At a special edition of Behavior Design AMS meetup at January 20 we invited Dan Lockton to share his ideas on design with intent.

2. Dr Dan Lockton
Visiting Research Tutor
Royal College of Art, London
@danlockton
Design, understanding
and agency

3. “Do you want us to
learn what you are
telling us?
Or is it all a sort of
example, an
illustration of
something else?”
A student’s question to Gregory Bateson

5. • Research through design
• Iterative, experimental, exploratory
• Many researchers have backgrounds outside design

6. Some current research
questions from my students…

8. How can we change
behaviour around
repair, by making it
more emotionally
engaging?
Nazli Terzioglu

9. Can metaphors
around pregnancy
and childcare be
applied to change
behaviour around
packaging?
Yoony Choi
Figure 1) Birth and life cycle comparison of packaging and pregnancy.
Many of different functions of packages reflect the pregnancy experience, and its particular
language too. In figure Table 21, some examples are presented.
Packaging function Pregnancy experience
The food is delivered to table The baby has been delivered to table
Expire date Due date
Faulty in system Miscarriage
Disposal inside product before the expire date Abortion
Reuse, refill packaging Being pregnant again
‘Handle with care’ label ‘Baby on board’ badge
Providing information on the pack Mother knows all about the baby
Extra tray/ sleeve/ form cushion for the contents Amniotic fluid
Using glue, additive on the packaging Applying chemical on mother’s body
Temper proof Cord
Non-recyclable packaging Sterility
Packaging that self-operate (self- expire) Linea nigra (Dark line)
Product position in a package Baby position
Recovery Mother recover after giving birth
Throw trash anywhere Mom left her child, being orphan
Barcode scan Scanning
Overdue Expired
Produce, reproduce Produce a baby, reproduce a baby
Bar code Antenatal record
Figure Table 12) Experimenting with language metaphor

10. How can algorithmic IoT
systems enable users to
construct their own
meaning for their
behavioural data? How
can the ‘observer’ be
considered as an active
participant?
Delfina Fantini
van Ditmar

12. Brunel University, Uxbridge

15. Many different areas (and traditions) of psychology
Sociology, science & technology studies
Ethnography, cognitive anthropology
Architectural theory
Human-computer interaction
Ergonomics and human factors
Decision science, behavioural economics
cybernetics

21. designwithintent.co.uk
[2010]

23. Expected release date: September 2016
Sign up for updates at
designwithintent.co.uk

24. ‘Design for
‘behaviour change’

25. ‘design for
‘behaviour change’

26. ‘behavioural design’

28. Growing popularity in
government: Behavioural
Insights Team (UK),
Social & Behavioral
Sciences Team (US),
World Bank, etc

29. Every piece of technology
“encodes a hypothesis
about human behaviour”
Adam Greenfield, LSE
Against the Smart City, 2013

33. All design influences
our behaviour

34. …whether intentional
or not

35. “When you decode the
world with design intent in
mind, the world becomes
kind of magical”
Roman Mars, 99% Invisible

36. There are lots of examples
of things designed to try to
influence behaviour
deliberately…

37. …and it’s often quite
negative, even though it’s
intended to be for ‘social
benefit’

41. [Designed] “objects
fundamentally ‘wish us well’”
Clive Dilnot,‘The Gift’, 1993

42. [Designed] “objects
fundamentally ‘wish us well’”
Clive Dilnot,‘The Gift’, 1993
Is that always true of
behavioural design?

51. 1939

54. What are the
assumptions about
people in each of these?

55. What are the
assumptions about
people in each of these?
(we’ll come back to this)

56. Determinism

57. Determinism
“implies a one-way process in which
the physical environment is the
independent, and human behaviour
the dependent variable.”
Maurice Broady, 1966,‘Social Theory in Architectural Design’

58. People will
do that
If our
design
does this

59. Treating people as components, with predictable
properties so they can be incorporated into your system
“WHY CAN’T I HAVE A TABLE WHERE I LOOK UP HOW TO
GET PEOPLE TO DO WHAT I WANT THEM TO DO?”

