We often work with people as if the only insights relevant to use are the experience and needs they have towards a service — i.e. renewing a blue badge — an issue — i.e. getting a job — or a neighbourhood.
But their experiences and expectations are shaped by similar experiences of using services, influences from their networks (i.e. “you can’t get a job through the job centre, so don’t sign on”) and the relationships the people they trust the most (have) had with particular services (i.e. parents who failed their exams at school) and external pressures (i.e. having to care for parents with dementia).
We must shift our focus from customers needing a service to understanding the complex environment that shapes their motivations, behaviours, and decisions. This understanding can truly enlighten our approach to design.
I’ve found The Design With Intent Cards by Dan Lockton an excellent way to help you think through this creatively. The following are the techniques I’ve seen the most helpful from those cards.
Modelling users: Pinballs
The system’s actual affordances are designed so that only certain behaviours occur. It silently structures behaviour: users follow the designers’ behaviour specification without necessarily being aware.
This view can lead to poor user experience when the designer’s and users’ priorities conflict.
For instance, Nepal‘s Tribhuvan Airport issued staff with trousers without pockets to reduce bribery by making it harder to hide cash. This real-world example illustrates the concept of ‘Modelling users: Pinballs’ from the Design With Intent Cards.
Give people stickers based on their skills and motivations to ensure that each group has an effective balance of skills and motivations.
Modelling users: Shortcuts
We make decisions based on how choices are presented to us, and we can’t devote the same mental effort to engage with every decision. If something is the default, most people stick with it.
Get people on the website to navigate straight to the challenge
Modelling users: Thoughtful
Thoughtful users are assumed to think about what they are doing and why and change their attitudes and behaviour in response to reasoned arguments. Give your system plenty of information displays and feedback that allow users to explore the implications of what they’re doing and better understand the world around them.
Provide people with context about the challenge that meets people’s different learning styles — conceptual (scenarios & methods), social (comment & discuss), factual (data & strategy) & action-focused (how to & methods)
Converging & diverging
Create space so people come together in specific ways.
Error proofingLens
The Errorproofing Lens treats deviations from the ‘target behaviour’ as ‘errors’, which design can help avoid, either by making it easier for users to work without making errors or by making mistakes impossible in the first place.
Interaction Lens
The Interaction Lens combines some of the most common design elements of interfaces where users’ interactions with the system affect how their behaviour is influenced.
Ludic Lens
Games are great at engaging people for long periods, getting them involved, and influencing their behaviour through their design.
Provoke curiosity by changing the front page with user-generated content.
Document and report the activities to keep participants engaged after the event and attract new people to take part in future events
Perceptual Lens
The Perceptual Lens addresses how users perceive patterns and meanings as they interact with the systems around them. It puts these patterns into forms that invite the designer to consider how they might influence people’s behaviour.
Cognitive Lens
If designers understand how users make interaction decisions, that knowledge can be used to influence interaction behaviour.
Provoke empathy
Get people to share stories which provoke empathy
Show people what tasks other people have carried outMachiavellian Lens
The Machiavellian Lens comprises design patterns which, while diverse, all embody an ‘end justifies the means’ approach.
Security Lens
The Security Lens represents a ‘security’ worldview, i.e., that undesired user behaviour can be deterred and prevented through ‘countermeasures’ designed into products, systems, and environments, both physically and online.
See more at Design With Intent.
