Humans in Design

Using my car keys to make a point about what makes great design...

Mon, 27 Jul 2015 22:34:53 +1000

Using my car keys to make a point about what makes great design - click unlock to link to the post.

Want to kill cash? It’s all about habits and bridges.

Tue, 25 Feb 2014 14:25:52 +1000

If you believed the publicity from banking innovation experts in the late 2000s you’d be quite surprised that cash isn’t dead and we’re not paying for everything by tapping our phones against little black boxes.

A few years on and there has certainly been some movement in that direction. There are some cool phone payment systems (square) and some quite widely used card tap payment systems (paypass).

However, it’s not exactly been the lightning revolution that was promised. We’ve been hearing about google wallet since 2011. Where is it? I’m still handing over a jangle of coins for my morning flat white.

Where I live (Australia) we are certainly not a luddites. Whilst we have traditionally lead the world in uptake of new payment systems, the number of payments made with cash was actually increasing at least until 2010. There seems be have been a gentle drop since them, but it’s not exactly falling off the chart and, where I come from, still dominates other methods of payment at low amounts:

So, what’s stopping us? Technologists would probably argue that the implementation of the required infrastructure. But I think the real issue is ourselves. Or more specifically, our habits.

You see, it’s my belief that most of our interactions with money are based on habits. This is especially true when you think about payment methods. We simply don’t think about it. Therefore, no matter how cool the new world of payment excites tech heads and designers if the bridge is too far from what each broadly standard habits they won’t take hold.

People didn't one day move from using paper and metal currency to tapping little pieces of plastic against a curved black box and hearing a ‘beep’. There was a progression:

The reason that google wallet isn’t taking off (just yet) is that it’s just a habit too far. Tapping our phones against boxes with the insignia of a tech company (ie not a “bank”) isn’t scary. It’s just unusual.

It seems a few people are holding a similar view. Some of these people are actually capable of delivering a product to market. My favourite example is the impeccably designed Coin; an interactive credit/debit card. Rather than carry all your cards you carry one and use an interface to select which one you want to use.

The CEO and founder of Coin once worked at PayPal. From what I can interpret he helped to build payment systems on mobile phones. He came up against the the chasm of current behaviour to what PayPal was trying to do. He started Coin to not only fit in this gap but adapt with the habitual changes it could create. In an interview he stated:

“I learned a big lesson from my last company where I built a payment system purely on mobile phones. What I found was it didn’t scale, we couldn’t change people’s habits. With Coin we have a system that works now. It works today but it has the technology for tomorrow so it will fit where we’re headed into the future.”

Another interesting example of using habit transition is square. Originally they took the natural behaviour of swiping a card and mashed that with 3 tiny but important behavioural changes:

Paying peer to peer with a card.
Paying with your phone.
Paying via an intermediary that isn't your bank.

Square played in this space specifically to capitalise on existing behaviours (ie the swipe of a card). But what is really interesting is that they have a succession plan. Square cash capitalises on the newly formed behaviour of paying with your phone through square as a way of removing the card.

The last example is Google Wallet itself. Google just recently announced that they were releasing a debit card. Some thought this was a strange move. But I prefer to think that there was someone like me inside the google wallet team who said “the habitual behaviours people have are on 1 shore. Google wallet is on the other. We need to build the bridge in the middle.“ That bridge is the card.

So, what does all this tell us about the design of money? We should dream far into the future. This is where we get the great ideas. But we cannot design this future immediately and expect it to happen.

We must recognise the habits that people have and gradually change them to the more grandiose original vision. The design of money can be a fast evolution, but it will never be a revolution.

Religious by Default

Tue, 18 Feb 2014 17:06:00 +1000

Can replacing two words in a sentence decrease religion by a third? In Australia the answer could be “yes.”

A quick background: in Australia religious education (read Christian education) is offered in government primary schools. This is called Special Religious Education (SRE). For half an hour each week, a volunteer Christian turns up to schools to teach pre-teens Christianity.

My lovely wife sent me an article on religious education in Australia. It included the following:

Prior to August 2011, the SRI enrolment forms used by schools were “opt-out”, meaning parents had to fill in the form or their child would automatically end up being taught religion, enrolled by default.

In the past two years, however, the forms became “opt-in”, meaning parents have to make a conscious choice to enrol their child in religious education. This simple change had a massive impact on the popularity of SRI. Namely, far fewer kids are enrolled.

Emerald Primary School principal Mark Carver said before the form was changed, perhaps 75 per cent of students in a class of 24 would receive instruction.

“Last year that was dropping close to 50 per cent,” Mr Carver said. “And once it gets below that, it becomes a difficult thing in terms of supervision.”

Yes, you read that right. The default option on a school form changes parent’s decision to have their child religiously educated. So I whilst we don’t have the actual figures from the government, if this principal’s finding can be generalised it would mean a drop from 75% to 50% of primary school aged children learning Christianity. Since the form in the Victoria, an Australian State, was changed to opt-in in 2011 there has been a dramatic drop in the number of schools and children receiving education in government schools:

I haven’t seen the form surely the would have been something like this:

[ ] I would like to opt my child out of religious education.

Now it would have changed to something like this:

[ ] I would like to opt my child into of religious education.

Two words changed to one and suddenly the want of Australian parents to have their kids taught Christianity has a significant drop. The motivations of the parents are not so clear. It might be that parents don’t want their kids to be the odd one out. It might be that parents just don’t see the box. We really don’t know.

But the psychological principle that leads to this change is well documented. It’s called the default effect. This is when a default option is offered which the user will be given if they do not make an active choice for another option. The most famous example is the huge difference in the rates of organ donors between countries with an ‘opt in’ system as compared with those that have ‘presumed conscent’ when people don’t tick the opt out box:

We’ve ruminated before that the design the Australia census question on religion reads as if it’s ‘religious by default’. Whilst all the logical evidence suggests that the Australia Government should have changed this question because it’s biased by design, we don’t have the proof that it changed choice.

Whilst a change in the choice to have your children religiously educated isn’t evidence that the census question needs to be changed, it does show that changing the default option effects the behaviour of Australians when considering religion. And in this case the outcome isn’t diffuse and distant. It directly effects your child.

But does this actually matter? So what if Australian kids lean some stories about a dude who came back from the dead? From my personal experience it does matter. My family is not religious. I know that this education caused me to believe in a Christian god, and everything associated, as fact for years. When I was about 10 I even asked my friend James, who’s dad was a baptist pastor, to give me a bible. I kept that bible until I was 16.

I also remember Jewish kid in our class was opted out by his parents. He was sent to a chair outside the principals office for the half hour that was usually ‘the naughty kids chair’. I honestly felt like he as being punished for not being Christian and that Judaism was somehow different an weird.

Whilst I came out the other side of this education with no religious beliefs I don’t believe this is always the case. I think it plays a strong part the prevailing view that Australia remains a christian country. On a personal level my good friend Matt calls himself ‘culturally Catholic’ and selected catholic on the census. Nothing I’ve ever seen him do shows any attachment to the religion and I know he doesn't believe.

This is a lesson for those progressive Australians who want a move a way from religion. Rather than focus on the logical arguments, focus on some key decision points. If we move those away from being religious by default much of religion will just evolve away.

Nudges, Incentives & Humans in the Design of Water Consumption

Fri, 07 Feb 2014 07:02:00 +1000

A classic nudge - a tiny behavioural intervention that leads people to a particular behaviour but doesn’t force it - is the placement of graphs on power bills. Specifically graphs that compare your current rate of use to your neighbours and, sometimes, yourself.

But can a tiny graph really work? Yes it can. This little intervention has been proven to lead to a decrease in power use that is at least somewhat sustained over time. The best data on this comes from US energy provider Opower. The intervention was randomised and encompasses 11 different utility service areas and more than ¾ of a million households. All areas experienced a drop in power with an average of 1.8% and a peak of 2.9%. Put another way, that’s 3 less coal-fired power plants.

The psychological reason that this works is multifaceted, but the main explanations I saw was the impact of social heuristics; specifically the imitate-the-majority (follow the herd) and imitate-the-successful heuristic (follow the leader). For those who don’t know, heuristics are is a cognitive shortcuts we all make in everyday decisions; rules of thumb. They’re good because they ease the cognitive load. But the judgment is intuitive, even automatic, meaning the outcome isn’t necessarily optimal.

