal businesses meetings. I emphasize formal, as you might find this a bit burdensome for things like lunch meetings or daily standups.

'Add Meeting' form

To clearly communicate this intent, we’ve chosen design elements that evoke a more formal business atmosphere. The most overt of these is the background image used on the form page where a new meeting is added:

Although this boardroom image might be viewed as texture or decorative ornamentation, it serves a functional role in this application.

First, we’re hoping people have a favorable response to the overall feel, as this is one of the first pages encountered by new users. But beyond any perceived attractiveness, we need to communicate the intent of this Web app. Chances are, most people will skip past all but the shortest of written explanations. In the same way that microcopy, clear labels, and icons are explicit cues to help out users, we are using this image to suggest—through connotation—the kinds of meetings where we think this tool will be most valuable. We use this specific image to suggest board meetings, staff meetings, presentations to a VP, planning sessions—the kinds of formal meetings that would take place in that conference room.

Additionally, this imagery was included as a prime for the “meeting type” form field. In the event that people don’t read the microcopy that cues people as to kinds of meetings you can create, this image is our backup. It’s decoration that suggests usage. Or at least that is the intent.

Elsewhere in the same application we use a more subtle cue to suggest a degree of formality:

Accepting a request

What does the ornamental border bring to mind? Perhaps a certificate or legal contract? This is a key area of the application—asking people to accept a request made of them during the meeting. We want everything about this page, from the literal language to the associative visual elements to suggest the seriousness of this moment: You are about to make a commitment to another person, a commitment that will be visible to everyone in that meeting. Do you intend to follow through on this commitment?

To be clear, these are subtle nudges. And they may be difficult to quantify. But there’s good reason to justify these aesthetic choices, for what they say and what they suggest.

Avoiding Negative Associations

The layout and photography used by Groupon bring to mind high-end catalogs (click for a larger image)

Here’s another example from the Groupon site. For the uninitiated, Groupon offers “one ridiculously huge coupon each day, on the best things to eat, see, do and buy in [your city].” I’ve purchased gift cards for everything from a favorite Thai restaurant to an artisan cheese shop. Their daily deals are typically on the classier side—think salons, fancier restaurants and shopping. These are not closeout deals like you’d find on other “deal” sites. In fact, I believe Groupon wants to avoid any suggestion of a “cheap” deal. Consider the photography and layouts they use in their daily deals. The photography is usually top notch. And the layout style brings to mind high end catalogs.

That’s an example of positive associative priming. But here’s an interesting discovery I made while researching the site: in earlier versions of the site, Groupon used the familiar dotted line or scissor clipping design element to border their deals, a design choice that has since been dropped for a simpler solid border.

Why do you think Groupon dropped the coupon style border?

Why did they lose the scissors and the association with coupon clipping? I suspect this goes back to communicating a “value” message versus one that suggests cheap clearance. This would be an example of avoiding what for them would be a negative (cheap) association.

On that note, have you ever wondered why the original iPod Nano resembled (and was compared to) a stick of gum? Think about how that association might have shaped perceptions.

Concept Models and Metaphors

Visual priming is also a powerful tool in print contexts. Below is a poster I created to explain The Fundamentals of Experience Design. The content of the model should, in and of itself, be fascinating, but that’s not what attracted people to this poster. No, what people found most striking about this was the floating chunk of earth.

On the surface, it is a fairly intriguing image. But what associations come to mind? Conceptually, this functions the same way as the cliché iceberg model we see everywhere—there is the obvious stuff everyone sees, and below that the critical stuff that gets overlooked. But if we consider this visual metaphor a bit more, we might also think about the roots. An experience (the grass above) that has no roots is likely to result in tumbleweeds. However, the deeper our roots go, the stronger our foundation. These are good associations. Beyond the conceptual suggestions, though, consider the style of the illustration. Does it resemble technical illustrations you might find in an academic textbook? Not a bad association if you wanted your ideas to be taken seriously!

I could go on, but you get the idea: The images we use, the words we choose– whether we’re aware of it or not, they function at an associative level that can (if given conscious attention) work in our favor. What are you suggesting?

UX London 2010

This is just one of many such ideas from psychology that Stephen will be sharing at the UX London conference (May 19-21), in both his Seductive Interactions talk and his Concept Models Workshop.

We always try to apply user centered design, thinking what the world should be like for people. But what if we would turn it around. What does a person look like to a computer? That’s the question Dan O’Sullivan and Tom Igoe asked themselves.

On the left you see the answer to Dan O’Sullivan and Tom Igoe’s question (from the book “Physical Computing”) of “What does a person look like to a computer?” In other words, to most computers with a mouse, keyboard, and graphical user interface “We might look like a hand with one finger, one eye, and two ears.” (2002, ppxi-xix).

After the 40th anniversary of the “Mother of All Demos” (where Doug Engelbart premiered that very interface), it’s worth taking a look at a few newer devices and how they might ‘see us. Let’s take a look…

Remote controls

To a remote (and its related TV/VCR/dimmer lights), all that you are is a finger. But, like a person with a voodoo doll, that finger through the remote wields a great deal of power – able to put something to sleep with a single, well placed prod. (Try thinking of that the next time you’re cursing at your DVD player.)

