American Center for Design Living Surfaces Conference November 1997 COMPUTERS, SOFTWARE AND INTERFACE AS PERSUASIVE MEDIA I'm in kind of a odd place these days, having only recently returned to the New York Times from a long and much-needed sabbatical. For the first time in many months, I'm caring about my own work again. It's been a real luxury to be at Interval, where I didn't have to think about my stuff and could focus on other people's work. In a strange way, I guess that's one of the things I find really compelling about this topic I've chosen to talk to you about, this idea of persuasive technology. It seems to me that in many ways, both persuasive technology and interactive media -- itself a powerful persuader -- ask the design world to turn itself upon its own ear. After so many years of traditional designers creating their own aesthetic and drawing people into that aesthetic ... interactive media -- if it's done right -- demands that designers put themselves at the service of their audience. Like persuasive technology, it demands that they stop focusing on their own work and cultivate selflessness, a relentless focus on others. -------------------------------------------- Now this strikes me as a revolutionary concept. Of course everyone wants to reach people, whether it's by shocking them with some radical or exquisite design, or touching them with a moving story. But this seems like honey to me. Design by enticement. You make your statement, and if people don't lap it up, well, they don't have to -- and oh, by the way, they must have terrible taste. The concept of interactivity is pretty much the opposite. Interaction design is a conversation between the designer and the user ... where the designer manipulates the environment in which that conversation is taking place. All other things being equal, if they don't hear you, you probably aren't speaking their language. ------------------------------------------------ This is where persuasive technology meets interaction design. Persuasive technology reaches into your head and starts massaging your neurons, or maybe something even more vulnerable, and subtly or otherwise, it convinces you to change, to DO something. That's the hardest thing in the world -- convincing human beings to overcome inertia -- to change their attitudes or their behaviors or both. But if you're in this business, I think that's maybe what you signed up for. ------------------------------------ Before I proceed, I would like to announce that I am going to be shamelessly ripping off two of my esteemed colleagues in this talk -- Steven Johnson, the editor of Feed magazine, and B.J. Fogg, a Stanford professor whose work on persuasive computing I've found invaluable. They're both here, at the conference -- I believe Steven is missing my talk, but he'll be here tomorrow and I'll exact my price for his insubordination. However, you should pester both of them relentlessly about their views, which they will no doubt represent much better than I'm about to. --------------------------------------- That said, I'm going to talk to you for a little while about what I've been thinking -- about the concept and implementation of persuasive technology, and how and where it relates to interactive media and design ... and -- since I can't resist a good homily -- I'll finish up by talking about the ethics of persuasion and what I'd hope to see you do with this stuff. The bottom line is this: what this conference is calling "living surfaces" -- these screens of our lives -- are exerting a much more powerful influence than most of us give them credit for, or want to admit. Some of us have so completely connected our computers to ourselves that we don't even realize how powerful their influence is. But if you want to play with them on their turf, you will need to learn how to harness that power . -------------------------------------- Okay, so. What do I mean when I say 'persuasive technology'? Well, what I meant by it a few months ago has morphed a bit from what I mean now. I have long believed, long before multimedia or the Web, that computers and software were exerting the same kind of subtle influence on me that I felt when I was watching TV. Many years ago, when I first read Jerry Mander's book, 'Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television,' I realized among other things that there was a whole world outside the frame of the TV screen ... a world that unless I was there, right there where the camera was, I couldn't know anything about. ((SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAS HAPPENED)) Call it context, or whatever, but it was definitely the world according to someone else. I had the same kind of feeling when I sat down to my first Atex, at my first newspaper job, and when I first learned Wordstar on my little Osborne 1 computer. I was being manipulated. Yes, I was using a powerful tool and yes, I learned to be happy, doing for myself what legions of typesetters used to get paid union wages for. But I knew that my work patterns were being changed -- for better or worse -- by the capabilities bestowed upon me by some programmer ... in some fusty cubicle, banging away on his keyboard late into the night. This construct, this relationship between programmer and user, is fundamentally different from design in any other media. A software interface doesn't just express itself, as I described earlier, and invite us to come along for the ride if we happen to be so inclined. The raison d'etre of a software interface is to make us DO, not feel, and the only way to DO ... is to do it the way that programmer wants us to. Software is supposed to -- and it does -- extend the capabilities