– dave

“I have to admit that I’m also quite shocked that some interaction designers don’t see what they do as influencing behavior.”.

Design doesn’t influence behavior, it facilitates. it. The user already has an intention with software, IxD just makes it as easy as possible for that intention to happen. Isn’t that the point of user research?

Read my blog to understand my point better. I’m not avoiding anything.

Point well-taken — but I think if “social” or any kind is involved in or around the design, in so much as design facilitates social practices, then the user’s interest in communicating and interacting with others has to move up the chain some. When the user is engaged in mediated communication, the design and its features, architecture, and so on are but part of the interaction. User-application-user interaction involves concerns different from those in user-application interactions. The user becomes involved in the success and failure, as well as the many different forms and modes, of interacting with others.

We might “manipulate” the user’s experience by means of design, but we need a richer language or framework for grasping how those interactions between users scale and reinforce one another. Social media permit a unique kind of social interaction — one approached with user-centricity but extended to different kinds of social interactions.

cheers,
adrian

To me the problem w/ your framing is my problem w/ UCD in general which is that UCD limits design’s goals to those of the human’s goals. But if “social change” is your goal then you will use user research not to learn their goals per se in the same light, but rather to learn how to manipulate (in all its negative and positive contexts) user goals towards a higher purpose.

Now like any other tool, it is not the tool itself that is morally to blame for outcomes, but the user of the tool. But just b/c it can be done for bad doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it at all. That is between you, your G-d, your neighbor, etc.

“I have to admit that I’m also quite shocked that some interaction designers don’t see what they do as influencing behavior.”.

Design doesn’t influence behavior, it facilitates. it. The user already has an intention with software, IxD just makes it as easy as possible for that intention to happen. Isn’t that the point of user research?

Elicit: seems to suggest a false causality. In a UCD approach to social media, user motives and intentions are the cause of action. Actions are social, and so an other user, or audience, orients or guides social action. Social interaction and communication are not elicited by design but initiated by users engaged socially.

Behavior: user psychology may be manifest in behavior, but includes more than what is captured in social media. And in any kind of communication and social action-based practice, motives and intentions will exceed what’s observed, captured, and facilitated (by social media) as behaviors. There’s more to user psychology than behavior alone; though behavior may be all we can “see.”

I think social practices shape user and social actions, and over time design can structure and inform them. Social architecture can dynamically reflect back that participation and shape it some more. Social navigation can guide a user or audience. But social practices, which include etiquette, themed activities, transactions, economies, relationships and so son, are more likely to shape interaction than design per se. I see the “structure,” “system,” and dynamics belonging more to social forms and organization. Facilitated by design insofar as it constrains and enables, and provides functionalities and mediates communication.

I recently got a Wii Fit. It’s a clever, mildly cajoling device that shows you how to do yoga, strength, and aerobic exercises. With a virtual trainer on the screen you can see how you are supposed to do the exercise and then follow along. Using the balance board, you also get direct feedback on how well you are doing them. (Not for all exercises, but for enough.) It also measures your weight, BMI, and Wii Fit Age and encourages you to do this every day. You can then track your progress in these areas across time and even set a weight goal for yourself.

I don’t need to lose weight, but my “good” cholesterol is a little low and my doctor keeps telling me to exercise regularly. In fact she’s been telling me this for 4 or 5 years. I just haven’t been able to find the time or even an activity that would compel me to exercise regularly. I usually worry about it for about 2 weeks and then don’t think about it until I see the doctor again.

Since I have started using the Wii Fit though, I find myself thinking about exercising and trying to make time to do it. I’m sure it doesn’t have the same affect on everyone, but it is certainly changing my behavior.

David Rondeau
Design Chair
Twitter: dbrondeau

Behavior you take with you; accomplishment you leave behind.

My hunch is that some people respond almost viscerally to the “elicit behavior” idea, even while conceding that one purpose of design is to increase the likelihood of certain results.

So your question–”What do people have to do for you to be successful?”–is a way of saying “What results will say the design was successful?”

That helps remove the bogeyman of behaviorism.

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A great design is good, always. I´am sure that people love cool animations and grafics. But i´ve no sense for designs ;(