Mobile phones

Early mobile phones (portable phones) saw us as a mouth, ear and finger – usually from a car where they were installed. Once their batteries were small enough to be truly mobile, they would suddenly have become aware of us having arms (and pockets), and with the advent of the screen, us having eyes.  However, the most “eye opening” moment for mobile phones has to have been with the advent of flip phones (as  popularised in The Matrix). At that point, mobile phones could see that we had hands capable of manipulating them… something the iPhone has lost.

iPhone

And on to that darling of multi-touch, the iPhone. Ironically, in some ways, the iPhone sees us less than many mobile phones – we might have quite a few tentacles (after all, it’s all about stroking, not clicking), but no opposing thumbs. That said, we’re definitely something big and powerful, since we can affect the accelerometers by rotating the device. And add-ons like the Heart Monitor Application might make an iPhone realise we are alive ….

Wii

Finally, the Wii is interesting in that it begins to not only see us as entire bodies (fingers, arms, eyes), but even as more than one person.

So why might we want to look at devices in this way? According to O’Sullivan and Igoe, “…to make the computer a medium for expression, you need to describe the conversation you what to have with (or better yet, through) the computer” (pix). More pragmatically, it’s a quick way to challenge your own perceptions about how a device might work. After all, it’s easy to forget that not everything sees the world the same way as we do.

Photos: litmuse (HAL), ThunderChild tm (remote), debagel (Nokia NHK-6AX), William Hook (iPhone), chispita_666 (Wii). All under a Creative Commons Licence

One of the best reads on tangible interactions I came across lately is a paper from Standford Univeristy HCI Research group. It is titled: How Bodies Matter: Five Themes for Interaction design. In it they use theories from psychology, sociology and philosophy to come up with five themes for designing tangible interactions. Because they bring all these sciences together on one subject, it offers some interesting insights in the field of tangible interactions.

The themes

1. Thinking through doing - Here they discuss how the body and mind are deeply integrated and how they co-produce learning and reasoning. It makes you realize how important tangible interactions are throughout our lives. Thinking/learning through doing is the way we learned how to walk, talk and ride a bicycle. Even the way we’ve been able to create a general understanding of our direct environment is a product of such interactions.

Gestures also play a big role in this process. It is said that next to just being a visual or sensory aid, they also lighten the cognitive load. Even blind people use gestures. A interesting conclusion they draw here is that systems which constrain our gestural abilities are likely to hinder our thinking and communications. They make a reference here to the mouse and keyboard.

Another interesting point they make is about epistemic action (the way we manipulate the environment to get a better understanding of things). In a game of Tetris, when someone gets better, the amount that he/she rotates the block before it is placed between the others, actually increases instead of decreases. It’s the same with scrabble; players that are better, move around the letters on their plate way more often than others.

2. Perfomance – With this they mean the complex performance of what our bodies are capable of. How we are able to master the use of an object to such an extend that it becomes an extension of ourselves is quite extraordinary when you think about it. Surgeons and musicians are an example they use. They do this every day, using their hands to operate their tools. Yet such rich interactions are hardly used in today’s human-computer interaction.

3. Visibility – This is about the the role of objects in collaboration and cooperation. Here they refer to a study about the use of flight strips in air traffic control. Air traffic controllers used these paper flight strips to make a physical representation of the airplanes. The outcome was that the person was managing the strips he had laying down in front of him thereby managing the air traffic, not the other way around. Visibility facilitates coordination.

But there are more ways visibility plays a role. Think about how we can learn skills by looking at someone else performing a task. Or why we still go to concerts while we can also listen to the music at home.

4. Risk – Tangible interactions come with a certain risk. Where we can undo our actions in a digital environment, in a physical environment they are often permanent. Therefore it demands more commitment and trust to perform a physical action compared to a virtual one.

Because there is more risk involved, people also tend to have a bigger sense of personal responsibility. That’s partially due because the consequences of their acts are visible and there for others to see. An interesting example of this which isn’t mentioned in the paper is Hans Monderman’s approach to road engineering. He was a Dutch road engineer and innovator who came up with the idea to make roads look more dangerous, and as a result to that, they became more safe. This was al due to the fact that people payed better attention.

5. Thickness of practice – This is about the tangible vs. the intangible. Technology has provided us with reliable and accurate systems. A intangible replacement for the tangible. The point they’re trying to make here is that though intangible solutions have their advantages, we should take great care before replacing the tangible with the intangible without reflecting upon it. There is just so much in the physical world we could benefit from.

Where did all the tangible interactions go?

That’s what this paper made wonder. How can it be that today’s most widely used human-computer interaction is still based on a mouse and keyboard. Tangible interactions play such an important role throughout our lives. Even in our design process, almost every time when we need to get creative or get more insight into something, we result in tangible methods. We start sketching on paper or brainstorming on a whiteboard or with post-its, we create physical prototypes or do field research.

