Comments for Design & Behaviour

Comment on Is Superfreakonomics your Bible? by Jamie Young

Jamie Young — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:19:50 +0000

Thanks very much Dan – the Tim Harford article is interesting, and I’ll have a good look at Mackay and Tatham’s paper. I posted about another cross-over between foreign policy and behaviour change a while ago after reading a chapter by Conrad Bird. Most of the links in that post have unfortunately since changed, but you can find Conrad Bird’s original piece here if you are interested.

Comment on Is Superfreakonomics your Bible? by Dan Stewart

Dan Stewart — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:18:13 +0000

Thinking of Behaviour and Conflict you might want to have a look at this link. Tim Harford wrote a piece on a paper that had been written by a major general mackay and a naval commander. Interestingly they have joined dots on how behavioural economics can be utilised to better in effect in conflict with specific reference to Afghanistan. Harfords piece also has the link to the Behavioural Conflict Paper. Of note is that your very own Mathew Taylor is quoted in the paper.

http://blogs.ft.com/undercover/2010/01/lessons-in-complexity-from-a-field-in-afghanistan/

Comment on Is Superfreakonomics your Bible? by Jamie Young

Jamie Young — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:01:04 +0000

Thanks for commenting Tony. Someone pointed me in the direction of a recent report with various contributions on how to communicate climate change more convincingly. Two of the more compelling contributors write along similar lines to your comment – Chris Rose argues for a more visible response from politicians and George Marshall recommends the government to recruit more trusted sources to communicate a message that stands more chance of being believed.

Comment on Is Superfreakonomics your Bible? by Tony Crouch

Tony Crouch — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 13:41:24 +0000

I think you’re spot on in saying that the Govt. is failing to tell a convincing story. In light of govt ‘experts’ view on transfer of BSE to humans, weapons of mass destruction, etc, you can’t expect people to blindly believe without putting across convincing and understandable evidence at the ‘man in the street’ level. To not do this and then turn around and call sceptics ‘flat earthers’ (Gordon Brown) is the best way to alienate, insult and lose hearts and minds.

Comment on Crowdsourcing Comments by Jamie Young

Jamie Young — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:32:42 +0000

Thanks very much for taking the time to comment everyone. Some good thoughts. Rantersparadise I think it’s absolutely true that ‘bottom up’ communication causes difficulties for central government in particular, and I’m not sure if the willingess or capacity to try is there at the moment. I think it’s also true that public sector ads (like the ones that Christy mentions) often unhelpfully reinforce the idea of “us and them” between citizens and government. Thanks for letting me know about your paper Jude, I’ll see if I can access it. Thanks for your thoughts on crowd-sourcing arts too, Trevelyan – not sure I have any strong opinion, but I suppose that One & Other was crowd-sourced after a fashion – I’ll leave it to you to decide how successful at maintaining standards and quality it was.

Comment on Crowdsourcing Comments by Trevelyan Wright

Trevelyan Wright — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:18:17 +0000

I work for a community arts organisation in the midlands that is developing a crowdsourced cultural offer for a town. We have had an interesting dialogue with some more traditional arts funding organisations about whether it is cultural professionals who ensure quality, and whether funding can be allocated to a ‘bottom-up’ approach. How then do you balance a commitment to ’standards’ or ‘quality’ within a crowdsourced approach?

Comment on Crowdsourcing Comments by Christy Read

Christy Read — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 08:38:47 +0000

I think the essential link between designers and politicians & co are marketing people. Take the horrble ads on TV how government will catch you for not paying roadtax, cheating on Social Security etc. If true behaviour change is the object, get a marketing person to use maybe a designer to come up with more effective ads

Comment on Crowdsourcing Comments by Jude Chua Soo Meng

Jude Chua Soo Meng — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 05:19:09 +0000

Hi there
Perhaps you might find an experimental paper I wrote recently to be of interest:

Jude Chua Soo Meng “Saving the Teachers’ Soul: Exorcising the Terrors of Performativity” in London Review of Education, Volume 7, Issue 2 July 2009 , pages 159 – 167

This draws on the work of behavioral psychologist (loosely classified) James March and proposes the use of technologies of foolishness to design / engineer thinking that is conducive to designerly modes of thinking.

Abstract

In this paper I frame the totalizing dominance of performativity in educational arenas in terms of its effects on professional thinking and attitudes. The problem is that the education professional’s cognition ends up artificially obsessed with defined performance indicators and closed by default to the fluidity that should accompany reflective design practice. To mitigate this state of affairs, I propose that educators be encouraged to playfully consider non-performative goals, and that institutions can even welcome insincere or experimental consideration of non-performative educational goals. Such solutions may also correct excessively performative cultures outside educational contexts.

Keywords: performativity; design cognition; psychology of design; decision-making; professionalism; foolishness

Comment on Crowdsourcing Comments by rantersparadise

rantersparadise — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:41:42 +0000

I agree completely but the process to bridge this gap is much more complex than we think or want.

Do people really want to communicate more effectively? Less ‘Top Down’ and more ‘Bottom Up’?

I’m working on what you are talking about now and I’m facing more obstacles than I thought I would…

Comment on Missing Links by Dan Lockton

Dan Lockton — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:43:06 +0000

Thanks Jamie – it was great to be able to try out the DwI stuff with such interesting people, on real problems.

On the obesity front, have you seen http://eat.ly ? It’s a very different approach to the Wii, but the aim seems to be to get people to reflect on what they eat, by committing to photograph each meal before eating it (http://eat.ly/faq#what – “Pausing for even a second to reflect on what you’re about to take-in is a simple yet powerful change to most diets… The Eat.ly technology platform is founded on the core idea that data + pictures = positive change.”)

It also allows other users to rate your meals for perceived healthiness. So there’s a kind of wisdom of crowds / social proof element, alongside the extra step of the photograph/pause and the commitment & consistency element…