So, knowing about this, I thought it was cool when a couple of years ago I saw graphs appearing on my utility bills in Australia. I’m pretty sure that I saw it on my electricity bill first. The water bill was soon to follow. I can’t find any studies on water, but I have no reason to think it wouldn't work just like electricity. You can shower faster just the same as you can turn of the lights more frequently. I don’t know if it worked us (but I assume I’m a lamb like everyone else).

Things got interesting to me when we moved to from Brisbane to Melbourne. We own our house in Brisbane and are renting in Melbourne. This move came with one unfortunate realisation in regard to utilities. Though in Melbourne the renter pays the water, in Brisbane it’s the landlord. So we got stuck with 2 bills. I wasn't that concerned. The bill wasn't that big for us. But then the bill arrived. Our tenants use 3 to 4 times the amount of water we did. We are the ‘same period last year’ in the image below:

Whilst we are not the same people, and there is only two of us and our tenants have just had a very cute baby, you have to admit that’s an extraordinary leap. When you consider they are a small household they don’t fare too well against the city averages.

This got me thinking of the current intellectual debate on what drives behaviour. Specifically, what Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, the grandfathers of heuristics, dubbed system 1 and system 2 of the brain. Both are models of how we can make decisions in very different ways:

System 1: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, subconscious
System 2: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious

The title of Kahnerman’s book helps me remember these systems: Thinking, Fast and Slow.

I always thought of the graph as a nudge that relied mainly on the subconscious effect of system 1. I can never remember making any specific changes to my power habits but, as I said, I assumed it worked on me. When I saw this bill from my tenants I was very quickly jolted into the conscious and calculating system 2.

If it was my house I’d be thinking ‘what can I do to save water?’. I might even come up with some behavioral interventions. Whilst I might internalise that down into various habits in system 1, I think I’d be very aware of the behaviours I was striving for at the beginning. It made me wonder if that 1.8% drop in power use I described above actually comes from thousands of little subconscious decisions, as I had assumed, or a much smaller group of people having ‘oh crap’ moments when they realised they use way more power than their neighbours.

Well to me it boils down classical economics and incentives. I’d never actually looked up the definition of an incentive before, but it’s “something that motivates an individual to perform an action.” That’s really interesting as my favourite behaviour change model - BJ Fogg’s - suggests that behaviour is driven by three things all converging at the same time; motivation, ability and trigger. In the case of large bills like the one I got, it seems that the motivation could be purely financial.

So what’s the lesson here? I feel that some of us who like psychology have thought we might be able solve big problems with nudges. The UK even has a government department nicknamed the nudge unit. It’s seductive to think that we could solve some really big problems without both government intervention or really noticing.

But if this is any indication, if you are looking to put a nudge in place you should first make sure the incentives are right. Otherwise it might be like trying to make water run uphill. So, just like the larger battles of climate change, if we want to conserve resources we should make those who use it pay up; my tenants should pay for their water.

In the meantime I think I might just send the bill to them, hoping that the motivation of pissing-off their landlord might be enough to help them change. I might also send them 4-minute-shower egg timer just to nudge the ability and trigger.

We weren't the only ones with concerns about religion and the 2011 Australian Census

Fri, 18 Oct 2013 08:30:10 +1000

Way back in August 2011 we raised some questions about how the Australian Census was asking respondents about religious affiliation. Our post suggested that the census seemed to assume that people were members of a religious group, and that a response bias could push people to choose the first bubble on the form (Catholic) even when more and more Australians are reporting being non-religious.

We loved the lively discussion in the comments and on Twitter, but more importantly, people were letting the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) know their concerns about potential bias in the wording of the question. The ABS received 444 submissions about the question — higher than all other categories combined and by a magnitude of three. The ABS’ summary of the submissions:

the introduction of a filter question asking if the person has a religion with a ‘YES/NO’ response

the category of 'No religion’ to be placed at the top of the list - otherwise in ranking order based on output data from the 2011 Census

revision of the question wording, incorporating new words such as ‘belief’ and ‘practising’

the inclusion of additional pick boxes for non-Christian religions

the review of examples of 'Other’ in the accompanying notes.

This is great - any of these would be welcome changes, with longitudinal annotation of the adjustment, of course. Sadly, the ABS’ recommendation for 2016 is a much more timid change:

The Census is the only source of detailed, small area religious affiliation data. Information on religious affiliation is widely used in the religious community, and by government agencies which provide services complementary to those provided by religious organisations.

The ABS will make some small changes to the list of response categories for common religious groups to reflect the most common responses received in the 2011 Census.

This recommendation is a contradiction. The first paragraph emphasizes the importance of the Census as the only source of religious affiliation data, but failing to address the larger problems with the question makes the results of that single-source wholly untrustworthy.

This has real-life impacts on funding and policy decisions. Religious affiliation data collected from the census is used to plan funding for parochial schools, assigning chaplains in hospitals and the armed services, and determining how to share time in public media. In other words, things that you might notice every day.

The pure volume of submissions on the subject shows that this is an area of great concern for those watching the census. The ABS could have been scientific and statistical about the problem (we would have happily given them our prototype for a trial) but instead they chose consistency over accuracy.

Oh well. Maybe next time.

Voting is a service, and it’s losing customers.

Fri, 06 Sep 2013 08:41:13 +1000

This Saturday is the Australian Federal Election. A friend of mine decided that she wanted her Saturday for herself so decided to vote early. She’s vegan, so it’s no surprise that when she saw the newly formed Animal Justice Party she was intrigued. She’d done some research online to find the party was formed in 2011, since the last election, with a manifesto :

“…to focus public attention and bring about change to the way humans at large treat other animal species as a result of political decision making.”

She voted ‘above the line’ for them in the Australian senate. Without knowing it this left leaning animal lover, who did her research, could just have had her vote counted in electing a senator from nationalists (One Nation), conservative Christians (Family First) or anti-environmentalists (not carbon tax climate skeptics) before it reaches a major party who wants to establish an independent office of animal welfare(The Greens).

How did this happen? It’s all of the design of a voting system - the single transferable vote - along with a service that hides transparency.

The Ballot - A Broken Touchpoint

For those not in Australia, we have two houses of parliament; the house of representatives and the senate. In both houses we have preferential voting - otherwise known as ranked voting - where voters rank an order of preference in a hierarchy and have their vote transferred to their next preference when their preferred candidate is eliminated. In the lower house we have what is called instant runoff voting where the order of preference is explicitly stated by the voter). The senate is different. There is a literal line on the ballot paper and voters have the preference of voting ‘above the line’ or ‘below the line’.

Whilst the parties are separated into columns, in the below the line the voting we can nominate individual senators in an order of preference.

However, we also have the option of placing a single vote of a single party above the line and casting what is known as a single transferable vote; voting above the line. In this instance the voter is not only voting for their first preference party. They also delegate the right for the party to allocate their vote in a preference they give to the Australian Electoral Commission prior to polling day. As this form of voting is easier it’s not really a surprise that 95% of people vote above the line.

Here is the catch though: the preferences are essentially invisible. You can see the parties preferences on some websites but I doubt few look or any remember. At the polling booth, as far as I know, they’re nowhere to be seen. They’re certainly not next to you when you are voting. It’s all memory.

Historically, this wasn’t really a problem. The number of parties was low and it was pretty obvious on a general political left to right. But in recent years things have changed. There has been a proliferation of minor parties and the ballot has progressively got longer. It’s at the point now where my senate ballot paper is over a metre long:

As the senate ballot papers have gotten longer so have the number of votes not counted because of the way the ballot was filled out. This reached 3.89% at the last election, nearly 1 in 25 people. And whilst that is a problem, the invisible preference flows have become a bigger problem. You see it is no longer obvious where preferences go, largely caused by the smaller parties making preference deals. These all seem to be about staying in the race long enough to grab a senate seat as a with a tiny number of first preference votes. Political scientist John Wanna puts it well:

“What’s happened is, once we’ve gone over the line, the micro-parties have realised, as a result of things like the New South Wales Legislative Council elections, that they can piece together these deals, which are basically anti-democratic deals really. They’re trying to shift your vote to somewhere else. And they’ve had a couple of decades now to work out how to game the system. And they’ve learnt how to game the system.”

The term for this is pretty sinister sounding; vote harvesting. I leads to some seriously bizarre preferences, like the one mentioned in my about my vegan friend. Perhaps most notably is the preference deal between the Australian Sex Party - a self described civil libertarian alternative - and One Nation - ultra conservative populists. Both have preferenced each other over the other major parties. In the state of Victoria, Fiona Pattern of the Australian Sex party was one of the last candidates eliminated in 2010 and stands a very good chance of being elected on preferences, including those of One Nation. In NSW the infamous Pauline Hanson stands a chance of being back in federal politics on the back of preferences including those of the Australian Sex Party. To use hyper-sterotypes, this means gay, pot-smoking, immigrant strippers could end up voting with white, anti-immigrant nationalists to elect two very different senators.