I believe that a tight cooperation of the tangible and intangible can result in a much richer experience. Good progress is being made nowadays. Tangible interactions are starting to enter the field of mainstream human-computer interaction (look at the iphone or the nintendo Wii). However it’s still far from reaching it’s full potential.

The paper is called: ‘How Bodies Matter: Five Themes for Interaction Design’ and is written by Scott R. Klemmer, Björn Hartman and Leila Takayama. It is published in 2006 and can be found here amongst other Stanford HCI publications. It’s an absolute must read for everyone involved in experience design.

That is the title of a paper written by Donald Norman, of which the last revision was published on August the 21st, 2008. In it he comes with eight design principles for waiting lines. These principles aim at designing the most efficient waiting line which is the least painful for the people in it. The interesting thing about it is that these principles apply to all services. Therefore they can also be related to the findings of the research about progress bars which we’ve published earlier.

The principles

1. Emotions Dominate – This one is the most important of all. All the other principles aim at ensuring a positive emotional reaction. Here Norman draws a parallel with the waiting lines in the Disney theme parks where people are placed in pleasant and attractive surroundings, and are entertained by cast members in costumes. All this to ensure positive emotions. Because emotions are contagious, they dominate.

Get people in a good mood and keep them there. Emotions dominate everything else.

1. Eliminate Confusion: Provide a Conceptual Model, Feedback and Explanation – From the start it should be clear how the line works and how people should proceed. How long do I have to stand in line and what can I expect?
2. The Wait Must Be Appropriate – People should be aware of the reason why they’re waiting, and why it takes this amount of time. When people agree over it’s unavoidability, they perceive the wait as reasonable.
3. Set Expectations, Then Meet or Exceed Them – For a positive experience, expectations should be exceeded. Expectations are set by ones model, of what’s going on. If people end up waiting longer than they expected, this results in negative emotions.
4. Keep People Occupied: Filled Time Passes More Quickly Than Unfilled Time – This is due to the fact that how we perceive time and distance varies depending on the context we’re in.

Keep them moving fast, keep them appear to be short, keep them filled with interesting things to look at, interesting activities to do.

1. Be Fair – In this case fair means that nobody has an unfair advantage. Are people helped in the same order as they arrive, or is there a way to cut in line? When a waiting-line is perceived as being unfair, negative emotions arise.
2. End Strong, Start Strong – Research shows that the start and ending of an experience is critical in determining one’s memory of it. When someone’s memory of an event is a positive one, he/or she is more likely to return.
3. Memory of an Event Is More Important Than the Experience – The memory of an event lasts much longer than the event itself. One’s future behavior is determined by the memories he/she has. Make sure these memories are positive.

Applying it to other services
Now have a look at the findings of the research about progress bars. The ones that where perceived as being the fastest where the ones that increased in speed when reaching the end of the bar. If you compare the principles to these findings, there is some overlap as well as some complementation.

When looking at Norman’s principles, the reason why these bars where perceived as being the fastest is probably due to the fact that they exceed expectations (principle 4). The expectations are set in the beginning (principle 7) and are based on the speed of the bar at that specific moment. When the speed keeps increasing towards the end, the user ends up waiting less time than he/she expected. But what if you would keep people occupied, or create some understanding why they’re waiting this specific amount of time? Would it be perceived as being even faster? Would it result in a more positive experience?

It’s worth to have a look at these principles while designing products, services and interactions to see how they can be optimized. Also when evaluating existing ones, they often offer good (and sometimes surprising) insight of how they can be improved. The paper can be found here on Donald Norman’s website where he publishes a variety of essays and interviews about design.

Why can some people develop their talents, while others can’t? This question was answered in 2006 by psychology professor Carol Dweck, in her book ‘Mindset, the new psychology‘. Dweck states that the issue doesn’t lie in the ability to develop, but in the mindset of every individual. Whether you think you have to show what you’ve got or act as though it’s part of developing yourself makes an absolute difference in your ability to actually develop.

According to Dweck there are two kinds of mindset. First of all there is the fixed mindset. People think that their traits are just given. A kind of ‘what you see is what you get’ approach. If I’ve got this talent, then this is what I have to do it with. According to Dweck ‘people in this mindset worry about their traits and how adequate they are. They have something to prove to themselves and others.’

Failure is information—we label it failure, but it’s more like, ‘This didn’t work, I’m a problem solver, and I’ll try something else.’

On the other hand you’ve got the growth mindset. Here people believe they have the ability to further develop their talents. They believe in getting better by working hard and learning. These people ‘understand that no one has ever accomplished great things—not Mozart, Darwin, or Michael Jordan—without years of passionate practice and learning.’

The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.

It’s really interesting to look at people from this perspective. Growth mindsets will more easily push themselves to the limit in order to succeed. When dealing with Fixed mindsets you have to first try and change their mindset. How would this be possible? Is this a proces that costs some time or can you easily influence people? Maybe we have to influence them at the moment when ‘our products’ start to interact with them. Preparing them for what’s coming and thus making them more willing to push themselves.

The image below gives a simple overview of the differences between the two mindsets (download as pdf).

This is a short but interesting interview with professor Dweck on the topic:

Top photo by: Reigh LeBlanc