Sociology

I think looking into sociology and behavior is a good idea. 

I copied and pasted stuff from that reading you found. I think it's useful to help us find a design strategy. 

Haven't read much into this yet but let me know how much you understand about it.

Design for Socially Responsible Behavior: A Classification

of Influence Based on Intended User Experience 

Nynke Tromp, Paul Hekkert, Peter-Paul Verbeek 

The framework shows how behavior forms an intermediate stage between social implications and the user-product interaction, and thereby respectively between collective and individual concerns. The latter explains, respectively, the reason for influencing and the way of influencing.

Could choose a design strategy from the theory you found. Which one do you reckon suits the topic more?

Four types of influence based on the dimensions of force and salience. Below are examples of each strategy from that reading. The numbers in chart correspond to the numbers below.

1. Create a perceivable barrier for undesired behavior (pain). This strategy warns the user about injuries, or uses actual physical stimuli that harm either the users or the products they are using (e.g., a car). Figure 12 shows how natural stones are placed to prevent cars from being parked at places that were not intended for this use. This strategy uses a so-called physical punisher for unwanted behavior (the car will be heavily damaged if one decides to park there anyhow). Psychologists commonly agree that enduring behavioral change can only be developed if a reinforcer, rather than a punisher, consistently follows the behavior. Although very effective, this particular approach is a situational and temporary solution and does not result in an enduring change of behavior.


2. Make unacceptable user behavior overt (shame). This strategy leads to products that make illegal behavior, or behavior we commonly regard as socially unacceptable, publicly visible. Figure 13 shows the Hygiene Guard, which is designed to make sure employees wash their hands after toilet use. The Hygiene Guard activates a flickering light attached to the employee’s badge as soon as the soap dispenser isn’t used and/or the water tap does not run for at least 15 seconds. This strategy increases the pressure of and extends an already existing social norm.


3. Make the behavior a necessary activity to perform to make use of the product function. When interacting with a product, the user has a specific goal related to the product function. This strategy is about including a design element that requires the user to perform a specific behavior to reach his or her goal. Figure 14 shows the Social Cups designed by Niedderer. The cups can only be placed securely on the table when linked to other cups. The social interaction becomes a necessary activity for the cups to achieve stability. This strategy relies on the motivation of the user to make use of the product function. As soon as users consider the behavior to require more effort than they are willing to give to achieve the goal, the strategy most likely will fail.

4. Provide the user with arguments for specific behavior. This strategy provides the user with objective information about the consequences of certain behavior. A well-known example, shown in figure 15, is the cigarette package that contains explanations of the consequences of smoking. This strategy tries to address, shape, or alter attitudes, rather than directly facilitating behavior. Studies have shown that people prefer to make choices that can be more easily substantiated by verbal arguments, even when they would eventually appraise other options as better ones.

5. Suggest actions. This strategy explicitly proposes certain actions or suggests certain specific behavior. For example, typical RSI prevention software suggests that computer users do small exercises when working on their computer to decrease the chance of developing persistent injuries (Figure 16). This strategy can explicitly use information to ground the suggestion, but it is not necessary. When the product also provides arguments, it aims at changing attitudes and facilitating behavior. In cases where it does not, it seeks to trigger a more temporary and automatic reaction (e.g., a gear sign on the dashboard of a car that suggests when the driver should shift gears).

 6. Trigger different motivations for the same behavior. This strategy adds an extra function to the product that elicits the desired behavior. To illustrate, the garbage bin along the highway is designed as a basket used in sports to score (Figure 17). By its design, it gives a different meaning to the action of throwing garbage in the bin. A strong aspect is that the strategy thereby aims at a different but intrinsic motivation for the behavior.

7. Elicit emotions to trigger action tendencies. This strategy tries to elicit an emotion to seduce people to certain reactions. The smiley in figure 18 is placed on the side of a section of road that needs maintenance and forces the driver to slow down. The smiley explicitly thanks drivers for their
understanding, with the expectation that the driver will not get agitated and start driving recklessly. This strategy aims at influencing the affective component of the attitude system to shape or change an attitude and therefore the evolving behavior.

8. Activate physiological processes to induce behavior. This strategy makes use of human physiological processes that result from bodily states so that specific behavior is more likely to occur. The table Go-to-Move, in figure 19, requires its users to stand rather than sit during a meeting. The standing posture is expected to lead to a more active mood. This strategy aims at stimulating preferred attitudes by activating physiological processes of which users are often unaware.

