And on a related note, everyone interested in this subject should read "The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman.
A fascinating read that will make you re-think the ways in which you use things in daily life.

I don't think value wise they're worth buying; but having the option to download them for free is pretty nifty!

Most of it is obvious stuff to a good designer; but cues like this always serve as a great reminder and tool; even a check list when approaching some projects!

I'd probably prefer a slightly more academic/detailed approach for the price tag.

Hadn't seen these so thanks for the link!

And not even a passing reference to Eno/Schmidt, where credit is due?

Very cool stuff! Finishing up my Human Factors Ph.D. this year, and this is a neat way to quickly reference some strategies. The content could also make for a very neat "crash course" for new students.

@JPW - I think the use of the phrase "oblique stragies" is the passing reference.

Lockton doesn't actually use the term himself on his site, unless I missed it, and I don't think he really based the cards on Eno and Schmidt's work, even though there is some similarity in the idea.

Not all devices are mobile, but all mobile devices are... devices.

Honestly, some of these come across as "How to be a dirtbag to your customers"

- Make things Opt-out instead of Opt-in
- Encourage people to collect things. Like meaningless flowers on your cellphone background.
- Split up achievable levels so that people get addicted to games faster! ie. FarmVille
- "What happens if you give rewards or feedback on an unpredictable schedule, so users keep playing or interacting?" - Skinner Boxes for people?
- "Is there anything to be gained from making something look like it works one way, while actually doing something else (or nothing at all)?"
- Bing puts paid adverts in with the search results to increase the chance of people clicking them. And this is a good thing?!
- "Can you use an authority figure or authoritative instruction to tell users what they should (or should not) do?"

I'm sure there are more, but this is where I stopped reading. Some of them seemed like good ideas, but others were bordering on abuse of psychology.

I just want to say, this is completely valid.
And advertising firm I worked for a year ago did this.

It's so easy to demonstrate, we would "split test" different site appearances, to see which ones people participated in more.

We would throw ~10,000 views at a page, and I wrote the script that would present different appearances and behaviors randomly.
Then we would bank on the most popular patterns.

Google also has a tool like that for it's affiliates.

If you made a living off a website then you wouldn't think the methods are so "evil".

So it's OK to use psychology to pull dirty tricks on people if you need money?

Just because a technique can be used in questionably ethical ways doesn't mean we shouldn't understand how humans are affected by it.

The same techniques that make Farmville addicting also make games "fun".

And really, taking issue with the "meaningless flowers"? When used as a reinforcement scheme for exercise?

You're right that many of them aren't necessarily very 'pro-user', at least in the way we often come across them. I hoped it would come across that I've not advocating them all as 'good', just pointing out that they exist, in a continuum of patterns (which really are not always clear-cut in terms of good & bad).

Influencing behaviour can be done in ways that help people - e.g. if someone often forgets to do something that they want to do, changing the opt-in/opt-out default can really be helpful. But in a different context that may be a step too far.

If you like, you could use the cards as a spotter's guide to how you're being manipulated. You could deconstruct the systems around you by identifying patterns in them, and judging to what extent your behaviour's being influenced. That's certainly how I found lots of the examples!

Or if you're working on designing or developing a new product or service where people's behaviour is, in some way, important to how it works, you could see the techniques as a kind of library of possibilities, and apply judgement (or actual A/B testing as dequeued says) to find out which ones are both ethically OK (from your point of view) and effective.

JPW - you're right, I should add a reference to Eno & Schmidt. Although the IDEO cards and TRIZ were what inspired the 'design pattern' card form for me, Oblique Strategies and Marshall McLuhan's Distant Early Warning cards deserve a nod too. As do Arup's Drivers of Change cards, Jesse Schell's Art of Game Design cards and a number of others which I've come across during the research.

See also Stephen P. Anderson's Mental Notes cards, which deal specifically with applying psychological insights to web design, and really are beautifully produced artefacts in themselves.

"Honor thy error as a hidden intention"

Isn't this pretty obvious? I mean I'm not a linguist, but I'm pretty sure that 'design' is a synonym for 'fate'.

The more detailed academic approach will certainly follow :)

The cards have ended up as pretty sparse via feedback from running workshops with designers, with a number of different iterations. It turns out that in the brainstorming context, having more detail slows down the idea generation process, as might be expected. So they've ended up with much less detail than they had originally... it will return in some form though (wiki first, then book, who knows?)

P.S. I did have a response to CG's (very understandable) comment, but I think it had too many links in it and has been temporarily eaten!

[The following is very boring if you're not a designer - please ignore now]

I can see these cards providing a window into something that non-designers could (nay, should) find interesting, but as a designer I have to say I find this stuff profoundly irritating.

Lockton's cards are a collection of nice ideas. Nothing wrong with that in itself of course, but to present them as a didactic tool completely mis-characterises what the practice of effective design actually is (I should add that Lockton is by no means alone in doing this).

For example - if I spend my life collecting films I think are great, does that make me a great film maker? The answer is probably no. And so it is with these cards. Effective design is not about checking boxes or being led by absolute heuristics. Just like film making, it's about vision, it also requires deep understanding of context and the problem space. Either that, or it requires none of those things - just a "blink" as Gradwell might put it. But it's really not about the etymology of patterns, despite the hoards of people out here slaving away on "pattern libraries." Indeed, it's very disingenuous to imply that it is. Beyond a point very quickly reached, they won't become better designers by making collections any more than those who make newspaper clippings will become journalists.

I'm starting to think that our current obsession with examples and lists like this is actually hampering our ability to design effectively because it fossilises creative thinking into a world of "rights" and "wrongs". At least, I see no real evidence of design improving in general, which is what you'd expect given the reams of design advice out there. In fact quite the opposite. Things have got measurably worse since Raskin wrote The Humane Interface - something I would never have expected when I first read that book over a decade ago.

I'm sure Mr Lockton is a good thinker - he's certainly an astute collector of crafty design ideas. But would it be too curmudgeonly to ask what Lockton *himself* has actually designed? The default mode of design is failure, and that's not surprising because it's hard. I would have more time for this man's work if he was more honest about that fact and laid off the pretty, but sadly meaningless, didactic fluff.

I can see these cards providing a window into something that non-designers could (nay, should) find interesting

That may be the way they end up being used - to highlight a principle, via an example, to people who've never thought about it before. It really isn't meant to be presented as a didactic tool, and really, really, I'm not claiming to be an expert. It's just a collection of crafty design ideas as you say; many of them aren't necessarily even very effective.

It isn't curmudgeonly to ask what I've designed. I'll be honest about it - for the last 3 years, I've been doing a PhD full-time, so not much, and it's actually made me quite sad. Before, I mainly did engineering design and technology R&D for products like folding bikes, novelty packaging, wheelchair drives, and a stalled attempt at commercialising a lighting backup system I designed. The default mode was indeed failure!

The next project, starting in a few weeks' time, involves "deep understanding of the problem space" for a system where people's behaviour has a big impact on efficiency, with the aim of helping people use it differently, via the (re)design of something I'll be working on. And if all the Design with Intent stuff turns out to be useless, then I'll be honest about it. After all, it's just as valid and useful to know what doesn't work, and why.