of the human mind, and sometimes the body. But HOW it extends those capabilities is actually and literally bounded by how the programmer thinks. That level of persuasion may not be obvious to most people, but it shapes our thinking. For example, how many of you have been "clicked off" by a cranky little kid pointing a TV remote at you? Or, here's a good example for you guys in particular -- how many of you can tell just by looking at it whether a picture has been PhotoShopped or Kai- Powertooled? That's the kind of persuasion I'm talking about. ----------------------------------------- Now, where Wordstar maybe was brute-force persuasion in that sense, along came the Macintosh -- the velvet hammer. The Macintosh is probably the first real transcendence from Revenge of the Nerds. What continues to amaze me about the Macintosh -- the characteristic that people refer to as its elegance -- is the almost prescient way that its interface responds to ME. More than any other computer at that time, and maybe even now, I felt like it was letting me work the way I wanted to work. It almost demanded customization -- my favorite feature for a while was the startup sound, which you could change at will. At one point, I installed a blood-curdling woman's scream; every morning, when I turned on my computer, all these little disembodied cubicle voices of my co-workers would say in unison, "Good morning, Denise." Yes, programmers built the Macintosh. But somehow, I felt like a few more of them had liberal arts educations. The constraints on our behavior were so much less obvious, I felt like I was finally cut loose forever from that stinkin' command line. But still ... how many of you have made the switch from Mac to Windows? Does it bug you that you have to Exit instead of Quit? Exit! That's so final! Everything about using Windows seems a quarter-turn off me, because the Macintosh trained me how to think the way IT wanted me to. It reminds me of the slogan for Processed World, a radical office workers magazine I subscribed to in the '80s: "Are you doing the processing, or are you being processed?" ------------------------------------------------- Sometimes the mechanics of persuasion are more noticeably flawed than others. Take hardware design -- good God. At some point, there's got to be a new subset of post-traumatic stress syndrome for people who have to deal with computer hardware. Let's see. They finally managed to get the on/off switch onto the front of the computer, that's a good thing. But almost everything else about hardware seems to be designed to create mine fields for unsuspecting users. They design the boxes so that you can put them under your desk, but all the cable connections are in the back so you have to crawl around on your hands and knees to get to them. There's still no volume control on the front panel. Keyboards are still crippling people, me included. Wanna switch your monitor back and forth between a Windows machine and a Mac? Buy a $900 box or DIE TRYING. And don't even get me started about modems and routers. What most of us are persuaded of, after an encounter with certain kinds of technology, is that we are stupid beyond redemption -- and industrial designers don't exactly try to disabuse us of that concept. ---------------------------------------- So that was my working notion of "technology as persuader," until this past June. That's when I read Steven Johnson's book, 'Interface Culture,' which I cannot recommend highly enough. Steven's premise is that software interfaces -- the connection point where the interactivity between people and technology actually takes place... are a new medium for human expression, as significant as anything that's gone before them -- from cave painting to the novel to television ... and that this new conversational, art-as-communication medium of the interface is already having a significant effect on society and culture. Where I was feeling manipulated by the unacknowledged boundaries of interface design, Steven tended to look more at its various components ... in particular, windows -- the generic, not Microsoft's -- frames, links, agents and even bitmaps. He saw them as tools and metaphors for a new mode of human thought, a new filter for us to snap on the lenses of our brains. For example, he believes that hypertext is a new grammar for writing and telling stories ... and that the hypertext link is the first significant new form of punctuation in centuries. In his worldview, word processors and graphics programs and HTML are deep and profound artistic tools, persuasive in the broadest sense. I get it. I believe. Then I met and started working with B.J. Fogg at Interval. --------------------------------------- B.J. is now at Sun Microsystems and he teaches a course in Stanford's Human-Computer Interaction department on a subject he calls Captology -- an acronym for Computers As Persuasive Technology. I love this acronym because it actually also makes me think of being captivated -- the very best state of mind your work can inspire as an interactive media designer. And where Steven focused on the ambient or less intentional effect of interface on the way we think and communicate... B.J. focuses on the intentional effect of certain kinds of technology to persuade us to do their bidding. He's compiled an enormous amount of information about many of the ways that various technologies persuade us to change or adapt our behavior. His research has corrected some of my amorphous intuitions and given them some real authority. One of the most relevant chunks of his research, for you, looks at how product designers use persuasive methods to intentionally change user behavior. He