Oh behave!

It's been a long 2 weeks since I last blogged, mainly because of work and secondly my poor sewing machine jammed again as I was doing another reconstruction (will blog about that later!). 

I did come across some interesting sites about behaviour though. Nowadays, governments are trying to come up with schemes/programmes that will help "nudge" the public in the desired direction.  A good example is the gruesome pictures on the cigarette packs to deter people from smoking, or placing recycling bins below our housing estates to get people to recycle. It is difficult though - have you ever tried changing the behaviour of your loved ones? hee hee. 

Here's someone who's actually stealing from a recycling bin instead of actually using it correctly - is there something wrong with the way the bin is designed, or are we sending the wrong message?

This is a picture of the recycling bins just outside our neighbourhood shopping centre. I think the reason why they're used incorrectly is that it's more convenient for the shoppers who've finished their food and drinks to pop their waste there instead of the general waste bin !

Have you ever noticed that although people come up with green inventions with intentions of helping the environment, we have not seen them on the market?  Look at the pics below:

Would you use this washing machine?
Designed for developing countries, just pop in
the clothes and roll it back home
when you've added the water

Almost waterless washing machine.
Having used water to do the laundry
some of us may be uncomfortable
with using such an invention.

Pictures from DesignWoo.com and Maglevus.

Even if an appliance, say a refrigerator, has been designed to be energy efficient, the end-user (ie me or you) has actually made its life-cycle energy inefficient if we always leave the fridge door open or taking forever to find that last slice of cheese in the fridge!


What we design is going to affect how users behave.......
Behaviour is not just about rolling out a new programme or waving a stick or a carrot at us. It can also mean changing the things that we use or the environment that we live in to push us in the right direction.  All you designers out there - take note!!

Dan Lockton of Design with Intent does a great job in explaining the different ways we can change behaviour.  He has designed a toolkit book that gets your brain ticking on what to look out for.  He has grouped the different ways you can influence behaviour into 8 lenses.  Here are some of my favourites....