Running a gamut of gambits: exploring behaviour change strategies and design

When designers are trying to influence users’ behaviour, we inevitably do so with some model embodying assumptions about how users will behave and react to the way the product or service behaves. In practice, a product or service influencing a user’s behaviour can work best when the objectives of each side and the designer’s and user’s model of the system are compatible, so, it’s important to try to understand the models that users have of your system and design using strategies that match them. Inspired by Wizard of Oz testing and a stack of 1960s pop-psychology books, in this workshop we’ll explore, choose and try out a range of behaviour change strategies on each other. Playing either ‘devices’ or ‘users’, we’ll seek to influence each other’s behaviour—as ‘designers’, using the Design with Intent cards to select strategies to match what we know about the ‘users’, and then running the simulation to see how right we were, and what kind of extra information we need to find out. Are we going to try to match users’ thought processes, or change how they think?
Run by Dan Lockton, Consultant, Requisite Variety; Research Assistant, Brunel University