lays out some ideas about how you can use them, too. And -- very important -- he also explores some of the unintended consequences of persuasive technology. --------------------------------------------- So, let's talk about design in this context. Although psychologists know a little something about what kinds of stimuli humans respond to, I don't know that anyone really knows the deep mechanics of persuasion, and I hope they don't nail it any time soon. I've got enough to worry about. But there are some things that appear to work. I would love to walk you through the process of designing with intent to persuade, but I don't think I would do a very good job of it. B.J.'s website for the captology course has plenty of information on it -- I'll give you the address later -- check it out for yourselves. But at the moment, I do think it's important to realize that the process is logical and very modular and you can look at it from lots of different angles, depending on your own personal preference and style. ((BUT ENOUGH ABOUT YOU)) The bottom line is about being conscious of Others in a larger sense ... thinking about what kind of behavior-change you want to effect, or the kind of intervention you want to create. Will you be most effective designing this product or experience for an individual? For families? For organizations or communities? Should it be designed for a PC on the Web? For WebTV? For an intimate device like a Palm Pilot? Or for a public-space kiosk? Would it be more powerful to use technology as a tool or as a medium? Or would it be best to make it a participant -- a social actor -- in a conversation? Here's a few examples so you get the drift .... A heart-rate monitor is a "tool" technology. It's a tool that gives you some information, which in turn persuades you to take some action, hopefully before you keel over. Surveillance technologies, like keyboard sniffers in offices that record people's keystrokes, are tools, too. Knowing you're being watched should persuade you to not cruise porn sites on company time, for example. This one tool wins the best-name contest, though -- it's the NAGSCREEN, built into shareware programs to persuade people to pay up. Dole, the food company not the former presidential candidate, has produced a persuasive CD-ROM called "Dole 5 A Day" (or something like that). A bit of a hybrid between a social actor and media, it uses a bunch of animated characters and games as well as information to do the persuading -- and it's intended to persuade kids to eat more fruits and vegetables. You may have also heard about the "Baby Think It Over" doll, which is another great example of "computer as social actor." It's a chip or two and some software buried inside a very realistic-looking "baby doll" ... reminding you when baby needs to be fed, and changed, and bathed, and played with. It's clearly designed as a propaganda tool in the fight against teen pregnancy. Sounds a little like Tamagochi, doesn't it? I'm terrified to make the connection here, but did you hear the story last week -- I saw it in U.S. News ... about the dad who had to return a puppy to the pet store because his little girls were more concerned with taking care of their Tamagochis? And I LOVE this one -- there's an adorable little fish program from Hewlett- Packard that keeps flaring up on your screen and taunting you to catch him and change his colors and print him out ... which persuades YOU to keep printing on your color printer, which will cause YOU to keep buying more expensive ink and paper. Think about that. That's wild! -------------------------------- There are many other factors involved in designing persuasive media. Another critical feature to consider is proximity -- the interpersonal distance, the relationship between your target users and their screens. For example, if you live with other people, you might feel comfortable browsing the web with Web TV -- which is in a public space, more public than a desktop PC for sure ... but not so comfortable writing personal email that everyone can see while you're sitting on the couch. And think about how you feel when you use an ATM machine. They're also physically a public-space device, but the information they display is far from public ... in fact, it's considered extremely intimate and personal by their users, at least here in money-obsessive America. It's a mis-match, proximally speaking. Which could explain why you always see people standing up really close to ATM screens, looking over their shoulder, making sure no one is close enough to SEE. We don't have to be persuaded to use them -- nowadays we have to -- but there are plenty of times we aren't comfortable it. --------------------------------------------- There are lots more parameters to measure, and lots of ways to design persuasive products. And I suspect that if you trained yourself to start looking at the design space this way, the world would turn into an idea factory for products that really connect to people, that get them to engage in conversation with your designs. In fact, I really believe this idea of getting people to participate -- call it "seductive computing" -- is absolutely a key to successful interaction design. The idea is to create products which vamp at you from across the room (or across the Web): the seductive computing slogan is, "Try me ... buy me ... use me ..." Then, of course, they have to continue to satisfy you in order to be counted as a truly successful product. But first, metaphorically at least, someone has to pick them up. Here are a few examples. Just like a lot of the previous examples, they may sound silly because they're so obvious. But really -- think about