Voters are now left with the problem of voting below the line in filling out nearly 100 boxes, where they cannot possibly know the information to preference correctly if they manage to do it at all, or voting above the line and hoping their preference ends up working to their wishes. To summarise generally:

Voting below the line = Pain + Control

Voting above the line = Speed + Hope

Election Day - A Broken Service

A traditional method used in service design, my profession, is that of the customer journey map. The point is to take the customers, or voters, through a service to both empathise with their situation and identify ‘touchpoints’ for future design. (Touchpoint is essentially jargon for an encounter that can be altered.).

Whilst a real journey map would be more detailed, a brief look at users on voting day reveals it’s obvious why people tend to only vote above the line. By the time you’re inside that small, cramped booth, where the massive senate ballot paper can’t even be held flat, you’ve already been through a rough time. Perhaps:

you only remembered late in the day that you had to squeeze in voting.
You’ve driven around the block 5 times looking for a park.
There’s bored kids running amuck around the polling place.
An at-the-time-delicious sausage in bread is now rumbling in your guts.
You can’t find a loo because you’ll lose your place in line.
You’ve now waited an half hour in a line, only to be placed in another line because you are in the wrong electorate.

You notice nowhere along that journey I described is a user actually exposed to the preferences of their chosen candidates. Political Antony Pink says:

“It becomes almost an impossible nightmare for all but the most prepared to show their preferences on the largest possible Senate ballot with the smallest possible fonts.

It’s easy to see why voters, even if they are sure of some preferences, just say ‘stuff it, mate’ and place a 1 above the line. They might head out hoping their vote gets allocated the way they want, but probably don’t think about it at all.

Fixing the Service

People tend to think of voting systems as fixed designs. But that is simply not true. Over time the design of voting has evolved to make voting easier and less error prone. For example, in 1856 Australia was the first country to include the candidates names on the ballots. In fact, above the line voting itself has only existed since 1984. Anything can be designed.

Whilst there are a number of clear issues including the irritation of voting and the simple inability to actually remember the political stance of all parties. However, it’s the lack of transparency of preferences that is at the heart of the problem. The point of doing a service journey is so that you know where the opportunities might lie. Whilst you’d want a detailed analysis do do the design, stopping short of fundamentally changing the electoral system, there are basically 4 main opportunities to improve transparency:

1. Fix the Touchpoint

Identify opportunities in the ballot booth or on the ballot paper that clearly show preference flows of above the line voting. Having the preference flows clearly visible in polling booths would ensure people have access some information on the day so they can use what prior knowledge the have and make an informed vote. You could also, let voters partially fill below the line, giving them a right to vote nobody if a some number of their preferences were passed over.

2. Utilise the Voter’s Journey

The process of polling day does tend to involve some degree of waiting. It also involves passing through places getting how to vote cards. There are numerous opportunities to allow voters to discover preferences as they enter. Maybe it’s volunteer organisations showing people ipads where they can check preference flows. Maybe it’s handing people bound books whilst they are in-line. Maybe it’s simply showing them on large walls.

3. Change the Channel

Channel is service design jargon for a conduit for delivering goods, services or information. Department stores have their physical space as one channel, and their webstore as another. Voting already has other channels, most notably the postal vote. We have already written about how this changes the voting experience, most notably removing time pressure and allowing access to wider information. For example, voters could utalise tools such as below the lineand research who you’re ranking thoroughly as you do it.

4. Create a Channel

Why not create a whole new way to vote? Australia brought in electronic voting at polling booths for persons with a disability in 2007. This fundamentally opens up the possibility of making invisible preferences visible. But why stop there. Surely online voting can’t be far away. Transparency would be there with the click of a button.

But, of course none of this will be fixed tomorrow.

And that’s a shame, because we could see it coming. Anthony Green, Australia’s most well known and respected electoral commentator, took aimat the electoral system:

“Conducting an election under such circumstances is a farce that Australians, and the politicians responsible for not acting ahead of time to fix the system, should be embarrassed by.”

In short, don’t hate the player. Hate the game.

Let’s fix our ballot by 2016.

Tristan
@humansindesign

Rohan Irvine - Guest Post and UX/Service Design job seeker
@rohboto

Thought this was good? See our post on the US ballot or the Australian Census.

The Plimsoll Line Revisited Some time ago I appeared on a 99%...

Thu, 29 Aug 2013 23:13:42 +1000

The Plimsoll Line Revisited

Some time ago I appeared on a 99% Invisible episode about the Plimsoll Line. Since that time I’ve often thought about why I loved the episode so much. It got to the to the point exactly a year ago today I felt the need gush (embarrassingly) about the line to hundreds of strangers at UX Australia 2012.

I played the episode, with the visuals, and then tried to explain the (over-the-top) reason why I think Plimsoll Line is a perfect use of design that I want to try and emulate.

onthegrid: Episode 34: Australian for Money [recorded April...

Mon, 13 May 2013 22:27:57 +1000

onthegrid:

Episode 34: Australian for Money [recorded April 28th, 2013]

This episode we were joined by Tristan Cooke of Humans in Design to discuss the Trojan Horses, Dark Matter, and Money.

Dan Hill: Dark Matter, Trojan Horses lecture

Matt’s article for Humans in Design

Simple - Alternative to Traditional Banking

Humans in Design on Simple

Renew New Castle

Creole Pigs

Can vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa?

Redesigned US $100 Note

99% Invisible Episode 54- The Colour of Money (featuring Tristan)

99% Invisible Episode 40- Billy Possum (featuring Oreos and Hydrox)

Trying to go Simple in a complicated world

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 17:00:00 +1000

I was incredibly excited when I got my invite to Simple. The company seems to be doing everything right, from a beautiful, usable app that helps customers set and meet goals to refreshing, clean design of the actual debit card and its packaging. It’s just what we love at Humans in Design.

Simple iPhone App Video from Simple on Vimeo.

I quickly transferred some money to my new account, and set out to try spending with my matte white card. The app worked wonderfully, as did the identity I felt when using the service. This was the opposite of a black card - it didn’t indicate that I was rich enough to spend indiscriminately, but that I was making intelligent decisions about spending and saving.

The associated app is probably the best financial app I’ve ever used - it captures details like location, category, and even how well I tipped. It’s fast and clean in a way that apps from big banks (who almost literally have all the money in the world) just aren’t.

However, I didn’t move my paycheck direct deposit to Simple for one key reason: the rent check. It feels completely anachronistic, but my landlord doesn’t have the means to accept rent payments electronically. I have to write a check on the first day of each month, and Simple doesn’t provide those silly pieces of paper.

UPDATE: Thanks to Rémy Rakić for pointing out that Simple does offer those silly pieces of paper — you just have to order them one at a time. I’m still frustrated that I couldn’t find this functionality without complaining about its absence here, but I might use it in the future. My point about America’s stupid, fragmented banking system stands.

I could work around this. I could transfer money from one account to the other, and plan around the 24-48 hour transfer delay. Or I could move my direct deposit to Simple and get a cashier’s check for the rent every month. Unfortunately both those solutions actually make life a little bit less-Simple.

This old-timey constraint is limiting real innovation in the banking industry. Paying my biggest monthly expense by check is inconvenient in almost every way. It requires physical delivery on my part, and it’s always a guessing game as to when the check will actually be cashed.

There’s a convenience incentive to move to electronic payments, but it mostly applies to individual payers. Banks need to put forth a strong effort to make alternative payment methods into the mainstream by advocating new services like Simple, Square, Isis, Google Wallet, or any number of other innovating organizations. Simple CEO Josh Reich knows this fragmented system is holding them back, too, and he talked about it in this fantastic interview on The Verge.

I love what Simple is doing, and I want to use it more, but for now, the people I have to pay make my big, old, user-unfriendly bank the path of least resistance and the payment network is being held back by the slowest players.

-Tom

@tmnlsn

Ever wondered where we came from and why we keep blogging? Hear...

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 08:30:15 +1000

Ever wondered where we came from and why we keep blogging? Hear about it on this in the above audio from an ABC radio program which was hosted by our friend Scott Spark in December.

