Many things in the world are not designed under the guidance of user-centered design methods, but these things still work very well. For example, in cars, people all over the world can learn to drive through similar operating devices. Let’s take a look at the various products around us, including scissors, axes, typewriters, mice, sporting goods, etc. Although they have some subtle differences in different cultures, they are basically the same. People can learn to use it. Why is this so? The basic reason is that when these objects are designed, the designer understands the behavioral activities of the product being used, which is “behavior-centric design”.
In many cases, no matter how the appearance and structure of a product change, the activities and behaviors of using the product will not change. For example, the creative musical instrument shown in the figure below, whose form and material have subverted people’s understanding of traditional musical instruments, but their performance The method has not changed in any way.
Many musical instruments are relatively complicated, difficult to operate, and can cause serious diseases. Music scores are not something ordinary people can master. However, whether it is musical instruments or musical scores, they have not changed much in the course of thousands of years of development. A person needs to go through a lot of guidance and practice before he can read and perform proficiently. The disease problem faced by musicians is so serious that there are special medical studies on this aspect. Neither musical instruments nor musical scores can pass any human-centered design reviews, so why are they still designed like that? This is because the designer starts from the behavioral activity and the way the instrument is played. Why not design with people as the center? Norman believes that there are two reasons, “The first is the activity-centered nature, and the second is the communication between the constructor and the designer of the object for its design purpose.”
Successfully designed objects can be perfectly integrated into the work. And support such activities in a way that people can understand. If you understand the activity to be carried out, then this kind of equipment is understandable.
People make and use tools to form the relationship between things and people, and express them through behavior. Use behavior is a synthesis of operation, cognition and perceptuality. The understanding and grasp of operability, cognition and perceptuality all depend on the observation and grasp of objective behavior.
So how to grasp user behavior and how to design with behavior as the center? The author summarizes some design principles and points that need attention for your reference and discussion.
1. Hardware scale
The hardware scale mainly refers to the characteristics of the human body. This part of the research mainly relies on the theoretical support of ergonomics. The hardware scale is a key factor affecting human behavior.
The human body characteristic parameters include static and dynamic parameters such as the size of each part of the human body, the radius of activity, muscle strength, and the form of motion. They are the most basic and most commonly used subject content of ergonomics. The difference in human body characteristic parameters seriously affects the way people act on things. For example, for the same chair, due to the difference in the user’s body height, leg length and other characteristic parameters, the person’s sitting posture and sitting time length and behavior will vary greatly , The different behaviors caused by the difference of human body characteristic parameters have been reflected in many designs, such as the design of adjustable seats or the design of soft seats, which are specific manifestations of the hardware scale of focused behavior. The relationship between people and things through behaviors, when implemented in product design, is the correspondence between body parts and related operating parts during use, and is the coincidence of human body characteristics with product characteristics.
2. Software standards
Software scale refers to the emotional factors of people.
Emotions are usually not directly related to the purpose of people using products, but changes in emotions will affect their behavior when using products. People have long been aware of the role of emotions in daily life. Researchers believe that emotions help people make decisions and evaluate whether the situation is good or bad, safe or dangerous. When people are anxious, their thinking becomes narrower, focusing only on the directly related aspects of the problem, but sometimes unexpected results appear. For example, words such as “anxiety in sapience” and “ant on a hot pot” vividly describe it. The influence of emotion on behavior. Emotions can control body muscles and change the way the brain works through chemical neurotransmitters, which in turn affects operating behavior. Emotions can be contagious, and emotional reactions can also affect the emotions and behaviors of other people in their facial expressions.
In his book “Emotional Design”, Norman believes that beautiful objects are better to use. Beautiful objects make people feel good, and this feeling in turn makes them think more creatively. Norman believes that beauty affects emotions and thus affects behavior, but there are many factors that affect human emotions, including natural factors such as weather, light, and temperature, as well as human factors such as music. Many researchers have conducted experiments to investigate the influence of atmosphere and emotion rendering on various human social behaviors. For example, a researcher used different types of music in a store to investigate people’s behavior in buying red wine. The results of the study found that whether to play Music or different types of music will not affect the amount of red wine people buy, but it has a greater impact on the quality of red wine purchased. Research has found that playing jazz music can create more profits for red wine sales.
3. Get used to the scale
Many designers have a philosophy that “user behavior is irreversible”. Although this is an overly arbitrary and incorrect theory, it illustrates the importance of user habits from another aspect.
QWERTY keyboard is a typical design case based on user habits and a typical representative of inferior products over superior products. The keyboard is very long. The typewriter appeared as early as 1714, but the keyboard was not mature. It was not until 1868 that the American “Father of Typewriter” Christoph Larson Shores designed the practical form and standardization of modern typewriters. The keyboard arrangement method is the current “QWERTY” keyboard. Initially, the keyboard of the typewriter was arranged in alphabetical order, and the typewriter was a typing tool with a fully mechanical structure. Therefore, if the typing speed is too fast, certain key combinations are prone to key problems, so Christopher Larsen Shoals placed the most frequently used letters in opposite directions and slowed down the keystrokes to the greatest extent to avoid key jams. Therefore, the efficiency of the QWERTY keyboard is low, and its purpose is not to maximize typing speed. In the following history, two important reforms were made to the layout and arrangement of keyboard keys, which greatly improved the speed of typing. Unfortunately, the QWERTY keyboard is still the mainstream of typing and computer input keyboards so far. The main reason is the power of habit. The cost of reform is very high, and for most people, the increase in speed does not have much substantial significance.
