Society Centred Design

SOCIETY CENTREDDESIGN

ISSUE #1WINTER EDITION

How can design use implicit memory and touch to influence user behaviour?

Memory Touch Branding. .

CONTENTS

1Intro

3Design & Society

7Design & Implicit Memory

9Branding & Implicit Memory

10Touch & Memory

13Touch & Emotional Branding

17Conclusion

19References

The social and physical environment that humans develop in has been developed by designers. Early experiences in this environment then go on to shape adult behaviour, even the ones that cannot be recalled. An environment that leads people’s behaviour is currently almost irrelevant due to predispositions about what elements actually influence user behaviour and it is a designer’s responsibility to positively influence behaviour in such a way that it benefits the collective society and the individual user whilst allowing the user to be unaware of the existence of the designer.

Implicit memory is the deep subconscious and emotional memory. It stores emotional experiences that are integrated into the brain and are able to influence user behaviour without any specific recall.

Design that integrates emotion may be able to influence user behaviour through implicit memory and stimulate the nerve circuits in the brain that are on standby to fire.

The importance of touch in human development is also essential. Everything that is felt in the surrounding society can influence implicit learning and trigger emotional responses.When combined with branding, haptic interaction can provide a tactile experience that impacts on this emotional response to provide deep emotional memories for theuser which could influence their behaviour towards a brand.

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Intro

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Social surroundings and social well-being are directly related. Consumer led design is responsive to consumer needs and is pretty much held on a leash by the consumers themselves however, is consumer led design for or against society?

In 1964, Britain progressed from being a ‘consumer’ to becoming a ‘consumerist society’. People essentially developed the need to ‘want’ rather than just ‘need’ and this had a major impact on the role of the designer.

Designers had to cater for new ‘wants’ by creating and constantly stimulating new human desires.

In the 1980’s, the design boom enhanced the ‘consumerist society’. Human desires had further increased however, they were only temporary and a constant flow of new products were produced to satisfy this temporary desire. This method of satisfying temporary human desires was far from solving any problems that society had at the time.By the way, consumer led design is still around and is highly ubiquitous. Consumers are encouraged to be excessively materialistic and designers are only beginning to touch the surface of public and altruistic values however, more often than not, these are engulfed by the desire to constantly consume (Whitely, N.)

Design & Society

Some of the most influential products of the 21st Century didn’t come about through user led innovation; they came about through design holding the leash. Take Apple for example, they have arguably created continuous temporary desires for millions of people that weren’t user led. Instead of asking people what they wanted, they gave them what they needed. In a way, the company reverted back to the ‘consumer’ model and addressed the ‘unspoken needs’ of people and potentially society rather than being led by the ‘wants’ of people. IKEA also has a similar model, their unspoken belief is to ‘show people the way’ ( Ideation. S. 2011).

Real design offering explicit and implicit values far beyond its original function is being avoided for seductively desirable products. If designers are to move forward by trying to influence user behaviour for the benefit of a collective society then they must accept responsibility for these issues.

Sustainable design is trending and it is important however, sustainable behaviour that has been influenced by sustainable design is arguably more important.

Good design should go far beyond its immediate use and function and an example of influence beyond original function would be the microwave. Its immediate function is to heat up food very quickly however; its unintentional influence is that families now join together for fewer dinners. In this case, behaviour has been mediated without being determined.

If user behaviour is to be influenced to ‘show people the way’, then the intended user experience must be contemplated and how the collective concern may conflict with the individual concern. Between these two groups, there is not always a mutual agreement therefore; it is the responsibility of the designer to bridge this gap.

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To motivate a user to alter their behaviour, the user experience will be an important factor. Conditions need to be shaped for more automatic responses and this is where implicit design can provide desired behaviour. A good example would be traffic lights. When there are no traffic lights, the automatic response of the user is to slow down due to lack of visual information which is the intended user experience.

Influencing user behaviour can be distinguished into 4 types: Coercive, persuasive, seductive and decisive.