We revisited some of our favourite topics, such as our mortgage statement redesign and census review, but also some back story on Humans in Design. It helped us solidify our guiding principles as we try to make this thing more than a blog:

Design of the mundane is important.
Design for behaviour change.
Design with what you already have.

We downloaded the audio from here, where you can too if you want to put it on your audio player.

- Tristan

@humansindesign

Who is your city really building trains for?

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 04:30:00 +1000

In my last city the train was horrible

In the last city I lived (Brisbane, Australia), I preferred not to use the public train system for intra city transit. I had to walk through a bad couple of blocks to get to the station nearest to my house, and to me, the station platforms weren’t an inviting place to wait between train arrivals. They were often grimey, poorly lit, and it didn’t seem like there was much security around if you were on the platform after business hours. If the stations seemed dirty and a little dangerous, the train carriages were even more so. The windows were almost always scratched out with graffiti, and I felt kind of like I was riding a New York subway in the 1980s.

Brisbane 2012, or NYC 1982?

Nevermind that they only came every 20 minutes or so, and the zone-based ticketing system seemed to me to be unfairly structured against those who lived in poorer outer suburbs. And it’s not just time to wait and the price system. Brisbane trains have a problem with their network and city coverage; basically, where they go. In NYC, Paris, London, and other places with metro systems, the lines worm across each other. In Brisbane they all lead in to the city and out.

The trains in my new home of Santiago are much better.

In Santiago, Chile, where I live now, the system is much nicer. While Santiago has a metro system, and Brisbane has commuter rail, they are both train-based public transportation for the purpose of this comparison.

Santiago metro stations also double as museums.

The stations in Santiago are beautifully decorated and easy to navigate. The train carriages are spacious, with less seating and no carpet on the floor, which makes them seem cleaner. They also come every couple of minutes, so even if you walk onto the platform as a train is pulling away, you don’t have enough time to catch up on your Twitter feed before the next one arrives. Inside the carriage is so clean you could eat off the floor. Well, maybe not, but I’ve seen a lot of people sit on the floor.

Inside a metro car in Santiago.

Obviously, I’m impressed. But I’m new enough here that the novelty of walking 20 minutes to the station from my house hasn’t worn off, so I don’t mind yet. I’m also lucky enough to live in a suburb that has a train line running along two sides of it.

I assumed trains would provide the most benefit to people like Nancy

I live with my boyfriend and his parents in Las Condes, one of the wealthier areas of Santiago. Because of the social system here, it’s pretty normal for households like the one I’m staying in to have a maid, or nana, who comes from a poorer neighbourhood every day and cleans the house.

Nancy and Me

It took some time for me to get used to this, and I still feel bad for leaving my clothes out for her to iron. Santiago is a very class segmented city, and which suburb you were born in really impacts how people treat you, and what sort of employment you’re likely to take up (An article worth checking out that gets into this much further is here).

I initially thought that the metro would be good for nanas who have to travel across the city to get to the wealthier neighbourhoods where they work, because of another thing that the Santiago public transport system does right: flat fares. While the prices do differ between rush hour schedule and normal schedule (670 pesos to 610 pesos, the difference being the equivalent of around 12 cents), you pay the same price no matter how far you go, including two transfers.

These flat fare tickets are much more of a progressive scheme than the concentric ticketing going on in Brisbane. Ticketing schemes like Brisbane’s make it more expensive and difficult for people living in disadvantaged suburbs to travel to the city to work in potentially higher paying jobs. Or at least have the aspiration to work in higher paying jobs. When you decrease the ease of mobility it encourages people to work jobs in certain areas that aren’t expensive to travel to. This restriction, though it may be self-imposed, decreases opportunity available to an individual, which in turn decreases their aspiration for what they can do or achieve.

Brisbane’s concentric public transport fare zones.

According to a report by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on socio-economic indexes, the most disadvantaged Brisbane suburb in 2008 was Inala. To travel from Inala to the CBD today would cost $7.90 for a single adult ticket each way ($5.43 if using a go card). To travel from Santiago’s poorest suburb, La Pintana, to the CBD? Around $1.30.

But Nancy don’t use the metro in Santiago

While all this is great, I found out that Nancy doesn’t actually use the metro when coming to work. Instead, each day she catches three buses to get to our apartment, and two buses to get back to her house. This is what the buses in Santiago look like:

This is the first bus Nancy takes in the morning

The black line in the map below is the bus route Nancy has to take to get from her house to mine, with current metro lines marked in as well. The bus icons indicate where she makes exchanges. Nancy tells me that the trip takes anywhere between 1 hour and 45 minutes to 2 hours and 15 minutes.

View Nancy’s Route in a larger map

Nancy’s route to work is shown in black

The buses in Santiago aren’t nearly as inviting as the metro, and it’s not just that the metro is necessarily prettier than the buses, it’s also more sensible to use them in terms of congestion - Nancy often complains of having to be late to work due to traffic conditions. One of the big pluses for trains is the separation from the rest of the transit system.

The reason Nancy catches buses instead of the metro is because the metro line doesn't reach out as far as the suburb where she lives yet. So, as she says, she doesn't have an alternative. Of course, were she to take the metro, Nancy would still have to make the 20 minute walk from the station to our apartment, so perhaps a bus is preferable for that reason too, but the point is that it’s not really an option for her. The bus and metro systems are integrated for the most part, and both use the bip! card for electronic ticketing. (It’s called a bip! because that’s the noise it makes when you press it against a card reader.)

But for some reason, changing from bus to train incurs a one-sided fee, strangely not charged when changing from train to bus. This fee can be seen as a disincentive, albeit a small one, and I’m not sure why they don’t just do away with it. It could be part of Santiago’s “Arsenal of Exclusion”, one of the almost invisible but intentional things which urban planners use to keep neighbourhoods separate (I recommend listening to the 99% Invisible podcast on the topic for a better understanding). When New York City changed their buses to link to their subway, they saw a massive increase in cross usage. This cross usage is something poorer residents of Santiago would benefit from, without the subtle barrier of a small fare increase.

Santiago transport’s bip! card (actually, this one belongs to me)

I wondered whether Nancy’s experience was the exception or the rule

Here’s a map I made of current metro lines and Santiago suburbs, broken down into quartiles of median household income (using 2009 figures). There are 32 municipalities, or suburbs, of Santiago, so each quartile is made up of eight suburbs. The pink areas make up the first quartile (lowest median income), the green areas make up the second quartile, the yellow the third, and the orange the fourth quartile (highest median income):

View HID STGO 2012 in a larger map

The location of the metro in comparison to Nancy

I put my house in as the girl icon (right near the red metro line), and Nancy’s suburb in as the star with the arrow (because the woman is a star). There is no metro stop anywhere near her. As a matter of fact, of all the suburbs in the same quartile as Nancy, only three of the eight have a metro line going through or on the side of them. Of the upper quartile, where I live, six suburbs have metro access. So it’s the rule. The poorest neighbourhoods in Santiago don’t have access to the metro.

Does the expansion of the metro into it’s area change it’s wealth?

We have a natural experiment to test this question. The metro lines have been expanding over the past decade. New lines were constructed and extra stops added to the current lines. A lot of construction was completed in 2005 and 2006. The map below shows the additions made to lines over this time (including the introduction of Lines 4 and 4a), along with the median income quartiles as they were in 2006.

View HID STGO 2006 in a larger map

Metro lines with grey shows work performed in 2005-2006

So what happened to the suburbs that had line extensions?

I took a look at some historical figures of income by suburb, and mapped them against line expansions to see if there was anything interesting going on. I also looked at previously ‘poor’ areas that had the metro lines built through them recently, and tried to find out if getting a metro seemed to make residents richer.

Of the 11 suburbs that had a new or improved line run through them, the very richest generally saw a slight decrease in their median income, followed by an even sharper increase in 2009. One rich suburb did see the opposite happen (an increase then a slight decrease), but it still remained within the highest income bracket.

The poorer households generally saw an increase in their average income, and then another increase, albeit a slightly lower percentage increase than the first. Of the three suburbs in the absolute poorest quartile, one suburb saw its average income between 2006 and 2009 increase enough to allow it to cross over into the second poorest quartile.

Is this a lasting effect?

One other area worth noting is Puente Alto. Not technically a suburb of Santiago (it’s part of the neighbouring Cordillera Province), Puente Alto was included in the line extensions of 2005-2006, and the introduction of the blue Line 4 saw the terminus constructed in its plaza. If you look on one of the maps, it’s the only non-coloured area with a metro line. Puente Alto’s median income levels were on-par with those in the second-poorest quartile of Santiago suburbs before the line extension, but in 2006 income levels rose sharply, and would have seen Puente Alto in the second-richest group of suburbs.

