The process behind this blog has always aimed to be one big post a week that framed a particular aspect of my research, followed by a series of smaller supporting or conflicting posts throughout the week. These smaller posts intending to encourage contribution and consensus by the end of the week and are intended to focus on real world or anecdotal application of that week’s research question. Thus far I’ve shared thoughts and observations from my research into Intrinsically Motivating Design and supported Skill Acquisition in the design of products and services. I’ve also volunteered some of the thinking from my experiences in designing for public engagement.

This week I’m going to try and do it in more of an active problem solving sort of way, responding to the design brief of designing for democratic regime change. In other words, as a designer of systems, products and services what can I contribute from my research to enable and empower individuals striving to undermine an autocratic regime. Contentious – yes. Interesting – yes. Educational – yes.

Hopefully, if I do a good enough job, this will be a nice theoretical study into motivational design and to positively influencing human behaviour. Indeed, this exercise might provide an insight into understanding contrary behaviour, which is to say systems, products and services that aren’t designed to motivate or empower their users or might be actively implemented to demotivate and dis-empower them. My hope is that this exercise will provide a valuable and unique insight into better designing dynamic systems and services to better support the intentions and will of the majority of it’s users. I hope you will see this as something worth contributing to or at least broadcasting further afield, it is certainly not intended to be prescriptive and as far as it is published here is purely a theoretical discussion, although clearly influenced by powerful recent world events.

The video that inspired this post. What motivates the behaviour that lead to this incident and what can we as designers do to prevent its reoccurance?

Other Relevant Posts...

• November 30th, 2009 -- Motivational Design Framework v.0.1 (2)
• June 24th, 2009 -- Expectancy for success? (1)
• December 9th, 2009 -- Modelling Motivation in the Design of Products, Systems and Services (0)
• October 30th, 2009 -- Design for Self-Service – A motivational psychology perspective (1)
• October 28th, 2009 -- User Needs are Outdated, We Should Be Designing User Goals… (1)
• October 1st, 2009 -- Framework of Motivated Behaviour (0)
• July 13th, 2009 -- Making Design a Concrete Experience (0)
• December 3rd, 2009 -- Managing Motivation (0)
• October 29th, 2009 -- Theories of Planned Behaviour (1)
• September 21st, 2009 -- Motivational Design Personas (9)

Tags: Awareness, Democracy, Design for Regime Change, Design Research, Design Thinking, Human Centred Design, Information, Intrinsic Motivation, Iran Election, Public Engagement, Relevance, Service Design, Social Nudge, User Perceptions

This entry was posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 05:30 and is filed under Design Process, Design Thinking, Design for Regime Change, Motivational Design, Public Engagement, Service Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.