60. “The inherent variability of the
behavioural world gives us more
information than we can handle, so
we value a stable world-picture,
being predictable, and being able to
predict. We work at maintaining the
constancy of our theories-in-use”
Chris Argyris & Donald Schön, Theory in Practice, 1974

61. Exploring assumptions
power needs
learning
intent
under-
standing
variety
adaptive-
ness
supra-
individuality

62. Exploring assumptions
power
• Does this design approach give one party an advantage
over others?
• How much agency does the ‘user’ have over what he or
she does?

63. Exploring assumptions
power
• Does this design approach give one party an advantage
over others?
• How much agency does the ‘user’ have over what he or
she does?
needs • Does this design approach help the ‘user’ achieve
something he or she needs to do?

64. Exploring assumptions
power
• Does this design approach give one party an advantage
over others?
• How much agency does the ‘user’ have over what he or
she does?
needs • Does this design approach help the ‘user’ achieve
something he or she needs to do?
intent • Does this design approach ‘wish us well’?

65. Exploring assumptions
power
• Does this design approach give one party an advantage
over others?
• How much agency does the ‘user’ have over what he or
she does?
needs • Does this design approach help the ‘user’ achieve
something he or she needs to do?
intent • Does this design approach ‘wish us well’?
variety • How nuanced is the ‘model of the user’ employed?
• Will different users experience this in different ways?

67. Exploring assumptions
power
• Does this design approach give one party an advantage
over others?
• How much agency does the ‘user’ have over what he or
she does?
needs • Does this design approach help the ‘user’ achieve
something he or she needs to do?
intent • Does this design approach ‘wish us well’?
variety • How nuanced is the ‘model of the user’ employed?
• Will different users experience this in different ways?

68. Exploring assumptions
• Does this design approach assume that the user just
reacts, thinks, or actually learns?
• Does it enable the user to construct his or her own
meaning or understanding?
learning

69. Exploring assumptions
• Does this design approach assume that the user just
reacts, thinks, or actually learns?
• Does it enable the user to construct his or her own
meaning or understanding?
learning
under-
standing
• Does it ignore, ‘work with’, or try to change the way the
user thinks?

70. Exploring assumptions
• Does this design approach assume that the user just
reacts, thinks, or actually learns?
• Does it enable the user to construct his or her own
meaning or understanding?
learning
under-
standing
• Does it ignore, ‘work with’, or try to change the way the
user thinks?
adaptive-
ness
• Does it assume the situation is always the same, or can
it adapt based on context?

71. Exploring assumptions
• Does this design approach assume that the user just
reacts, thinks, or actually learns?
• Does it enable the user to construct his or her own
meaning or understanding?
learning
under-
standing
• Does it ignore, ‘work with’, or try to change the way the
user thinks?
adaptive-
ness
• Does it assume the situation is always the same, or can
it adapt based on context?
• What level does it frame the problem at? Does it take
account of the wider social and cultural context, or is it
about individual people making decisions in isolation?
supra-
individuality

73. Designing with people

74. rather than for people

75. And that means
understanding
people’s lives:

76. Understanding the
contexts and the
nuances of everyday
experience, and
people’s interactions
with the world

77. What happens when
people and things are
connected?

78. New types of feedback
loop, new forms of
adaptation, new models

79. New stereotypes
New superstitions

80. “For example, while electronic objects are
being used, their use is constrained by the
simple generalised model of a user these
objects are designed around: the more
time we spend using them, the more
time we spend as a caricature.
We unwittingly adopt roles created by the
human factors specialists of large
corporations.”
Tony Dunne, Hertzian Tales, 1999

81. “We can see other people’s
behaviour, but not their experience.
This has led some people to insist
that psychology has nothing to do
with the other person’s experience,
but only with his behaviour”
RD Laing, The Politics of Experience, 1967