1. Create a perceivable barrier for undesired behaviour (pain)2. Make unacceptable user behaviour overt (shame)3. Make the behavior a necessary activity to perform to make use of the product function4. Provide the user with arguments for specific behaviour5. Suggest actions6. Trigger different motivations for the same behaviour7. Elicit emotions to trigger action tendencies8. Activate physiological processes to induce behaviour9. Trigger human tendencies for automatic behavioural responses10. Create optimal conditions for specific behaviour11. Make the desired behaviour the only possible behaviour to perform

Design & Society

The diagram above was created by Massachusetts Institute of Technology for an article about Design for Socially Responsible Behaviour. It shows the relationship between design strategy and design influence.

If design is categorised by user experience such as above, then essentially the user is in charge of the categorising. Different users however, may not categorise a product into the same influential categories, therefore strategies can be assigned to these categories to show how designers can trigger different psychological processes to affect the user experience (Tromp, N., Hekkert, P, Verbeek, P. 2011).

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Figure 1. Four types of influence and related strategies. Tromp, N., Hekkert, P, Verbeek, P. (2011)

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Implicit memory affects behaviour without conscious awareness and without strategic effort to use memory (H.E. Schendan 2012).

This type of memory received little attention until the 1960’s and it allows people to express stored information in the absence of conscious awareness. Human activities adaptively improve via experience and this principle is based on every neural connection in the brain having the potential to change to reflect experience (Paul J. Reber 2013). Whenever actions are repeated such as tying a shoe lace, implicit learning is taking place and the biggest phenomenon in implicit learning is repetition priming.

Design & Implicit Memory

‘When a recently encountered stimulus is re-encountered, it is processed differently, usually more quickly’ (Paul J. Reber 2013). This is because when ‘re-encountering’, less neurons are required to represent the same information.Good designers understand aesthetics, they understand function, they know about psychology however, the next depth to which we should go is to begin to understand the brain itself, how it works and human behaviour. The performance of the brain is influenced by the quality of the built environment and society surrounding it. The mind then adds information to what is receives from the physical environment during daily activities (Badger, E. 2012).

Imagine walking across a beach, this experience includes memories and emotions linked to previous experiences you have had with similar environments throughout your lifetime. Connections are regularly being drawn between place and memory without awareness and these emotional ties are something designers should look to expand on.Imagine an Alzheimer’s facility that helped its residents remember who they are just through its architectural design or the way in which the physical structure interacted with other technology.

Neurobiologist Fred George along with other scientists confirmed the process of ‘Adult Neurogenesis’. ‘Instead of neurons in the brain decreasing with age, our capacity to add new memories and skills continuous to expand’. The speed in which these new cells are added seems directly influenced by the quality of the interactions between people and their environment therefore, ‘changes in the environment change the brain and therefore change behaviour’ (Badger, E. 2012).


The ability of humans to store small details of implicit information allows the presumption that exposure to brand names, images and context affects their subsequent brand choices however, these are affected by different involvement conditions. The main two conditions are stimulus involvement vs. memory involvement.

During stimulus involvement, the user’s choice of brand is assumed to be a rational scrutiny of information where all of the alternative choices along with all of their attributes are present.

Branding & Implicit Memory

In memory involvement, the consumer rarely has such information available about the alternative choices and therefore, tries to consciously recall all of the relevant information through memory (Seh-Woong Chung and Katrin Szymanski 1997).Most real life purchases are achieved using a mixture of both types of involvement.There is however one other scenario that effects brand choice. It is essentially where brand choice meets implicit memory. Imagine yourself in a rush to purchase a specific type of product, let’s take a chocolate bar for example. You have no time for any stimulus or explicit memory choices and instead you end up choosing a product based on its familiarity and perceptual fluency.

This is linked to incidental exposure to brand names using repetitive priming unaccompanied by awareness throughout your life.Consumers rely on perceptual features of the alternatives and essentially choose the brand that catches their eye, especially in the ‘rush’ scenario. Goods that are frequently purchased by consumers who are not exactly highly motivated to choose alternatives such as chocolate bars would benefit from a visually simple design that just emphasises the brand name/ image in context and this should allow for successful priming (Katrin Szymanski 1997).

