Should Interaction Design Control Behavior?

Posted on May 6, 2009 by Brad

There seems to be two schools of thought in the IxDA community regarding how a design should influence a user behavior. On one side there are designers who simply try to support existing behavior patterns, on the other hand designers attempt to directly influence a users behavior pattern. Some argue that it is unethical to directly try to influence, or change, a users behavior without them knowing it. In my opinion, if you are not causing the user undue harm by modifying their behavior, it is fair game.

From a global point of view, both schools of thought end up doing the same thing. If a designer is simply supporting existing behavior, they are influencing the user to keep doing the same old thing. A designer who looks to directly effect the behavior of a user can drive innovation for new products, services, and methods. They don’t get caught up in what the user does today, but what they might do tomorrow.

Do you think there is an ethical issue here? If we can’t design new ways of doing things, does this stifle innovation? What camp do you fall in?

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  • mirweis

    This is a vast debate that could be extended to a lot of domains. I would rephrase these two categories as “structuring” and “regulating”.

    The structuring approach would provide users with a predefined “script” or “routine” helping them to go through the actions they have to accomplish towards a specific goal. This works well with new-comers or beginners as a “scaffold” for their activity. (in the same manner than adding additional wheels to a child's bicycle when he/she is learning to ride). The drawback is that it usually prevents users to be creative or to transfer solutions that already work form them.

    The regulating approach is to provide users with freedom about their processes of interaction with the interface. In addition, one may add some sort of feedback support to help them figure out ways to efficiently reach there goal. This approach is less constraining and leave room for idiosyncratic routines as well as creativity in terms of optimizing these routines. These approaches would fit best intermediate and frequent users.

    To sum up, I agree with your position but would add that it is dangerous to adhere to one of these school of thoughts. Both could have there advantages and drawbacks. Carefully analyzing the context of use and the specificities of the audience is the key.

  • http://bnunnally.tumblr.com Brad Nunnally

    For a given project it may be worth exploring phases that attempt to either support current behavior or try something new. Applications like Office and Photoshop have been doing this sort of by simply tagging on new features on top of old, even if the new feature makes an old one obsolete.

    This may be a good process for successfully phasing out legacy features.

  • landay

    Of course and it does all the time. But it will become even more important as interfaces are especially designed for behavior change (e.g., see the entire “persuasive computing” conference).

  • GilbertC

    Addressing these issues must depend on our views on human nature. If we adopt the reductionist positions of much experimental psychology, that reduces people to deterministic machines, then we can indeed shape behaviour if we understand the causal laws underlying human activities. What's more, if people are deterministic, then most, if not all, of the ethical issues disappear.

    If we take a humanistic view of human nature, and see people as interpreting, sense making, autonomous individuals in constraining social settings, who seek to grow throughout their lives, then 'nudges' apart, we can't really expect to fully influence human behaviour through design. Furthermore, the respect for individual autonomy here does raise ethical issues about covert manipulative behaviour. As long as the 'nudges' in an interaction design are overt and require some degree of knowing co-operation from users, then we can reduce the ethical issues.

    Mark Steen (TNO, Netherlands) examined self-other constructions in his Design PhD. All design activities create a relationship between the designer(s)' self and the users' other, and also co-construct both self and other in the process. I find Mark's analyses very helpful here in reframing the sort of questions above. For me, the question is, what are the ethical relations between designers and users in terms of self-other relationships, especialy when the relationship is mediated by a design artefact?

    Ultimately, it comes down to how explict designers are in expressing their purpose for designs, that is the ends to which a design is a means. Such purpose will vary, and have different ethical implications in different contexts, e.g., ATM dialogue design intentionally constrains the user to minimise queuing times, but a time-out on a print dialog would be seen as unethical – there is no need to pace users here, it's their PC and they an leave a dialog hanging as long as they want (this is not the same as Adobe/browsers *hiding* the print dialog under a pile of windows and freezing up your internet access!)

  • PoliticiansTV

    There is no ethical issue here .. they go hand and hand. The issue is if you use such techniques to intentionally mislead. This is like using advertising as editorial in magazines … They made laws for this.

    Data analysis is not a crime :) Web sites (applications) will “act” and “adapt” to user interaction as the years (days) go by … Resistance is futile.

  • http://ubelly.com/?p=70 Underbelly » Oh, Behave

    [...] to make you click on it, as are the links in this text. That’s not sinister! I found a great discussion thread from a blog on exactly this subject if you want to read both sides. Hopefully we’ll all be savvy [...]