83. “Your experience of me is invisible to
me and my experience of you is
invisible to you…
[but] I cannot avoid trying to
understand your experience,
because although I do not experience
your experience… I experience you as
experiencing”
RD Laing, The Politics of Experience, 1967

84. We can’t avoid having
models of humans…
Hugh Dubberly & Paul Pangaro,‘Cybernetics and
service-craft: Language for behavior-focused design’.
Kybernetes, 36(9), 1301-1317, 2007

85. …but we can challenge
and refine them

86. …and doing research with
people in context, as part
of the design process, is a
way of challenging our
assumptions as
researchers

87. Two ways of doing this
better:

88. Two ways of doing this
better:
1) Understanding what
people are trying to do…

89. Two ways of doing this
better:
1) Understanding what
people are trying to do, and
helping them do it better

90. Two ways of doing this
better:
2) Understanding how
people understand the
world…

91. Two ways of doing this
better:
2) Understanding how
people understand the
world, and helping them
understand it differently

92. 1) Understanding what
people are trying to do, and
helping them do it better
2) Understanding how
people understand the
world, and helping them
understand it differently

93. 1) Understanding what
people are trying to do, and
helping them do it better

94. “There go my people; I must find out where
they are going so I can lead them.”
—Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin,
revolutionary, 1807-74

95. “All buildings are
predictions.
All predictions are
wrong.”
Stewart Brand
How Buildings Learn, 1994

96. “All buildings are
predictions.
All predictions are
wrong.”
Stewart Brand
How Buildings Learn, 1994
designs

102. Innovation is often about
perceiving affordances
that others haven’t

111. Learn from workarounds—
what are people trying to
do?

112. Learn from workarounds—
what are people trying to
do? Can we help them
solve their problems?

113. 1) Understanding what
people are trying to do, and
helping them do it better

124. People are
inherently bad at
making decisions,
so experts need to
intervene and help
them

125. People are
inherently bad at
making decisions,
so experts need to
intervene and help
them
People are
inherently OK at
making
decisions, so
experts ought to
learn from them

126. Herbert Simon’s
Bounded Rationality

127. Bounded rationality

128. Bounded rationality
≠ people being irrational

129. Bounded rationality
= people responding to the
limitations and priorities of the context
in which they’re making decisions

130. Bounded rationality
= people responding to the
limitations and priorities of the context
in which they’re making decisions
often in different ways

133. Consider heuristics as something we
can learn from (Gerd Gigerenzer;
Herbert Simon), and perhaps part of
what makes us human, evolutionarily,
rather than treating humans as
‘defective’ (Daniel Kahneman;
Behavioural Insights Team)

134. What rules (heuristics) are
designers assuming people
are following when they’re
using a system?
What heuristics are they
actually using?
Lockton, Harrison, Cain, Stanton, Jennings (2013)
‘Exploring problem-framing through behavioural heuristics’
International Journal of Design

135. Behaviour change doesn’t
have to be negative.
It can be about helping
people solve the problems
they face in everyday life.

136. ‘Paving the cowpaths’

139. 1) Understanding what
people are trying to do, and
helping them do it better

140. 2) Understanding how
people understand the
world, and helping them
understand it differently

141. • Mental models and imaginaries
• Meanings, associations, expectations
• People’s perceptions of their own
agency or ability in a situation

157. Is it better to help
people understand the
complex systems with
which they are
engaging?

158. or should it be about
making the ‘right’
behaviour as easy as
possible?

159. Energy’s
‘invisibility’ is a key
issue in people’s
understanding

160. ‘I think I worked out that through gas and electricity
every year, the average house gets the equivalent of a
bit over three tons of coal delivered completely silently
and without any mess.
‘And go back a hundred years ago and everyone would
have a really good quantitative understanding of how
much energy they used because they had to physically
shovel the stuff. So, that made me stop and think.’