9. Trigger human tendencies for automatic behavioral responses. This strategy activates a human tendency by creating a perceptual stimulus. The light switch in figure 20 plays with the human inclination toward order and a preference for symmetry.26 By attracting attention to its asymmetrical position when the light is on, users will be more inclined to turn it off when the light is not needed or when leaving the room. This strategy makes use of human automatic behavioral responses that are instinctive or learned.

10. Create optimal conditions for specific behavior. This strategy uses design to create an optimal situation in which the desired behavior can occur naturally. An example is the coffee machine in the hallway of a company. A coffee machine in the hallway (Figure 21) encourages people to gather at a neutral place. This situation naturally results in small talk between colleagues who might not interact in the normal course of the day. This strategy manipulates the conditions so that behavior can occur naturally but does not necessarily interfere in the underlying psychological processes of the behavior.

11. Make the desired behavior the only possible behavior to perform. This strategy uses design to make behaviors other than the desired one impossible. An example is the positioning of bus stops, which determines the distance that passengers

Bridging Concerns: Repositioning the Designer

choosing a strategy requires some additional considerations.

Coercive influence can be an effective intervention for specific types of social issues. Coercive interventions are often experienced as conflicting with individual freedom and therefore can only be applied in instances in which the desired behavior is almost unanimously agreed upon. Nobody revolts against the reasoning behind such a design strategy when it concerns matters of life and death. Creating obstructions so that drivers cannot exceed the limit of 30 kilometers an hour within a school and playground area is acceptable and understandable. However, designing obstructions that prevent homeless people from sleeping on public benches becomes already more debatable. Coercive influence is very  restricting, and it therefore requires authority to be applied. As a result, the public domain and institutional domains are domains for which coercive design often is suitable, in that government and managers have the authority to implement such interventions. In the private domain, a radio for personal use that starts malfunctioning as soon as too much energy is consumed is an example of coercion. When it concerns the private domain, coercive influence can only be applied when collective and individual concerns are in line with each other.

Persuasive influence also is best applied when collective concerns are in line with individual concerns, which means they are easily identified or experienced as individual concerns. Many interventions that use persuasion are about health or safety issues, which are easily related to and accepted by the individual. However, persuasive interventions can easily fail as soon as they concern behavior that has long-term implications but that collide with short-term matters. A good example is smoking behavior. Smoking in the long term conflicts with concerns about health, but in the short term addresses concerns of enjoyment. Persuasive interventions are present in all domains but are presumably most successful when interaction with them occurs on a voluntary basis. A campaign alongside the road to promote safe driving behavior most probably is less effective in influencing behavior than the (purchased) personal digital sport coach that structures your behavior during exercise.

Of course, social issues often do not deal with matters of life and death or with concerns that are in line with short-term individual concerns. Many issues are constructed around collective concerns that are often not related to individual behaviors. In addition to sustainability, these issues are often socially constructed issues, such as immigration, integration, discrimination, and social cohesion. Within these phenomena, seductive influence can be very useful in eliciting desired behavior because these phenomena often do not allow for enforcement or explicit arguments. Forcing people to talk to their foreign neighbor is simply unthinkable, and providing explicit explanations to people about how contact with neighbors contributes to cohesion in the area somehow does not sound so compelling so as to influence behavior. It is especially for these issues, which leave governmental institutions powerless, that design can offer elegant interventions

Decisive influence is a very strong influence in that the design makes the desired behavior the only possible behavior. However, the application of this influence is limited. The design of infrastructure and buildings typically is decisive design: The design of infrastructure determines the distance of a public institution to a bus stop and thereby influences physical activity, or determines the width of an alley and thereby its access to cars. But social behavior, such as communication, is hard to influence with decisive design. Moreover, decisive design can easily lead to unpleasant experiences. As soon as the government decides to take away half of the bus stops to stimulate physical activity, objections can be expected

Most, if not all, social issues deal with human behavior. Deliberately affecting behavior to stimulate specific social implications requires a redefinition of the role of the designer. Although designers can never fully predict the social implications of their design, and although the political significance of artifacts changes over time, this reality does not imply that designers should refrain from taking seriously the social implications of their designs. Designers no longer can hide behind the needs and wishes of the consumer; instead, they have to take responsibility as “shapers” of society. Doing so entails a shift from a user-centered approach to a society-centered one. In defining desired social implications and behavior, it is the designer’s task to incorporate relevant experts, such as sociologists and policy makers, as well as citizens. Subsequently, it is the designer’s quality and expertise that can translate the collective concerns to individual concerns by means of design.