Designing for Human Behaviour.
Part 4
Designing for Human Behaviour: Crafting Solutions that Align with Natural Human Actions and Optimizing Environments for Interaction.
Let's start with the definition of Human Behaviour: “Human behaviour is a function of the actions and attitudes of people within an environment.” What is an action? An action “is a sensory and cognitive process that is measurable and observable.” What is an attitude? “An attitude is an emotive and intuitive response that requires relationship and story” (Piaget’s theory of cognitive development). And what is the environment? It’s the circumstances, objects, or conditions by which one is surrounded.
By looking directly at people's actions and attitudes, a correlation can be drawn, and patterns can be observed and measured within specific environments. Most of these patterns are influenced by culture, ergonomics, economics, and the herd effect of others within the same environment. Designing for Human Behaviour, therefore, means designing for the patterns users are accustomed to within specific environments.
“It is not enough that we build products that function, that are understandable and usable. We also need to build products that bring joy and excitement, pleasure and fun, and, yes, beauty to people’s lives.” – Norman
Every time you expose a user to a new, innovative, ground breaking, or unorthodox pattern—whether it's a new type of restaurant, a new office environment, a new way of driving, or a new computer interface—you risk losing them. Not because people can’t understand them, but because they trust the familiar more than the unknown. In a world of information overload, these cognitive biases are shortcuts that help us get through the day. Breaking that pattern comes with a high risk of rejection. There are many examples.
Think about 3D TV: after the success of 3D movies like Avatar in 2009, 3D TV was predicted to take over, but it flopped. Similarly, smart refrigerators that could order food online and self-balancing scooters like the Segway never became the game-changers they were expected to be.
Of late, there’s a revisit of the idea of “Automat” restaurants, where post-COVID-19 measures seek to reduce exposure between people. This concept involves serving food via conveyors, robots, or vending slots. Interestingly, the first Automat restaurant opened in Philadelphia in 1888, with Horn and Hardart operating out of 150 locations before its decline and eventual closure in 1991.
At its core, people hardly ever choose a restaurant based solely on the food. It's about the entire experience. Don’t get me wrong—food is important—but in today’s age of transparency and accessibility, it’s a passport factor.
Restaurants are highly emotional and social spaces and the only form of design that engages all Five Human Senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Understanding and framing all those senses almost always results in highly stimulating and successful environments. Additionally, a successful social space will be attentive to ergonomics (our ideal relationship to and interaction with objects around us based on our physical and mental condition) and proxemics (our ideal relationship between people and the space around us based on emotional conditioning). The success of one restaurant over another almost always comes down to which is more sensitive to natural, desired, and predictable human behaviour.
The complexity of Designing for Human Behaviour.
More in the next Article.
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