However, in 2009 income levels were almost back to what they were before the extensions (they were slightly higher, but not by a lot). So while the building of more lines could be perceived as bringing money to this poor area, holding onto that momentum has been a problem for Puente Alto.

Here’s a map of how the lines and income quartiles changed from 2006 to 2009 (Remember, the pink areas make up the lowest median income quartile, the green areas make up the second quartile, the yellow the third, and the orange the fourth, or highest median income quartile.) I put it in .gif form, so you can see how the suburbs around the metro lines have changed. Watch it for awhile and you see the pattern:

Change in income quartile from 2006-2006 and metro lines

The overarching pattern for income in suburbs being newly serviced by metro line stations is that basically, the rich got a little poorer and then much richer, and the poor got a little richer and then a little bit more richer, with some exceptions.

Can we really say the metro caused this change?

Of course, there were increases in incomes in those suburbs that didn’t have line extensions, so it’s hard to definitively tie income growth exclusively to metro expansion. Also, in 2003 Chile was beginning to recover from an economic slump, and the increases in 2006 incomes across poorer households could just be reflecting this relief from income poverty.

We cannot be totally sure if the change is correlation or causation. That said, infrastructure like these metro expansions create jobs and allow poorer people to travel to jobs, so the contribution of projects like this to Chile’s recovery from an economic slump, and the benefit of a metro system to poorer suburbs in general is silly to ignore.

So what’s happening in the future of Santiago?

Even more new work is planned, including two new lines. Here’s a map I made of the upcoming work with the 2009 median income quartiles:

View HID STGO 2017 in a larger map

The future metro lines with the current neighbourhood incomes

The purple Line 6 and brown Line 3 are expected to be completed in 2016 and 2017 (Please note, these are just an estimation of where the stations will be; They aren’t marked in Google Maps yet. You can check back in five years and see how off I was). I left the markers in for both mine and Nancy’s houses, so you can compare to the first map, showing where the lines are today.

As you can see, most of the new tracks go through already affluent suburbs. Apart from Line 6, which links one more of the lowest income suburbs into the metro system, the majority of the planned work still won’t allow travel between the poorer suburbs and the richer ones easily, so nanas will still have to catch the bus.

Why isn’t Santiago building the metro into poor, urban fringe areas?

It could simply be because the current lines would be hard to connect and there is no specific bias. However, discovering the decision making process behind station placement is difficult. The best justification for adding a new metro stop I’ve been able to find is “passenger demand”. However, in Santiago, the more densely populated areas are the poorer outer suburbs. So if you were trying to connect as many people to the metro system, it would make more sense to build stations there.

Perhaps focusing so much of the metro lines in the richer areas may have been an effort to stop people using their cars. Nancy agrees, thinking that it’s “to decongest the highest traffic areas within the city”. If this is the case, it’s not working; people still use their cars, and there doesn't seem to be a big rush to sell them. My boyfriend’s parents actually bought a second car (a cheaper one they use to drive into the city, in case it gets scratched when they park, or stolen). So the metro has not as yet positively influenced their behaviour in this respect. In fact, they rarely even catch it. You can’t imagine the nightmare that is Friday afternoon traffic.

So while the design of Santiago’s metro stops, carriages, and services are by themselves excellent, the wider placement of lines and stations in regards to access for lower-income suburbs needs improvement. Is there a lesson? Maybe. The metro system works well when people use it, and people do use it, but I think the aim of future planning should be to get more people incorporating it into their routine, and the right people.

What lessons can we learn from Santiago?

The metro is an effective way to travel across city; it doesn't block up traffic, it’s fast, and it’s clean. It seems that the addition of a metro to an area might be an effective tool to improve the economic outcome of areas, though there is the chance that the effect will not last or simply displace the poorest people to other areas.

But it’s worth the change. Future line expansions should be designed to give poorer people the opportunity to travel across the city easily. Better employment opportunities are available with greater mobility, and linking suburbs will bring down some of the social class barriers that are a big problem for Chileans.

The lessons here also translate very well to almost any city, especially those with a large class differentiation. The lessons are even more relevant to areas where the richer are more central and the poorer less so. If Chile can address its problem of social exclusion with its metro system design, it will become a model for success that other cities around the world can follow.

- Charlie - Guest Post

@tinyproblem

With editorial assistance from Tristan and Tom.

___________________________________

For those interested, Charlie got all her information about suburb income levels from this site (it’s in Spanish, but if you want to check it out, click on a comuna and then check out point 2.4): The source only lists median income levels, not the mean, and it would be interesting to be able to compare mean and median income levels, were both sets of figures available.

Ballot thoughts on Election Eve.

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 16:13:36 +1000

It’s election eve for the American half of Humans in Design, but I’ve already voted. In my new Pacific Northwest home, the default method for voting is a mail-in ballot. People are casting their votes from home rather than a polling place. I mailed my ballot two weeks ago, and it was amazingly satisfying. It made me think this change of voting context was important.

Voting from home changed the election for me. My first presidential election was in 2004, and I was voting in Utah. It was no butterfly ballot, but pushing a stylus through paper still felt incredibly antiquated. And it didn’t help that everything I voted for that year lost, either. 2008 was better - electronic voting machines had arrived, and my polling place had changed from my old elementary school to a government building near my downtown Salt Lake City apartment. My candidates still didn’t win locally, but no one can deny that the election was thrilling.

But aside from those major candidate disappointments and victories, all those minor ballot initiatives and less-prominent candidates felt like a test I hadn’t studied for. Instead I chose to vote directly along party lines, or for whichever candidate had the most foreign-sounding name. I took about 5 to 10 minutes to fill out this ballot.

This year’s ballot felt more like an open book test. There was no line behind me, and I took the time to carefully consider each question that I didn’t already have a strong opinion about. And it helped that this time I was voting for great things (gay marriage! sensible drug laws! second terms!). I sat there with google chrome tabs open on each of the issues I felt I needed more information on, learning about them as I cast my vote. I took 45 minutes to fill it out. That’s around 5 to 10 time longer than I spent in the last two elections.

I don’t expect everyone out there to be like me but it absolutely made me a more informed voter. I feel it’s undeniable that this change of context - voting in your own time with access to all sorts of information - is important and, in my opinion, better.

The ballot wasn’t completely perfect, either — the long sheet of paper was a little unruly, and I had to go out and buy a book of stamps to mail it back. There’s also an option to drop off ballots at designated locations, but for a process that is otherwise almost completely painless this seemed like just-enough of a participation barrier to stop some people from returning their envelopes.

Efforts by political groups to collect ballots and deliver them on behalf of voters have rightly been met with derision, and I really think that simply buying and giving out free stamps would be a better way to ensure a large turnout.

Also, the ballots are verified by signature, and the system isn’t fool proof. A friend of mine (who has been casting absentee ballots for years) told me a story of having to re-send his signature after the election commission determined that his original ballot wasn’t a close enough match.

On the whole I think mail-in ballots are one of the best options for American elections. They drive down the costs of participation for voters. No one has to wait in line or take time off from work. And there are at least some voters who, like me, will consider the issues in more detail during voting.

Part of me is disappointed that I won’t get an “I Voted” sticker from the polling place. Also, my election buzz is slightly deflated, but not enough to think that this was anything less than the best ballot I have cast in my time as a voter.

-Tom

@tmnlsn

The interface of payment

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 11:48:00 +1000

We’re proud to present this guest post by Matt McInerney (@mattmc) Graphic Designer at Pentagram, Co-host of On the Grid, and design blogger.

A paper banknote featuring a national icon, a denomination, and the countless details that assure us that it is indeed valuable: It’s the interface that has served us well for centuries.

However, we all know that soon enough physical currency will be a distant memory. Even today, I probably only pay in cash 5% of the time. The rest of the time I use a credit or debit card.

Knowing that how we pay will change, and is changing, I wonder what the future of payment will look like, and more importantly, how it will influence our decisions of what to purchase and why.

The way it is and the promise of NFC

A credit or debit card makes payment very simple. It’s a small, single purpose device that allows paying with a swipe and a confirmation. The swipe is easy. The confirmation of a PIN number or signature makes one feel secure.

Although the rumors that Apple will start using near field communication in the iPhone 5 were false, Google has been using it with Google Wallet for some time already. It sounds great, right? All you need is your phone, you tap it to the NFC-enabled merchant device, and you confirm your payment. Fantastic.

