Duncan Gotobed

Being persuaded

I have been reading BJ Fogg's Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do (Interactive Technologies) and I have found it extremely thought provoking.

He describes how technology can be used to influence other people's behaviour. For example, he explains how computers can:

• make target behaviour easier to do 
• lead people through a process
• perform calculations or measurements that motivate
• allow people to explore cause and effect relationships
• provide people with motivating experiences
• help people rehearse a behaviour
• reward people with positive feedback
• model a target behaviour or attitude
• provide social support 

He makes a good case and over the next few weeks I'm going to put various forms of  'persuasive technology' to the test to see if it can help me lose weight. I'll post how I get on and my thoughts about the technology and its effectiveness in this blog.

Healthy choices

The RSA recently held a fascinating panel discussion on influencing people’s behaviour involving Andrew Lansley MP, Paul Dolan, Theresa Marteau, Dr Ben Seymour and Matthew Taylor.

Both Paul Dolan and Theresa Marteau illustrated the case for moving away from influencing people’s thinking, which is generally ineffective in changing habits, to unconsciously affecting people’s behaviour.

See the panel discussion here.

Colossal failures

Adam Savage is an American industrial design and special effects engineer, actor, educator, and co-host of the Discovery Channel television series MythBusters.

In this video he tells 'juicy stories' about his failures. Very watchable/listenable.

http://fora.tv/2009/05/30/MythBuster_Adam_Savages_Colossal_Failures

On designing tools

I like this quote from Dave Snowden 

"Technology is a tool and like all tools it should fit your hand when you pick it up, you shouldn't have to bio-re-engineer your hand to fit the tool."

It describes a key quality of a well designed product/service.

(via davidtjones)

Look after your copywriters

http://consumerist.com/5295538/sausage-package-illustrates-what-happens-when-youre-a-jerk-to-the-copywriter

(via PSFK)

Making use of space

This recent Apple advertisement on NYtimes.com shows the unique creative opportunities of three different ad units that are talking to each other…literally.

Watch the video here.

Crowd sourced accountability

The Guardian has created a crowd-sourced website that asks readers to check through all expenses submitted by MPs over the last four years. The site contains 457,153 pages of documents of which 311,584 need to be reviewed. When someone finds something suspicious they can flag it for further investigation by the newspaper.

Readers have made a number of discoveries, whch the Guardian lists here.

Follow others

Schulze & Webb have designed a prototype digital radio that has your social network built in, showing you the stations your friends are listening to. Would you listen to it?

On projects...

"If a major project is truly innovative, you cannot possibly know its exact cost and its exact schedule at the beginning. And if in fact you do know the exact cost and the exact schedule, chances are that the technology is obsolete." 

Joseph Gavin discussing the design of the Lunar module.

(via davidjones)

'Yes'

This list of 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive is very good. I particularly like:

Introduce herd effect in highly personalized form. The hotel sign in the bathroom informed the guests that many prior guests chose to be environmentally friendly by recycling their towels. However, when the message mentioned that majority of the guests who stayed in this specific room chose to be more environmentally conscious and reused their towels, towel recycling jumped 33%, even though the message was largely the same.

Writing things down improves commitment. Group A was asked to volunteer on AIDS awareness program at local schools, and was asked to commit verbally. Group B was asked for the same kind of volunteer project, but was given a simple form to fill in. 17% of volunteers from Group A actually showed up to their assigned local school. From Group B 49% of volunteers showed up