Spiked: When did ‘hanging around’ become a social problem?
Josie Appleton, at the always-interesting Spiked, takes a look at the increasing systemic hostility towards ‘young people in public places’ in the UK: ‘When did ‘hanging around’ become a social...
View ArticleSome interesting aspects of built-in obsolescence
This San Francisco Chronicle review of Giles Slade’s Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America (which I’ve just ordered and look forward to reading and reviewing here in due course)...
View ArticleLocking users in by making it difficult to leave
Privacy International has a report, ‘Dumb Design or Dirty Tricks?‘ on the practice of a number of popular websites – most notably eBay and Amazon – of lacking an easy or obvious way for a user to...
View ArticleReview: We Know What You Want by Martin Howard
A couple of weeks ago, Martin Howard sent me details of his blog, How They Change Your Mind and book, We Know What You Want: How They Change Your Mind, published last year by Disinformation. You can...
View ArticleReview: Made to Break by Giles Slade
Last month I mentioned some fascinating details on planned obsolescence gleaned from a review of Giles Slade‘s Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America. Having now read the book for...
View ArticleBehaviour shaping round-up
The legendary Rob Cockerham looks at the Point of Sale Trail in Fry’s Electronics, Sacramento. Shoppers queuing for the checkouts are routed through a maze of aisles densely packed with impulse...
View ArticleTeaching customers a lesson
Seth Godin talks about companies that try to teach their customers a lesson: “Either you’re going to make someone happy or you’re not… Here’s the short version: If you try to teach a customer a lesson,...
View ArticleCreating false memories
An interactive camera demo from Corporate Communications, Inc. Clive Thompson writes about some interesting research [PDF] by Ann Schlosser at the University of Washington into how the use of...
View ArticleThe fight back: loyalty card subversion
It’s inevitable that for every attempt to cajole or impose control on users, there will be some people who seek to avoid or circumvent it. As Crosbie Fitch put it in a recent comment, “humans are...
View ArticleCoercive atmospherics reach the bus shelter
Jonathan Zittrain discusses scented advertising in bus shelters: the California Milk Processor Board recently tried a campaign with chocolate-chip cookie-scented “aromatic strips”, intended to provoke...
View ArticlePacket switching
Both Dr Tom Stafford (co-author of the fantastic Mind Hacks book & blog) and Gregor Hochmuth (creator of FlickrStorm, an improved Flickr search system) have been in touch suggesting...
View ArticleObjects in mirror are wider than they appear
This is an interesting story. Robert Kilroy-Silk (above) currently an independent MEP, has raised the issue in the European Parliament of intentionally distorting mirrors in clothes stores,...
View ArticleAnti-user seating in Oxford
Top two photos: A bench on Cornmarket Street, Oxford; Lower two photos: A bus stop seat perch on Castle Street. While from a very narrow specification point-of-view ‘they do their job’, what utter...
View ArticleDeliberately creating worry
Swedish creativity lecturer Fredrik Härén mentions an interesting architecture of control anecdote in his The Idea Book: One of the cafés in an international European airport was often full. The...
View ArticlePortioning blame
McDonald’s, Toledo, Ohio, 1967. Image from DRB62 on Flickr. We’ve looked previously at the effect of portion/packaging sizes as a ‘choice of default’ architecture of control, and I’m aware that I have...
View ArticleThe Terminal Bench
Mags L Halliday – author of the Doctor Who novel History 101 – let me know about an ‘interesting’ design tactic being used at Heathrow’s Terminal 5. From the Guardian, by Julia Finch: Flying from the...
View ArticlePier pressure
  Deliberately routing users via a longer or more circuitous route is found in many forms (with a variety of intentions) from misleading road signs, to endless click-through screens, splitting up...
View ArticleDetailing and retailing
The dazzle painting of HMS Furious, c. 1918. Image from A Gallery of Dazzle-Painted Ships A couple of weeks ago we looked at casino carpet design – a field where busy, garish graphic design is...
View ArticlePersuasion & control round-up
New Scientist: Recruiting Smell for the Hard Sell Samsung’s coercive atmospherics strategy involves the smell of honeydew melon: THE AIR in Samsung’s flagship electronics store on the upper west side...
View ArticleSwoopo: Irrational escalation of commitment
Swoopo, a new kind of “entertainment shopping” auction site, takes Martin Shubik’s classic Dollar Auction game to a whole new, automated, mass participation level. It’s an example of the escalation of...
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