But I was inspired by the article on cooper journal titled ’the best interface is no interface’ to take a second look at this idea. That sounds like a lot of the same steps as a card. Let’s compare them, in painstaking detail:

Credit/Debit Card Payment:

Remove the card from your wallet
Swipe the card
Confirm your payment
Put back the card back in your wallet

NFC Device Payment:

Take the phone out of your pocket
Unlock it
Find app the to pay with
Tap the phone to the NFC chip
Confirm your payment
Lock your phone
Put it back in your pocket

While it may seem insignificant, the NFC device requires more steps. The ‘find app’ step could probably be combined with the unlock function with a UI tweak. But, at the very least, we are at the same number of steps as the credit card. Where is the benefit?

“You can leave your wallet at home.”

Yes, you can leave your credit card at home, because you've linked it to your app. But, your wallet is not just for payment, what about everything else? Are you going to leave your ID at home? What about your cash in case the merchant doesn't accept NFC or even credit cards? Your metro card?

I’m sure Apple’s Passbook, or another competitor, will try to replace your ID, metro card, club cards, etc.. but let’s be honest. Even though an iPhone can replace a driver’s license, how long until your government accepts this? I don’t know about your government, but mine… moves… slowly… Look at US software patents.

And replacing cash entirely? Even credit cards aren't accepted everywhere, and the concept has been around for over 100 years. I’m guessing that you’re going to need a backup payment method for a while.

So if I’m going to be carrying my wallet anyway, the weight of a credit in addition to my ID is not enough inconvenience to convince me that the infrastructure change needed for NFC is worth it. And when governments finally does acknowledge such a move, congratulations, we’ve upgraded to the same numbers of steps. Why is that exciting?

At best, NFC may be a slightly useful but quickly outdated technology. Think of things like QR codes or Blu-ray discs. Even though they offer something useful, and provide benefits over previous solutions, they are so quickly obsolesced that many people will just skip them completely.

“A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”
- Wayne Gretzky

If we are going to change the way payment works, it can’t be technology for technology’s sake. It needs to work the way next generations think. It needs to useful. To me that means 2 key goals:

Remove steps that are superfluous.
Offer something beneficial that current payment systems don’t.

A running tab. Everywhere.

What if you walked into a store, you ordered, and you’ve already paid?
Square is already doing this with Autotab.

You don’t have to find the an app. You don’t even have to take anything out of your pocket. Granted, there is some initial setup required, but that happens once. After that, it’s as simple as ordering:

"Siri, I’ll have a Sam Adams.”

However, as the tongue in cheek example above shows, there are plenty of situations where a person taking your order is part of a cultural tradition that we enjoy. I don’t see the role of the bartender disappearing so that I can order a beer from my phone.

In other situations though, a person at checkout just creates lines. And lines are torture. Like any job that can be replaced by a machine, it will happen. Walk into any grocery stores and you’ll likely see a large, and relatively expensive, self-checkout machine. Once the incentive of every customer having their own checkout machine in their pocket, cashiers are gone.

The right interface for the job

In the case of Autotab and your bartender, the right interface isn't a GUI, it’s a person. For that interaction, it’d hard to see much room improvement.

In a big-box store, human interaction is more valuable to provide expertise about a product. The interface for payment could very easily be a phone GUI. It eliminates the need to wait in line and doesn't require installing one more screen.

Location-based action

The idea is simple: a function that reacts to your location. Motorola calls it Smart Actions. Google has filled a patent for location-based actions. Rather than drastically changing payment infrastructure, like NFC, you just use existing GPS or triangulation.

I decided that the first thing this needed was an icon. So I combined the Location icon with the action/go icon to create a location-based action icon.

You can see how this would fit in with existing smartphone interfaces:

Let’s imagine this: You’re in a big-box store, you've found what you need, it’s time to pay and leave. You push/swipe the button, the store you’re in is detected, and you’re presented with a simple interface for checkout.

Scan your items and pay with a linked account or stored credit card. No lines. Just show your digital receipt on the way out. Location-based actions extend beyond payment, but could drastically change the infrastructure of the retail experience.

Whether the interface is visual or verbal, human or machine, all the above could happen now. If we want to change the way we pay, we could very easily do so. If anything, we don’t have a technology problem. We have a behavior problem.

That was easy… was that too easy?

As a part of the generation that saw it all fall apart, I have to wonder. Twenty-somethings in America (and then all around the world) watched as ill-advised spending habits collapsed what our parents assumed was a strong economy. And I’ve been writing about how to make spending easier…

While I’ll admit that there are plenty of mediums that have not figured out how to get people to pay for what they are consuming, I’m not going to pretend like we are struggling to part ways with our cash. If anything, maybe we should be in the process of learning how to add a little more friction to that effort.

Design for Good

Products like Mint let me know that I've spent too much on take-out food every month. This is information that I get when I decide to login to the application and check. What if I was confronted with this information the next time I decided to order take-out? This could be as simple as changing the color of the ‘pay now’ button based on whether this purchase is a responsible one.

But we can go even bigger, what if the next time I’m trying to make a purchase, I’m reminded of how much one should save per month to retire comfortably and helped to make that saving:

You’re shown a savings alert

Next time, ‘Pay Now’ is already green because you've saved previously.

Help Understanding

In the interface of payment, there is also an opportunity to bridge the gap between bits, physical objects, and labor. What if you understood the process of making something? How far it traveled? What makes up the product? Your settings could allow you to check what your priorities are when making a purchase:

Deeply Flawed Hope

I understand that people will trade for convenience at almost any turn. Why would you add friction to your payment process? And what retailers would support such a thing? One would assume they’d rather offer coupons than financial advice.

Well, maybe we can learn from our mistakes. We are witnessing what some are calling the cheapest generation. It’d be hard not to learn the mistakes of the baby boomers. We are watching the rise of services like Kickstarter and Kiva, and the fall of automobile and home purchases.

It seems like we could be the generation that thinks a bit more deeply about our purchasing decisions, as we’re forced to live through the consequences. I mean, we have to, right? …Right? At least we can try.

We all know humans can be impulsive. We often times ignore what is best for us. If we are to be responsible designers, designing systems to counteract this may be the next step in payment interfaces.

We’ve done a great job at making it easy for us to part with our money. We don’t have to part ways with pieces of paper that we’ve earned. We don’t have to watch as money leaves our bank accounts. We just watch numbers change, if we choose to pay attention.

Perhaps the next step is designing systems that allow for more responsible spending and help build a sustainable economy.

- Matt McInerney - Guest Post

@mattmc

Graphic Designer at Pentagram. Co-host of On the Grid

Our speech at Next Bank Asia was given a Gen Y tag. This is...

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 16:31:00 +1000

Our speech at Next Bank Asia was given a Gen Y tag.

This is quite ironic considering it was more ‘backwards’ looking than most.

I’d sum it up more as:

When looking at the future of transaction design, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

or

If we don’t design payment systems to suit our true goals we’ll consume ourselves.

It includes ideas from some previous posts.

If you work in banking and like these ideas please get in touch.

- Tristan

@humansindesign

Humans in Design recently hit 10,000 Tumblr followers! In...

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 00:38:00 +1000

Humans in Design recently hit 10,000 Tumblr followers! In celebration, I’d like to show you something that I never thought we would post here — a cute dog video. Pickles, the star of the video above, just can’t seem to walk in her sparkly red dog shoes.

So what makes Pickles do the Baby Elephant Walk when she’s got the shoes on? It’s very similar to what happens to these people when they step on a stair that’s slightly different from all the rest:

New York City Subway Stairs from Dean Peterson on Vimeo.

We all create mental models of how our bodies relate to the space around us. When one small variable changes, our entire balance is thrown. The mental model you probably have of how we walk is our brain sends down signals to each muscle and we move. This is not correct. Motor movement is more about learning and modulating patterns.

We perceive an environment we want to walk through and an entire locomotion (walking) pattern is initiated. This walking pattern is sustained mostly at lower levels, including as low as the bottom of the spine.

Our senses then continually feed information from the environment and translate that information into a pattern that can be adapted and modulated. This feedback also occurs without reaching ‘the higher levels of brain’ — it’s all in areas of the cerebellum and brainstem. This is how we automatically do things like lean forwards when walking up an incline.

Vision is the sense that most people think of first, but there are a couple of other senses involved: proprioception and touch. The integration of feedback is what allows complex motor tasks. If you take a sense away or lose the ability to use feedback, then things can get funny.

