The power of design in changing behavior

The power of design in changing behavior

Van der Voort, L.

Tromp, N. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Industrial Design

Master of Science Design for Interaction

2012-07-02

Social dilemmas are appearing in our lives at every single moment of the day at all levels of society. Talking about the great dilemmas of the modern world like pollution, over population and resource depletion we are also confronted with them in daily life at a lower level. For instance people in the train who love to listen to load music through their headphones and in mean time force many travelers surrounding to ‘enjoy’ the music as well. Or people who are always late for a meeting and let the rest wait because they think their time is very important and scare. Dilemmas like these are always resulting of a conflict of interest between the individual and the collective. The individual acts with short-term self-focused interest, while the society is better served with long-term collective-focused behavior. It is very convenient for me to throw my gum at the street instead of in the bin, but if we all act this way the streets will be covered with gum, which attracts more waste on the longer term. However, if I throw my gum at the street, I first of all act without thinking and second of all act without realizing the consequences on the longer term. As most of our behavior, some psychologists say even 99%, also this behavior is the result of unaware brainwork. Not the awareness but the unawareness is the master in our brains. So if most of our behavior is caused the unawareness, why are products like conventional campaigns focusing on changing the behavior in an aware way. If we want to change the behavior of people in social dilemmas we have to do it by approaching the unawareness, not by means of any text or sign, but by means of products. Since products have proven to influence our behavior without us even realizing it, why are we not applying this power in situations of social dilemmas jet? Should designers not take their responsibility and do ‘good’ for society? Besides applying our knowledge and capabilities in the commercial world, I suggest we apply it in the world cooping with social dilemmas. Many examples in the world of marketing are based on attacking the unawareness. The many researches done on the influence of different colors and shapes on the behavior of people or the regulations the government implies on clandestine advertising and priming, show how much we can influence people by the unawareness. This is how the hypothesis of this research comes to existence: Design products are more effective in influencing behavior in social dilemmas than conventional campaigns with signs and written text are. To examine if this hypothesis is true an experiment is set up where by means of two products based on design and two products based on signs and text are included. At the central canteen of the Haagse Hogeschool, every product is tested for a week and the influence of it on the students leaving behind waste is measured. However, the results of the experiment show no significance, meaning no valuable differences in the amount of waste left by the students caused by the influence of the different stimuli. However, this does not imply no interesting results we included at all. This lack of significance is either resulting from the set up of the experiment or the origin of the behavior of the students in the environment of the canteen. Different uncontrollable variables were included in the environment and had an influence on the students and their behavior. Besides since many students visit the canteen pretty often, the behavior possibly is based on situational norms and habits. Changing a habit or a situational norm requires a repeating adjusted interaction to eventually change the behavior. This report will dive in to the literature the hypothesis is based on followed by the set up of the experiment. The four stimuli included in this experiment will be illustrated by explaining the behavioral motivation they are based on and in what way they are expected to influence the behavior of the students. The analysis of the experiment is performed with various analyses of which the ‘results’ chapter will show the most important outcomes. The general conclusion and discussion on the various elements of the experiment are given in the chapter ‘discussion’ followed by the recommendations for a next experiment based on this one. Because, since no significance was resulting from this experiment, we are still convinced the power of design is immense and should be applied in changing the behavior in social dilemmas.

social dilemma
influencing behavior
unawareness
experiment

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:aea98a24-a29f-4a89-bf61-e0ae5773273c

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2012 Van der Voort, L.