Robert Fabricant’s Irrational Behavior keynote at Interaction 09 argued that since behavior is the medium of interaction design, problems that result from behaviors are problems for interaction designers to solve.
- Interaction Design is about more than computing technology. It’s about making things more suitable for human use.
- Technology is not our medium, behavior is.
- Most interaction designers are infatuated with data visualization in order to reveal what people are doing through visual means.
- “Functionalism is only half the battle, the way you elicit engagement and interest from people is to appeal to their aesthetic sensibilities.”
- We need things in our devices that motivate us to use them.
- Old model: tracking, measurement, analysis –does not fulfill our emotional needs.
- Can designs tap into perception to take advantage of unconscious behaviors?
- Personal, abrupt, immoral, now –these are things that trigger responses from us. We need to create immediate representations that are immediately salient and do not require deep analysis.
- We can create aspirational behaviors through comparisons to other behaviors.
- Motivators in social behavior: create pledges within your social circle; provide reinforcements for commitments
- Market exchanges vs. social exchanges. Meters interact with us as consumers. A lot of exchanges are dominated by a sense of market value.
- New model: immediacy & influence & impact
- Behavior that requires an immediate response. When we create a meter or data visualization –it helps reveal the impact of something but does not motivate people to act.
- How do we measure the impact of what we do? We need a way to define behavioral impact.
- Outputs: things that you produce
- Outcome: what people do as a result of what you produce
- Impact: the changes that occur as a result of outcomes
- Understanding is important but it has to lead to a change in behavior.
- Sustainability is a problem of behavior. Therefore, it is an interaction design problem. We need to commit ourselves to solving the problem through impact not just outcomes.