Touch & Memory

Social behaviour can also be influenced by tactile stimulation. Responses to touch during day to day activities, positive or negative, are influenced by previous experiences in early childhood.

This is achieved by receptors located in the human skin that store information regarding the situation where touch was generated (Alberto Gallace, Charles Spence 2010).

The skin is constantly collecting information about its surrounding environment. The messages humans receive through their skin in early life, even when just a foetus, has a resonating effect on their behaviour in later life. Imagine a baby exploring a toy, where does that toy go? The mouth of course. Why? Not for the taste but to actually feel the object. (Lots of sensory neurons are located in the skin of the upper lips and tongue). The way an infant is touched or touches in its first few years or even hours of life, influences not only whether it survives or not but also how it copes in later life (Benjamin, B).


So how does this link to design, society and implicit memory?

The shapes and structures that are touched, felt, seen and explored in early life most likely influences the choices that are made in later life. When feeling objects, choosing brands and socially interacting, implicit priming will take place where perceptual familiarity will step in and make certain choices for us, especially in a certain ‘rush’ scenario.

Research on visual objects has shown that perceptual variables such as size, right/left, reflection, location, colour, surface, pattern, contrast and illumination only impair explicit (conscious) memory.

Touch & Memory

On the other hand, attributes such as an objects shape and structure are sensitive to implicit memory ( Ballesteros, S., Reales, J., Manga, D. (1999).

When testing shapes with people that were temporarily visually impaired, symmetric shapes were more accurately detected compared to asymmetric shapes and objects encoded structurally were judged as symmetric or asymmetric faster than objects that were encoded semantically. On the other hand, semantic encoding allowed observers to recognise objects more accurately compared to speed ( Ballesteros, S., Reales, J., Manga, D. (1999).

What this test shows is that when touch is used to explore an object, kinaestheticinformation is instantly created. This information then taps into implicit representations of objects from past experiences.

Haptic exploration combined with implicit memory seems to rely on structure and shape therefore; symmetric shapes could influence user behaviour to choose a brand when there is no time for stimulus or conscious memory involvement. It is important to note however that haptic perception does not allow for the same speed of processing information as visual perception (Sandra Littel, Ulrich R. Orth, 2013).


A person’s emotional response to a product is influenced by their tactile experience with it. If a brand can create a unique feel for its products, then it can create a unique tactile memory for its consumers through the feel of its products.

This could be achieved through sensory marketing. This is when a consumer’s senses become engaged and this affects their behaviour. Sensory aspects such as: emotions, memories, perception, preferences, choices and consumption are all effected by the feel of products and therefore, touch is perhaps the most underutilized sense in the design industry.

Touch & Emotional Branding

Research has shown that the choices consumers make are affected by touch where warmth for example signalises sympathy/ liking whereas heavy objects symbolise something more serious and competent. (Think of the current trend for thicker business cards) (Design and Paper. 2013).

When it comes to packaging, consumers perceive congruent designs more positively for competence, sophistication and quality however; a brand is perceived more exciting when haptic cues are paired with low congruence visuals.

Congruence seems to facilitate fluency and fluency relates to aesthetic appeal (Sandra Littel, Ulrich R. Orth, (2013). When congruency is linked to price, consumers expect higher prices for higher congruency.

Tactile sense is the most immediate sense. (Think of a gentle lovers touch). It enables humans to wrap their consciousness around their physical environment and as brand recognition begins to decline, the use of touch increases. Consumers are more likely to feel a product to aid in its evaluation in order to compensate for an absence of information from the brand. As a result, the only snippets of data that can be recalled are those that are consciously plucked from memory however, if there is no time for this, then the reliance on implicit perceptual familiarities increases. (Gobe, M. (2009).

Consumers want to imagine how they will interact and experience a product before committing to a purchase therefore; haptics are utilized to achieve this. There is a problem however and that problem is current packaging design. Any secondary packaging around a product should be designed to allow the user to feel and imagine using the product before purchase. Many brands either choose not to do this or they simply have no idea of the great opportunity that they are missing.

