Casino Burgers and Irrational Behavior

I just got back from a nice lunch with Lou Rosenfeld and Kevin Cheng, made up of great hamburgers from Casino and some interesting conversation about publishing. All of us have a pretty solid footing in this world: I published my book myself, two years ago; Kevin started the now neglected ok-cancel, and is working with Lou on a book on comics; and Lou is trying to change the way the book industry works, specifically for practicing designers. I view publishing as one of the critical components of a successful transformation for designers from “artifact makers” to “intellectuals”. Casual publishing, like blogs and tweets, and more formal or established channels like books and magazines, all position the designer as a thought leader. And as a thought leader, like a lawyer or a doctor, designers should be compensated for the quality of their thoughts and not just their ability to paint a pretty picture.

This idea of the intellectual role of the designer was an underlying theme at my colleague Robert Fabricant’s panel on Designing for Irrational Behavior. Robert’s been hyping the idea of behavior for a while, as have other designers. A focus on behavior is implicitly an intellectual focus, but is often manifest in an artifact; there’s a strong connection between the way things look and how they get us to “do” things.

Robert used some examples to drive home some core points on behavior:
1.    We should be building explicit rewards into our designs
2.    People should be empowered to build a complete sense of themselves through our creations
3.    Interaction design acts as “conversational glue”

Two of the examples are shown below:

Compare the two visuals from the dashboard of a car. Not really apples and apples, but – from a design perspective – the second certainly has a sense of “conversational glue”, while the first screams of kitchen sink usability engineering (don’t reduce – just make everything clearly visible). I found the distinction fairly opaque, and so I was very surprised when Peter Whybrow, one of the panelists, responded that the first was an excellent design because it allows everyone to see all of the functions, providing a clear view into behavioral trends and allowing people to change their behavior appropriately.

I saw Robert visually cringe when this was said, and I think the different between the two – and the apparent subtlety of the differences (the fact that Peter didn’t see what Robert saw) – hints at one of the roles of the intellectual value of interaction design. It’s a subtle point, but an important one: We’ve gotten to a point where usability isn’t the goal any more. Instead, a sense of temporal aesthetic has more intellectual value, more substance, than a usable (learnable, repeatable, clear) solution design.