Pickles loses the touch feedback when the shoes are on; the subway passengers’ don’t visually perceive the odd stair height. Without these pieces, they can’t adapt their movement patterns to fit their physical space.

What does this mean? When we design environments that people (or dogs) will be moving through, it’s important to consider most physical movement happens thoughtlessly. Give people the right visual and tactile feedback and everything’s good. Slightly wrong and it’s the baby elephant walk.

-Tom
@tmnlsn

Framing: A few words can make a massive difference

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 23:19:00 +1000

I constantly find it amazing how very small differences in language can have a large impact on behaviour. This is primarily though framing the decision in different ways. Most people feel they intuitively understand the term framing, but it’s worth taking a look at a explanation before we get to some examples. Here is the social sciences explanation:

People build a series of mental filters through biological and cultural influences. They use these filters to make sense of the world. The choices they then make are influenced by their creation of a frame.

So, what are you doing when you frame a question? You are forcing it through a different filter with hopes of a different outcome. The social-science/psychology world is full of examples of framing.

Here are three of my favourites:

1. Photocopying and skipping the queue:

We’ve all stood behind someone at a photocopier and wanted to push in. Obviously, some psychology experimenters felt the same and tested different phrases for effectiveness. The photocopier is called ‘Xerox Machine’ in this example. Here are the frames:

Previous Frame: "Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?“

Altered Frame: "Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?”

You can see that the second frame had extra, seemingly redundant, information. However, in the second frame the addition of the word 'because’ followed by a reason forces the decision through a different frame (at least for some people).

Result: In frame 1 about half (60% of people) said okay. In the altered version almost everyone (93% of people) said yes.

Source 1 and Source 2

2. Hand-washing and and Hospitals

Inadequate hand washing is still a leading cause of infection in hospitals. We previously made a video about it. The goal here is to get hospital staff to increase washing their hands.

On a visit to a hospital an organisational psychologist saw signs above the sinks directed at hospital staff. He thought by changing one word on the signs he might be able to increase hand washing. Here are the frames:

Previous Frame: “Hand hygiene prevents you from catching diseases.”

Altered Frame: “Hand hygiene prevents patientsfrom catching diseases.”

It’s pretty obvious what the experimenter was betting on here. He was betting that framing through harming another (the patient) would be more effective than harm to oneself. This was probably because you’d assume people got into healthcare to help people. Also, as humans, we tend underestimate the risk to ourselves especially without a history of negative effects.

Results: There are some caveats, but from observation the adherence to handwashing seemed to increase about 10% (from 89.2% from 80.7%). The is only a relatively small change, but seeing as the consequences of infection are so high, it’s a significant drop in risk.

Source

3. Appointment Booking

No-shows without a cancellation are a problem for many businesses, especially restaurants. Legend has it that a Chicago restaurateur, Gordon Sinclair, was having issues with no shows and, therefore, made an instruction to his staff. They were to change what they say at the end of phonecalls when customers were making bookings. The frames are:

Previous Frame: “Please call if you change your plans.”

Altered Frame: “Will you call us if you change your plans?”

This second frame requires the person to engage in the thought process of cancelling – envisioning calling if they have to cancel. Perhaps it makes them think about if they would call. Perhaps it makes the confrontation of cancelling seem lessened. Whatever it is, it worked.

Results: At least according the New York Times, his no-show rates dropped from 30% to 10% with this change. Basically, a three word business-saver. Note this one is a bit of an ‘urban legend’ – which does not mean it’s not true but rather just less verified.

Source 1 Source 2 Source 3

What have I learnt from this?

I have learnt how to talk to my wife. Or more specifically, how to elicit a different response to music recommendations I give to my wife.

A couple of years ago when the band Best Coast broke I knew she’d like them. I was going to be on the road and the songs are all girly pop songs about missing for a partner. When I told her about this band I said:

Previous Frame: “Rebecca, you’ll like this band.”

Well my wife does not like to be told what to do, by me or anyone. So she didn’t listen to Best Coast for 6 months… only to discover that she loved them.

This year, I discovered some other music she’d like, the dream pop of Grimes. I had learnt my lesson. When she got home I asked if I could put on some music. I said:

Altered Frame: "Rebecca, is it okay if I play some music that I like? I think you’d like it too, but tell me if you want to change it.“

The first frame was a direction. The second an invitation. She was the judge. For the last few weeks I’ve been hearing this track at least twice a day.

Some call it manipulation. I call it listening with love.

- Tristan

@humansindesign

'User-created' no parking signs

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 04:25:00 +1000

We’ve all seen a ‘no parking’ sign scrawled on a sign across a driveway.

Recently I started to seem them scrawled on the ground in driveways.

Then I saw some people who’d gotten annoyed at people parking across their driveway and extend it into the street.

This seems to work reasonably well.

Some people even started to mark a whole space that wasn’t big enough for a car.

Then, getting even bolder, some started to extend further into the street and give a direction:

Then, just around the corner from my house, one appeared that broadened an already existing yellow line.

Some of my neighbours obviously saw this and decided it was a good idea.

I live in inner city Brisbane, Australia and the street is always full of cars.

However, I did feel this was a bit of an overkill. I had never had any issue.

But I had spoken too soon.

This guy came and parked across my driveway.

I put an arrow on the photo so you can see the space the car has blocked.

Then some other joker did it too!

Can’t they see the driveway? It’s right there!

It was at this point I figured my neighbours might have been more than just angry, over-zealous vandals.

Standing back, it did really seem to make an area of their driveway much clearer.

Mine on the other hand, wasn’t so clear. This is especially as my house was set on the street and my driveway curls downwards with the slope of the land.

I came to appreciate how, at night in a rush, you might miss it.

Then I thought about getting the perspective of a driver coming down my street looking for a park. Here it is:

The yellow shape is really clear and the 'no parking’ become clearly readable as you get close.

Plus the handmade writing has a 'get off my porch!’ feel. No way I’d be messing with these dudes.

I did see a car parked on it once, but I think they owned it. Otherwise it was never covered.

Awhile later it appears the council came and took it away… as much as they could.

My neighbours probably got a fine or at least a warning. But I had sympathy for them. They saw a problem and, knowing the council wouldn’t take up their suggestion, solved it.

I actually called the council about this and suggested they take the hint and place properly designed lines.

Per Mollerup addresses 'user-generated’ signs in his great book Wayshowing.

He states:

“Environmental signs are generally commissioned by those in power. Rulers and owners use signs to inform and regulate society. Signs - as a rule - are signs of authority.

However, a rich flora of unofficial ad hoc signs exists along with professionally designed and officially produced signs. These unofficial signs are made by citizens who for one reason or another though official signs failed to meet their needs. Unofficial signs are the visual voice of the people, a graphic vox populi…

… Sometimes unofficial signs are the result of irritation caused by the lack of other signs or the lack of sufficiently expressive architecture. Letterheads that state 'this is not room 411’ or 'Entrance next door’ are symptoms of dysfunctional official wayshowing…

Normally, unofficial do-it yourself signs are symptoms of unsuccessful planning. Sometimes these amateur signs are considered more credible than professional signs… Some of the first signs in the world were probably a kind of graffiti.”

In these signs the council sees vandalism, but I see a search for effective signs.

Perhaps councils should embrace the principles of co-design and be more open to innovative ideas from the public.

Otherwise, people will take matters into their own hands.

-Tristan
@humansindesign

Keep '99% Invisible' visible

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 13:27:09 +1000

We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention how much we love the design podcast 99% Invisible. Even if we hadn’t been on it a few times, it would still be one of the best podcasts around.

Roman is asking for support to keep it going strong into a third season. Please watch the above video and visit the kickstarter page.

Even if you only donate a measly $1 this will help. Debbie Millman from Design Matters will donate $10 000 if the campaign reaches 5000 backers at any level.

Also, as if supporting a it wasn’t enough of a no-brainer, if you kick in enough money you’ll get a nice Plimsoll Line t-shirt we helped bring back to the glory it deserves:

You could also choose a set of notebooks with a Plimsoll:

Of course, Tristan doesn’t need it on a shirt…

- Tom

@tmnlsn

and

-Tristan

@humansindesign

Humans in Accidental Design

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 12:07:00 +1000

Design outcomes can often be serendipitous. A designer means for an object to achieve one thing, but it actually achieves another. This idea probably already exists but if it doesn’t, I would like to coin it:

The Accidental Affordance.

In this instance I am making reference to Don Norman's definition of affordance. That is:

An affordance is a quality of an object, or an environment, which allows an individual to perform an action… and is readily perceivable by the actor.

