Persuasion, Emotion and Trust

About a month ago I came across the video below from Susan Weinschenk on Persuasion, Emotion and Trust. It's an excellent video, and I recommend taking a look at the The ROI of User Experience as well. They're both great examples of how to explain a concept with both clarity and authority.

The main idea behind what Human Factors International (HFI) describes as PET design is to ensure that users come back to your service/website and do so repeatedly.

This has tied in with my realisation that it's not just about usability any more (although it is still a key principle and there are still a lot of companies not getting it right).

In order to get customers to use a service they need to be able to do more than just find what they're looking for. They need to have a reason to go a step further, and they need to have a positive experience in order to come back again.

RCA Design Interactions: Tribal Futures project

Whilst reading the Putting People First blog this afternoon I saw this post, which led me to the Matt Jones' blog, Magical Nihilsm. Here he described his involvement in the "Tribal Futures" project with the RCA's Design Interactions course, in collaboration with Vodaphone's user experience group. 

The brief they were set asked them to:

“…focus in on the mundane and the extremes of our behaviour in groups and propose design interventions to support, subvert and celebrate our tribal connections. We encourage you to extrapolate the current trends in mobile, social and other technologies in terms of their failures as well as successes, and examine what technologies intended and unintended consequences might be.”

I was pleased to see that an ex classmate of mine, Alison, got a mention. Her Waltz of the Orange Men described the flows of movement she observed whilst following the council's recycling removal men. It was really interesting to see the insights she found from observing their work, including their reliance on each other to work effectively.

Waltz of the Orange Men from Design Interactions

I think this has given me some inspiration of where to go next with my project. I know I need to focus in on an area, but it is encouraging to see the insights that can come from something that appears mundane at first. I'm not sure if I want to focus in on group behaviour in public space, or this idea of individuals and disconnectedness. 

Traces of Human Activity

Yesterday we travelled through to Edinburgh for the day to conduct a fieldwork activity. We were given the task of observing and recording traces of human activity in the built environment, and we were given some criteria of what to look out for. These were:

• By-products of use
• Adaptations for use
• Displays of self
• Public messages

We were also looking at them within their context i.e. clarification of/by the larger picture. Chris and I walked along Princes Street firstly, before heading through the Old Town along the Royal Mile and the Cowgate. We then went back towards the New Town and walked along Rose Street.

In the few hours we spent on the streets we noticed many examples of remnants of human activity. We were both intrigued by the amount of litter that had been placed down. It appears that people will happily place empty cups, bottles, cans etc. on a wall or shelf. It is as if they feel it is not really littering, as the object almost fits the spot it has been left at.

Traces of human activity in Edinburgh

The image above also shows how people will puts stickers on objects such as lamp posts and bins. Often it seemed that people were more likely to place their sticker somewhere if there was already one on it, giving the impression that people will "break a rule" if someone else has already done so. This also relates back to the people I observed in London, who would hold back and watch how someone else operated a ticketing machine in the underground before doing so themselves, and so picking up on the social cues.

People in Space

Whilst in London I was attempting to observe things in relation to the group project we have been set in DE. The full brief has not yet been handed out, however we were told that it will involve people, and how they collaborate in space, particularly with big interactive systems. I tried concentrating on watching how people behaved in public spaces, and how they dealt with systems such as ATMs and ticket kiosks. It was also interesting to see people interacting with other information devices such as maps and some of the exhibits in the Science Museum. I found that in different situations behaviour became quite similar, especially when it came to queueing for things.

People interacting at the Science Museum

Often I found myself reminded of Jane Fulton Suri's book Thoughtless Acts? It illustrates how "we adapt, exploit, and react to things in our environment; things we do without really thinking." I kept finding examples in London such as an empty coffee cup left on a ledge at a tube station, someone sitting on the steps at a statue, and people keeping behind the yellow line at an ATM.

Thoughtless Acts

Jane Fulton Suri is involved in the human factors section at IDEO. Last year I read the article Informing Our Intuition, which I found related to me and my desire to understand people in order to create intuitive design. It was also interesting to read her describe the need for design research to be "integral to the innovation process, rather than as an external activity."

I actually saw another book along a similar theme in the Design Museum called Design by Use: The Everyday Metamorphosis of Things, which sadly doesn't appear to be in the library here.