Author: Xincheng Huang

In this workshop, we are doing a persuasive design for Eric. We are trying to design a strategy that can persuade him to do regular meditation. The hat assigned for our group is the green hat, which stands for creative thinking.

During the process, we find that it is actually quite tricky to perform persuasive design for someone with an inconsistent schedule. But performing such design really challenged us to think every aspect of the process. I think that the most important part of a persuasive design for me is designing a trigger. The reason is that sometimes I won’t get some work done even if it gives me enough motivation and is easy enough for me to complete it. Therefore, I think what I need the most when trying to follow a schedule is exactly a proper trigger. 

In the design process in this workshop, we considered a proper trigger for Eric could be a nice place and a leisure period of time. We thought about the restroom, classroom and so on, but we find that neither of these places can be pleasant enough or gives him enough time to meditate.

Therefore, the end result was that we think that Eric should find a consistent slot in his schedule specifically for meditation. 

A common problem for many of us in our life is procrastination. Personally, I cannot remember how many times I have decided to start working but then end up with spending another 30 to 60 minutes playing on my phone. I have tried to solve this problem by setting an alarm or timer on my phone or laptop. However, I realize that it does not help, because the action of “setting an alarm” on the phone is itself a distraction. I just cannot help but browsing a few other apps after I set up an alarm. Therefore, I would like to design something, that can help me to track the time I have spent on my work without creating an extra distraction.

The product I would like to design and make is a pen with extra functionality for timing. To be more specific, I will put a line of lights on the pen that changes color and the length of color. When a user is using that pen to write, the light will slowly turn pleasant green or blue, and the length of the part that gets light up also drop to signal that the time is going. When a user stops working and lay the pen down, the color will slowly turn red and the length of the part that gets light up will go up. In this way, the user will be able to see how much time he or she has been continuously working, when to take a rest, and how much time he or she has stopped working.

This product uses the idea of “enchanted objects”, fits in the commercial agenda, and pursues the design goal of performance and problem-solving. With the idea of “enchanted objects”, the functionality of timing is embedded in the pen, so it won’t provide an extra distraction. Also, the color the “level” of the light keep alarming the user and encourage him or her to stay focus and work. Such design and extra functionality leads to good performance and helps to tackle the problem of procastination. Furthermore, apart from good performance, the pen will be pleasant to look at and interesting to use, which makes it fit the commercial agenda.

I hope that such a design can encourage more quality work and study for anyone who frequently works with a pen.

Reading the behavior model for persuasive design, I am very impressed on the author’s emphasis on the relationship between behavior and motivation, difficulty, and trigger. It might be a common sense that a behavior will be more easily carried out by someone if the difficulty is high and the motivation is low. However, personally, I just like to aim high and imagine how good it would be if I am able to carry out something difficult and fascinating. Reflecting on this, I realize that I am starting with high motivation, but also high difficulty, and this might be why I am usually not able to complete some of my tasks.

Another thing that is noticeable in this paper is the idea that the difficulty and motivation will change as will work on a project. On the one hand, if a task is too difficult at the beginning, one’s motivation will be worn off no matter how much motivation he or she started with. On the other hand, if one starts with an easy task, he’s or she’s motivation and sense of difficulty will also change. For instance, by getting familiar with the task, one might get more and more confident and want to challenge something with more difficulty. In this way, one can eventually complete a task that requires both high difficulty and motivation.

For the past five days, I was trying to cultivate a habit of exercising regularly (which I have been trying for a long time but failed). For the first two days, I set the goal of jogging for two kilometers after getting up. However, it ended up being too difficult for me. So, for the next three days, I switched to doing ten push-ups every day before sleeping. It turns out to be a workable plan. The difficulty is low, and I have moderate motivation. Meanwhile, I realize the choice of time is also important, it has an effect on both difficulty and motivation. Generally, a free and comfortable time slot is best suited for completing a relatively challenging task.

In this presentation, David Ross discusses the idea of “enchanted object”. This is basically a kind of design that uses daily and common objects in our lives but adds extraordinary things to it. David Ross suggests that this is an option of how future technologies should be designed. He also mentioned some other possibilities such as “terminal world”, “Prothetic World”, “Animism”, but he also suggests that they each have their fatal flaw, such as being distracting or discouraging communication between people.

The one thing about “enchanted object” that is the most interesting for me is how it focuses on making the daily things around us become more useful and extraordinary. This idea makes the design much more blend-in in our lives rather than imposing new concepts to its users. I think this is very important in this modern time, for the reason that avoiding distraction and disturbance of new technology has become many people’s concern in their lives. Modern technologies have brought us access to tons of information, via the internet, phones, and computers. However, this also makes us exposed to unnecessary information and distracts us from living our own lives. In my opinion, “enchanted objects” provides a solution to dial down such distraction without having to reduce our access to information. Specifically, each object is designed to provide only the information that is meaningful for its purpose, and only at the time when actually need it.

However, I also think that there could also be problems with “enchanted objects”. For instance, when we have too many of them from us, blinking or beeping, then this could be even a more terrible distraction. Meanwhile, maybe always designing our technologies into building products following the idea of “enchanted objects” won’t be a very good idea either. Because sometimes society does need designs that bring us completely new invention, and the idea of “enchanted object” does not really provide ideas for conducting such designs.

1. Electrical Cords Around the Products

Electrical cords can be troublesome for our life. We are often encountered with situations when we have to organize a bunch of messy cords of our earphone or charger. Therefore, I realize that I have developed this thoughtless act of rolling any electrical cord around that electrical product itself. 

One potential solution for this is similar to what Apple did for their old MacBook chargers, which actually comes with two little thin plates that you can roll the cords on.

2. Walking on the side of the pavement

This is actually a quite childish act which I did a lot when I was a little child (and I still do sometimes though). Today in some parks you can still see children walking on the very side of the pavement for no reasons.

I guess a potential solution for this is to make the side of the pavement less stand out. Now, most pavements do look like what is shown in the above picture, with its side standing out as a separate line of brick. Therefore, this thoughtless act might come from people’s instinct of following a line, and if we make this line of pavement side blind in, maybe we can make the occurrence of this relatively dangerous act less frequent.

3. Pop up!

This might bring back some childhood memory. At least for me, it was almost addictive to just sit there and pop up one of these wrapping materials. I don’t think there has to be necessarily a solution for this, because popping up them feels great! Furthermore, I even think that if we could design a toy, which can be repeatedly popped up, it must be one of the top-selling toys around the world!