Glad this has come up, as I'm actually researching this very area - Design for Sustainable Behaviour - coming from a background of developing a general method for suggesting behaviour-changing design techniques applicable to different problems, and then applying them to environmental and sustainability issues.
I've been blogging about this since 2005 - http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk - but only recently started active research for a PhD, and broadened the focus slightly from the original concept of 'architectures of control' (which implies a slightly more sinister/negative motive) to the idea of 'design with intent', i.e. designers/planners envisaging some intended 'target behaviour' that is desirable for users, and then creating products/systems/environments which guide users towards that behaviour. There are examples from many disciplines - architecture and manufacturing engineering in particular - as well as the more obvious interaction design and product design techniques. This is very much an interdisciplinary field: in truth, the entire advertising industry and law enforcement are also 'designed' to shape 'user' behaviour, and some of the approaches used can be translated into design suggestions. While there is a difference between persuasive feedback (as with captology/persuasive technology) and outright coercion, I would argue there is a continuum between them. 'Harder' interaction design techniques such as forcing functions or control poka-yokes are somewhere in between. Things to consider include whether the target behaviour benefits the user directly (e.g. reducing electricity use saves the user money as well as helping society) or serves another entity's interests. A system which 'persuades' a user to save electricity by rationing kWh supplied to a neighbourhood does not necessarily benefit individual users, but may benefit society. This is where the ethical nub seems to be. The idea of the research is initially to develop a method (similar in concept to TRIZ - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ - though less complex) for suggesting applicable design techniques relevant to a range of different target behaviours. This will (hopefully) be useful to designers, engineers, planners and so on. The second stage will be - focusing on environmental behaviour problems - user-testing prototypes of some of the products/systems suggested by the method, and measuring how successful they actually are. What human or technical factors limit the effect on behaviour change? Do some users become frustrated by devices which shape their behaviour? And so on... If anyone's interested, there's a review paper introducing the research, accepted for the International Journal of Sustainable Engineering here - http://danlockton.co.uk/research/Making_the_user_more_efficient_Preprint_hyperlinked.pdf (PDF, 160 kb) - and I'll be presenting this (very short) introduction - http://danlockton.co.uk/research/Design_with_Intent_Preprint.pdf (PDF, 169 kb) - at Persuasive 2008 (http://persuasive2008.org ) next month. The Nokia research looks interesting and I look forward to investigating it further! I understand Pauric's arguments, and to some extent agree, but educating users is part of the point of much of the research in this area. We could build devices which silently adapt their modes of operation to save energy, but there seems no reason why they can't do this obviously and help educate users at the same time; getting users explicitly to _choose_ energy saving modes is even better, as the natural 'commitment & consistency' cognitive bias would help reinforce this behaviour. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=28577 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
