RETROPEAK by Andreas Sachse » Design

Design for behavior change

Andreas Sachse — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 17:16:55 +0000

In one of my early blog entries (“Small car? Half priced parking!”) I talked about finding the right incentive to change people’s behavior. The case was cheaper parking for smaller cars.
Now, it seems, there’s an emerging field called ‘design for behavior change’. This field touches upon the exact same thing: finding the right incentives as a motivation for a new behavior.
This is very exciting stuff – not only when looking at mass behavior change (like getting kids to wash their hands in kindergartens and schools) but also looking to change the behavior of your customers.

A good example is something that has existed in web sales for a very long time: sites giving away free shipping if your purchases reaches a certain amount. I for one, find myself filling the basket until I reach the free shipping limit, and to me this proves, that it’s possible to work with incentives that motivate certain purchase behavior.
I’m sure this could be exploited in many new ways especially if combined with some of the social media services.

But I think there’s another part of ‘design for behavior change’ that could be equally exiting. It could be a great mission for product design companies to make products that have built in incentives towards the purchase (e.g. the purchase contributes to global causes, or to local community causes like a new playground) and at the same time motivates the customers to a certain new behavior through the design of the products (e.g. doing something great with your kid, getting more exercise, reduce waste or conserve energy). Of course the product should also fill a need and meet a market, but that goes without saying.

Maybe this could be a path to success for some?

The importance of gut feeling

Andreas Sachse — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:35:45 +0000

I was reading this very inspiring article at Harvard Business Review the other day (I actually instantly bought the book as well…one more for the shelf…).
In the article Roberto Verganti talks about user-centered-innovation and how he disagrees with the approach.
After working with six sigma a couple of years in my previous job, I have sort of come to the same conclusion. In the Six Sigma scheme the overall (simplified) goal is to move away from ‘gut feeling’ and towards data based facts and decision making. As we said to our clients: “Gut feeling is evil” :)
In the same manner user-centered-innovation is an attempt by businesses to verify their concepts. By user involvement they hope to create products, services etc. that the users demand.
As much as I acknowledge user involvement in general, it just isn’t the right approach when what you’re creating is genuinely an innovative product – especially if the product fills a yet un-adressed market. In that case you are creating a completely new demand.
And to be honest, I’d rather follow my own gut feeling than asking several other individuals about their opinion about something they haven’t yet thought of.
I thank Roberto Verganti for putting intelligent words on this. Looking forward to read his book.

Design for Designers?

Andreas Sachse — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 23:10:41 +0000

It’s always interesting being introduced to a work domain that you haven’t been in previously. Trying to understand how people think, work and interact in the product design community makes me see a lot of weird things going on. One of my first realisations was that a great deal of product designers are designing stuff that never reach the public. Maybe they see their design as an art form more than a practical tool in the development of a product…maybe they just like to show their design to other designers which in turn will acknowledge their designs.
It’s not entirely unlike the open source computer programming community: people share code pieces that are so far from being a proper program, that you really have to live within the community to appreciate it. It’s essentially raw pieces of code, just like raw pieces of design is just that: an unfinished part of a greater whole.

For me, the design is just one of many important steps in a product development process. I understand and acknowledge the importance of design … but at the same time you have to acknowledge the equal importance of e.g. production, sales and distribution as parts of a product development process.

And I shrivel each time I hear someone say “great design” when seeing some crappy 3D design sketch rendering and when that design sketch is being promoted as the next big thing. C’mon let’s focus instead on the successful designers – let’s find the designers that have successfully managed to make great product designs that resulted in great products that you can buy. After all…the product is the goal, not the design, right?