In short, a use for something that someone can perceive.

So why the accidental affordance? Here I am just making reference to an outcome as which was not foreseen by the designer - an affordance that was not designed.

A famous example of this is twitter. Twitter was originally intended as an SMS site to communicate with a small group. However, it’s most famous uses now extend to globally networked connections, real-time comments through to organising revolutions. Twitter has even ended up turning the hashtag, which was originally an accidental affordance, into a major part of its business model.

Even if you don’t use Twitter, you probably still touch an accidental affordance every day. Levi’s (and pretty much any other company that makes jeans) have always put a fifth pocket nested inside the right front pocket of their pants. This pocket was originally intended as a place to put a pocket watch, but as Levi’s itself pointed out in one of its most famous ads, it’s almost never used for a watch:

Watches have moved from pockets to wrists, but they’re still creating accidental affordances. My watch is a prime example. My wife needed an analogue watch for an exam, so with the idea I’d take it afterwards, we bought a man-sized one with a big clear face. Here’s the watch:

The first night I was wearing it we went to a concert and I looked down to check the time. It was dark, but the light automatically came on when I looked down! I was stoked! Magic watch! It looked like this:

After a second wondering at the amazing design, I realised that it wasn’t magic. I was just extending my wrist and the back of my hand was contacting the light button on the side of the watch. You can see it happen in this mega-short little video:

Even though it’s an accident, I find it really useful, and other people seem to wow at it a little when they don’t expect the light to come on.

Similarly I bought a glif from studio neat to hold my iPhone in a tripod. This was mainly talk hands free to my lovely wife during travel. It’s easier to drink scotch that way. That’s her on the screen below:

Another problem I have had in travel is that my headphones always end up in a tangle. Turns out the grove in the glif helps me out with an accidental affordance:

Perhaps the greatest example of an accidental affordance is milk crates.

Originally intended for this:

There are at least 101 accidental affordances including shelves…

… chairs…

… even street art.

In fact, one of the best unintended affordances for a milk crate - use as a 12 inch record crate - was designed out when milk was switched to metric. They are now a couple of centimetres too short. Some say this change was intentional as its use as a record crate was a leading cause of theft.

So why is this important? Well people think of good design as sparks of genius. But really mostly it’s through iterations and accidents. However, the accidents are normally not perfect.

For example, my dad bought exactly the same watch, partially expecting ‘automatic’ light. It does not work the way he wears it. In fact, it only works for me 80 percent of the time. It would be better if it worked every time, for everyone.

Similarly, wrapping my headphones around my glif also covers the screen, and is only mostly secure. It would better if there was a way to wrap them up totally securely that didn’t cover the screen.

Also, whilst old milkcrates were good for storing records, they are not stackable whilst doing so. The records poked out the top. This was rectified in a newer commercially available design:

So, be on the lookout for an accidental affordance. You might just be able to steal an almost design and adapt it into a perfect one. It might be the next penicillin… or just a way to light a watch up at night.

As Don Norman himself said:

The value of a well designed object is when it has such a rich set of affordances that the people who use it could do things that the designer never imagined.

- Tristan

@humansindesign

- Tom

@tmnlsn

Did the 2011 Australian Census get religion right?

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 17:18:00 +1000

The results for the 2011 Australian census came out today. We think the results of the religion question were (unintentionally) distorted by the design of the question. Specifically, with believe that the number of Australians who are not religious is greater than the number counted as ‘no religion’.

Counting correctly is important because census results will be used, at least to some degree, when making public policy decisions where religion is involved. The question was formatted like this:

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reported the religious affiliation results in a table. On the surface, it seems that 'no religion’ continued to get a bump. However, there was something hidden. The bottom of the table listed 100 percent. However, it had an annotation that the total…

“…includes inadequately described (supplementary codes) religions and people who did not state a religion.”

Strangely, there is not a row in the table that lists how large this group is. We ran the numbers. Turns out it’s almost one in ten people and the fourth largest group:

If approximately a quarter of those people were actually not religious for the first time 'no religion’ would be the largest group on the Australian Census. If you’re a strong adherent to a religion we think it would be unlikely you’d leave that question blank.

We've criticised this design before. The core of our argument was that the design reduces two questions into one and hides the 'no religion’ question down the bottom. This could partially explain the large 'inadequate’ and 'blank’ responses. It was for this reason that we proposed some alternate designs which we put to a public vote. Our final proposed redesign is revealed for the first time below:

This is not about activism, but appropriate measurement. Accurate measurement in the census is important. We think there is no malice involved from the ABS, but their design has promoted an error that works against the 'no religion’ option. Australia has changed and the design of the census does not reflect that.

Keep reading to hear our full story and proposal to the ABS.

Hit us on twitter @humansindesign or in the comments with your response.

_______________________________

Form effects behavior. Even when it’s the form of a form.

This is not up for debate. It’s a fact. You can debate 'how much’ it effects people’s answers, not that it does. Sometimes this will be through promoting error, other times it will be through framing the question in a particular way.

The goal of form design should be to eliminate distortions to and reveal only true answers. An extreme case where this is import is the census. The purpose of the census is to accurately gather information from the population for the government, and other agencies, to make policy decisions. You have to assume that any question included will be used in this manner.

A question about religion is included on the Australian census. So, you have to assume that it will be used, at least to some degree, when making public policy decisions where religion is involved. We are aware this is touchy subject, so we will not comment on any of the issues. Our only goal here is to gain accurate reporting of information regarding religion.

The design used on the 2011 form can be seen below:

We have previously criticised the design of this question. This promoted enough debate that we proposed some re-designs and put them to an unscientific public vote. To summarise, we believe the form or it’s online equivalent, which has 'no-religion’ at the bottom, has the potential to promote error in three ways:

People miss 'no religion’ simply because it’s hidden under the other box.
People answer 'Other’ before considering 'no religion’. The census itself actually has 'humanism’ as a suggested 'other’. This is an ideology or philosophy rather than a religion.
People answer a religion because they listed first and frames 'no religion’ as a direct alternative to the listed religion. We imagine this will be the case for many people who have some affiliation to a region in their past, but no longer practice. Examples are, persons who were baptised Anglican but no longer or never practised the religion.

The extent to which it promotes error is unknown. However, Australia has changed and the census question design does not reflect that. Historically it was almost a given that everyone would note a major religion. Now the rate of 'no religion’ is climbing and the 'not stated/inadequately described’ number bobbles around the 10% mark. This year was no different, as the chart above shows.

Our original designs all included moving items around in the same question. The most popular option was to move 'no religion’ to the post preference and change the wording to 'not religious’.

But, as pointed out to us by Jessica Enders, probably Australia’s leading expert in form design, this single question is actually asking two logically sequential questions. By asking it in this order the question is framed differently and, we think, appropriately and fairly.

Are you religious?
If yes, what religion?

Jessica suggested going for broke in the next census by breaking it into two questions and, in the first year, have no pre-set response option for a religion. Simply ask people to list their religion. Following that she suggested listing any religion that, on the previous result, reached an certain level be listed as an option. Essentially splitting the question and pushing the reset button.

We are sympathetic to this view, but wonder how hard it will be for the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to sort and code these responses into something useful. Therefore, we propose the keeping the religion options as currently designed and simply splitting the question:

Note, the wording is open to debate, but we felt using 'identify’ is soft and easily understood.

It’s a small change, but we believe that it would increase the people answering 'no religion’ in two ways. Firstly it would pick up people from the 'not adequately described’ and 'blank’ boxes. Secondly, it makes making people stop and think, 'am I really religious?’ before answering.

The above essentially has no different answer possibilities to the the question on the 2011 census. If form design does not matter then you’d expect exactly the same response with the re-design as with the question that was asked. I bet you don’t think that’s true.

One line of response from the ABS will probably be that changing the question makes it inconsistent with other years and consequently harder to draw trends. This is true, but because the population is changing we question the accuracy of the trend it’s drawing. Better to start being right, than be consistently and increasingly wrong.

Our final proposal to the ABS and Australian Government is this: test it. The next census is not scheduled until 2016. In the meantime it would be pretty easy to test the effect of our proposed redesign, and others, using randomised control trials.

There is no agenda in this other than accurate measurement. It’s important. We believe the current design promotes inaccurate reporting.

If we’re wrong, fine. But if we are right, it’s important.

It would also reduce people doing stupid things like this:

- Tristan @humansindesign

- Tom @tmnlsn