what's happening, how they're working on you in ways you hadn't noticed, or been conscious of before. Start noticing how certain kinds of technology grab you. How about the Airfone on the plane? Notice that little screen flashing at you the next time you're sitting in front of one. "Call your kids! Check your voicemail! Log on! It's easy!" How about arcade games? Those noisy, flashing screens actually have a name -- it's called "attract mode" -- and their sole purpose is to get you to slip those quarters into the machine. A bit more mundane, but think about the elegant persuasion of those individual print samples that you can get from laser printers or fax machines in Circuit City. Try me, buy me, use me. Now think about how powerful it would be if we could use seductive computing techniques to find a useful -- that is to say, NOT annoying -- way to seduce people to a Web site and keep them coming back. For example, a banner ad that just screams "Click me! Really, click me now!" -- and doesn't bother to tell me WHY -- is just eye noise. And of course, tips me off that I'm about to be done-to in a way I probably won't like very much. I just don't see a lot of mindful design happening on the web -- mindful of what they want people to do once they get to a site, or mindful of what people themselves might want to do, for that matter. Because if web designers WANT me to do what I end up doing on the Web -- that is, to frustrate me 99 percent of the time -- then we'd better rethink this whole shebang. In any case, I have faith that you all will figure this out eventually. But I'm convinced that it doesn't have to be so painful anymore. I have a strong intuition that many of the design ideas and methodologies of persuasion can really help put interactive design on a fresh and interesting and much steadier course. Certainly they can take a lot of the voodoo out of the process, so you can direct your energy toward creating design strategies that work. This would be good news for everyone. ------------------------------------------- ((ETHICS OF PERSUASION)) Finally, how could anyone address this subject without talking about the ethics of persuasion? Certainly I can't. Absolutely there are lots of people, probably some of them right out here in this audience, who are eyeing persuasive technology "with bad intent," if I may quote Jethro Tull. For all we know, it's being used that way right now. For all we know, Mortal Kombat is a conspiracy to make our kids blasé about violence. But if it's not (and I suspect the people who make this crap aren't savvy enough to launch that concerted an effort)... then we have to consider very carefully not only the effectiveness -- the intent -- of how we persuade ... but we also have to think about the unintended consequences of the technology that we deploy. If Mortal Kombat and No Flesh Shall Be Spared -- the game this illustration came from -- can be so hideous without even trying, think about if they DID try. This is a very deep, scary topic, especially when we are talking about turning a technology as soulless as a computer into what is essentially a propaganda engine. The examples that you saw today of persuasive technologies might seem harmless and maybe even beneficial ... but of course, no one with bad intent has really gotten a crack at them yet. We are at the beginning of the curve in a lot of ways -- designers don't know enough to use the concepts mindfully, and consumers aren't connected enough to make them widely useful. But the people who are connected, especially our parents and grandparents and our kids, are much more vulnerable than you and me. They tend to believe stuff because "it's on the computer," just like they believe it because they "saw it on TV." And why shouldn't they? Public relations agencies get paid a lot of money by technology companies to sell us on computers as repositories of the world's knowledge, largely infallible and absolutely indispensible. ((IN THE FUTURE)) They've indoctrinated us to believe that, as Laurie Anderson says, "In the future ... everything ... will be ... BETTER." And because interactive technology is by definition, at least, more engaging than other types of media, this technology has the potential to be the most persuasive of all. Of course, designers shouldn't be expected to protect people from themselves, but they do need to take responsibility for making sure we know what they're up to. Because if they don't, they -- YOU -- are going to cause a backlash against your work like nobody's business. Adults generally demand to know when they're being yanked, and they REALLY don't like it when you yank their kids without telling them. I mean, it's okay to get them to eat more vegetables and warn them about getting pregnant, but what other messages might you be indoctrinating them with? Hmmm? So ... although I don't think you want to live in a world where other people decide how you implement technology, at least you can come clean about your own motives and intent. And as this area of design develops, my fervent hope is that you will choose not to keep the advantage for yourselves. As you get better at the art of persuasion, you have to identify the techniques that you use, look at their effectiveness vs. their unintended consequences, disclose what you find in your research, and do your best to make sure everyone else does the same thing. For me, the bottom line is that you have a great opportunity here. You are where the rivers meet -- technology, media, art, commerce, psychology, global culture. Interactive design is definitely the next great challenge, and lucky you! You get to help it develop into an important new discipline. Thank you.