Influencing Behavior with Design

When designing anything, it’s easy to get caught in a trap of only focusing on the visual aesthetic or making it catch your eye. Often times design can serve much more engaging purposes. We’ve talked about services that show you what people look at when they visit your site. It’s an important tool. But what if you could also guide what they do when they visit your site or use your product?

Design with Intent
One of the most valuable design references I’ve ever come across is Dan Lockton’s Design with Intent cards. A Creative Commons licensed deck of cards, Design with Intent contains 101 patterns for influencing what your users actually do with your product. Divided into “lenses” like Architecture, Errorproofing and Interaction, these cards come complete with real world examples of how to influence behavior through design. Examples range from the physical world, to our emotional needs as people.

Guilt is a great motivator
Here are a couple of my personal favorites (you should still download the whole deck and check each one out).

I’ve found every single one of these cards to not only be interesting, but insightful and inspiring. Many of these are obvious and make you laugh when you finally realize they have been under your nose this whole time. Many of the cards deal with topics we’ve talked about before like the Anchoring Effect. Check these out and let us know what you think!