161. V&A Digital Design Weekend
~13,700 visitors
100 Drawing Energy participants
Drawing Energy

170. drawingenergy.com

171. Mental models of complex systems
Mental imagery of abstract concepts

172. What other complex systems are
there, that people don’t really
understand? (or understand
differently?)
• Our own bodies and physical health
• Our mental health
• Finance
• IoT, smart grids
• driverless cars
• the environment, government, the law

173. People have different
understandings of the same
systems, and what agency they
have within those systems.

176. How does that understanding affect
people’s behaviour?
How could design help?

177. Quantifying everything, but
the value of nothing?

181. Can we help people
construct meaning
themselves?

182. Going beyond
reductiveness

183. Image: Delfina Fantini van Ditmar
Dragging Pumped up

184. How can
algorithms
understand
context?

186. Enable people to construct their own meaning(s) and
understanding(s)
‘Emulsion’
Skrekkøgle,
Norway

189. Are numbers and graphs the
best way to talk to people
about energy?

190. What does energy look like?
What could it sound like?

191. Powerchord
Sonified home
energy monitor

194. Power ranges Sound files
0-5W
6-30W
31-150W
151-390W
391W - 500W
501W - 900W
901W - 1700W
1701W and over
Nothing played
Track A (low intensity)
Track B
Track C
Track D
Track E
Track F
Track G (high intensity)
per appliance, in parallel

195. http://powerchord.me

196. The real goal is not just understanding
complexity.

197. The real goal is understanding what
agency is possible in a situation, and
how to enact change.

198. How can people change the behaviour
of the systems they are in?

199. This is design for behaviour change,
but is not about designers trying to
change ‘public behaviour’ as if it were
somehow a separate phenomenon.

200. Can design enable people to
understand the wider contexts of their
actions, their agency within society,
and how they can act to create
different outcomes, different futures?

201. • understand the world
• understand people’s understandings
of the world
• help people understand the world
• help people understand their agency
in the world
• help people use that agency in the
world
a progression from understanding to action

202. • How are you thinking about people
in your work?
• What assumptions do you have?
• Where have those assumptions
come from?

203. Thank you!
danlockton.co.uk
designwithintent.co.uk
rca.ac.uk
Twitter: @danlockton

204. Image credits:
A Clockwork Orange screenshots: Warner Brothers
Crossrail images: Transport for London
Billy & Belinda Bollard catalogue image: Marshalls Street Furniture
Bleeding billboard: Papakura & Franklin District Council, New Zealand
Special License Plates: Popular Science, March 1939
Stoke-on-Trent Council obesity texts: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-
staffordshire-26021215
Pipe image, Tortilla chips + photocopier, speedometer: found on Failblog, originators unknown.
Lying on grass: http://willrl.com/2012/09/un-ami-dun-ami-cest-un-ami/ - photo by Will R.L.,
taken in Paris.
Australian cigarette packaging: oldest version found http://www.barnorama.com/funny-
pictures-vol-304/ —originator unknown
Speeding best value: oldest version found http://www.justmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/
2014/04/bestvalue.jpg —originator unknown
Coles / Target Shopping baskets, alarms, printer signs, Apple Watch and pug mouse mat found
on Imgur, originators unknown
Herbert Simon image from Carnegie Mellon Library: http://diva.library.cmu.edu/webapp/
simon/
CarbonCulture at DECC images from CarbonCulture: http://carbonculture.net
Siemens controller image from Dr Nicola Combe
Nest image from Nest publicity
Drawing Energy images: http://drawingenergy.com
Times Square image from Retronaut
Jawbone app screenshot and Smart Fridge data journeys by Delfina Fantini van Ditmar
Repair images by Nazli Terzioglu
Pregnancy / packaging metaphor images by Yoon Choi
Emulsion image by Skrekkøgle
Other images by Dan Lockton