Design should be made worth working with. Societies taste in everything varies from decade to decade, it’s the same for design and this needs to be catered for. Design trends need to match trends in society however; this needs to be highly localised, relevant and responsive to their environments.

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A comprehensive view has to be nurtured about the value system that has been created for society. This article was not a blue print for the future of design but instead a critique of its current values and considered depths to which responsible designers should go.

The social implications of a design can never be fully predicted however, this is not an excuse for the designer to hide behind. There is a responsibility and this entails shaping society by translating the collective concern with the individual one.

Could this mean a shift from user centred design to a society centred one?

Conclusion

Could there be joint degree programs in the future offering both design and neuroscience?

It doesn’t seem too far off.

A sensory experience is essential for the development of humans and society. It will provoke the most efficient brain responses and this will enable humans to direct their energy more efficiently towards tasks that they were naturally designed to do such as to be curious, learn, develop and create.In a tactile deprived world encouraged by the internet, brands that cater to touch could be future successes by translating their identities into the feel of their products.

Design needs to reflect the key values of its time, and currently those values are to be responsive to people’s emotional needs and desires for tactile pleasure.

‘The Paperazzo haptic award was created because they consider haptic communi-cation the only chance to really emotionally touch people in a world full of sensory overload’.

Brands will begin to use neuroscience to learn how to interact with their communities more effectively. This will create a trend for neurobusiness however, these brands will need to employ people or outsource skills that understand how to use neural information and apply it successfully into projects that benefit society.

By shaping the conditions of the user experience, a brand could potentially re-shape the brain. (Errens, J. 2013).


References

Paul J. Reber, The neural basis of implicit learning and memory: A review of neuropsychological and neuroimaging research, Neuropsychologia, Volume 51, Issue 10, August 2013

Sandra Littel, Ulrich R. Orth, (2013) Effects of package visuals and haptics on brand evaluations, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 47 Iss: 1/2, pp.198 - 217

Tromp, N., Hekkert, P, Verbeek, P. (2011) Design for Socially Responsible Behaviour: A classification of influence based on intended user experience. Design Issues: Volume 27,

Number 3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [online] Available at: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/DESI_a_00087

Whitely, N. (1993) Design for society. Reaktion Books Ltd.

Gallace, A. Spence, C. The science of interpersonal touch: An overview, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, Volume 34, Issue 2, February 2010, Pages 246-259

Badger, E. 2012. Corridors of the Mind - The Science of Society - Pacific Standard: The Science of Society. [online] Available at: http://www.psmag.com/culture/corridors-of-the-mind-49051/

Ballesteros, S., Reales, J., Manga, D. (1999) Implicit and explicit memory for Familiar and novel objects presented to touch, [online] Available at: http://www.psicothema.com/

pdf/328.pdf

Benjamin, B. The Primacy of Human Touch, Issue2, [online] Available at: http://www.benbenjamin.net/pdfs/Issue2.pdf

Chung, S., Szymanski, K. (1997) ,Effects of Brand Name Exposure on Brand Choices: an Implicit Memory Perspective, in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 24, eds. Merrie Brucks and Deborah J. MacInnis, Provo, UT : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 288-294

Design and Paper. 2013. Feel The Brand – Haptic Communication and Sensory Marketing. [online] Available at: http://www.designandpaper.com/?p=3199

Errens, J. 2013. Beer, European culture and haptic design. [online] Available at: http://brandperfect.org/index.php/knowledge/articles/499-beer-european-culture-and-haptic-

design-new-fonts

Gobe, M. (2009) Emotional Branding

H.E. Schendan, Implicit Memory, In Encyclopedia of Human Behavior (Second Edition), edited by V.S. Ramachandran, Academic Press, San Diego, 2012

Ideation. S. (2011) User-Led Innovation Can’t Create Breakthroughs; Just Ask Apple and Ikea. [online] Available at: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663220/user-led-innovation-cant-create-break-

throughs-just-ask-apple-and-ikea


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