Whether to maintain the status quo or break the habit requires the designer to analyze the cost and benefit, which depends on the designer’s control of design trends and the depth of thinking, and also depends on the determination of the company and the grasp of the market. Both respect for habitual behavior and habit-breaking behavior can create good designs.
4. Subconscious scale
The subconscious is also called the unconscious. It was first proposed by Freud in his book “Psychoanalysis”. It refers to the desire that is suppressed deep in the heart without being aware of it. It is the ability that humans originally possessed but forgot to use. The composition of human consciousness is like an iceberg, only a part of it is exposed to the surface of the water, but most of what is hidden under the water has an impact on the rest. Freud believed that the subconscious mind is active. It exerts pressure and influence on people’s character and behavior. Some seemingly trivial things, such as dreams, verbal errors, and clerical errors, are all determined by the brain’s subconscious mind.
The understanding of the subconscious and its application in design are the content that needs to be focused on in behavior-centric design. As described by the iceberg theory, the vast majority of human potential consciousness has an impact on the surface consciousness and behavior. Similarly, the potential needs and subconscious behaviors of users provide a broad space for product design, which affects human subconscious behavior. Attention can create seemingly simple but intriguing products, thereby externalizing people’s subconscious cognition and arousing strong cognition. This deep and reflective cognition can create a deep and lasting user experience. In his speech “The Core of Consciousness”, Japanese designer Naoto Fukasawa analyzed the charm of subconscious attention in product design through a large number of product design examples.
On the left of the picture above is an iron railing. Why do people put this milk carton up? Because the square shape of the railing is the same as the shape of the milk carton, the matching of their forms stimulates people’s subconscious behavior. The picture above is the W11K mobile phone, from Naoto Fukasawa’s childhood memory. The potatoes that were peeled became slightly inclined. When he put the potatoes in the water to wash, the feeling of touching the edges and corners was impressive. In daily life, people often subconsciously keep touching products with such corners. Naoto Fukasawa advocates intuitive design, that is, the idea of ”without thought”. He believes that design should find inspiration in the unconscious. As a designer, he should discover more subconscious behaviors and needs in life than non-designers. When people are asked what kind of design they need, they will say that they don’t know, but one day they will say “Ah, this is this” when they see something. This is because their subconsciousness has not been stimulated before, and the designer is It is necessary to tap the subconscious behaviors and needs of users to design products. Everyone will create something or do some interesting behavior in life, but it can’t be transformed into design. People can live without design, but design will make people live better.
There are several points in behavior-centric design that need to be paid attention to:
1. Clarify the essential needs behind the behavior
Sorting out the essential needs behind the behavior often produces unexpected ideas, which can greatly expand the design ideas. When we improve the design of toothbrushes, we generally consider the shape, material and color of the toothbrush. But do we really need something like a toothbrush? We just need some kind of product to make the mouth clean. When we realize that the functional essence of toothbrushes is to clean the mouth, we will think about “what is the future of oral care?”, whether to continue the traditional “brushing”, or to adopt other behaviors, such as “spraying” and “chewing”. , The design idea will never be limited to the toothbrush itself, using the user research method of field research, oriented by the user’s essential needs, and based on user behavior, can produce new solutions.
2. Behavior sometimes needs to adapt to technology
In behavior-centered design, we recognize that human behavior needs to adapt to technology when necessary, and hope that product design is to effectively support users’ behavior and activities, rather than merely obeying users’ wishes.
People are indeed adapting to technology, and behavior-centric design not only understands this, but may also make good use of it. Many times you must first learn the tools and techniques, and then you will understand the activity to be performed, such as shooting. You must first understand the structure and characteristics of the gun to master the essence of the sport and become an excellent shooter. Scientists create technology, designers transform technology into products, and users adapt to technology—most of the time it is such a process. For example, from adapting to using a mouse to control a computer, to adapting to the way of using touch by hand, people have been changing their behavior and activities with the development of technology. It is hard to say that touch is the best way of human-computer interaction. This way in the future It will still change, and people will continue to adapt to technology.
Emphasizing behavior-centered design is not to deny user-centered thinking. Behavioral activities are related to people, so those systems that support behavioral activities usually also support people who engage in these activities well, so we can still use the knowledge and experience accumulated in human-centered design.
3. Design guiding behavior
Behavior-centered design does not require designers to observe behaviors and then design products to cater to people’s behaviors, although this is the case in most cases. Behavior-based activity-centered design also requires us to guide user behavior and activities through specific designs at the right time and at the right place to achieve a certain purpose. This is also a very different thinking between behavior center and user center. The guidance of design on behavior can be negative or positive. This guidance can be understood from both physical and psychological levels. Generally speaking, it mainly includes two methods of restraint and stimulation.
(1) Constraints
To avoid selection errors, the best way is to give users the only choice. Similarly, to guide user behavior can be through product manufacturing constraints. If the user can easily see and explain the restrictive factors on the physical structure, and the user knows which operations are reasonable before use, then misoperations can be effectively avoided. For example, in the design of a door handle, if the obvious handle is removed and the possibility of pulling is not provided, then the user can understand that the door is opened by pushing. Of course, many doors will be written with the words “push” or “pull”. It is also a design to help people understand, but at this time the use of this door requires two levels of understanding, which is not a very good design in itself, which not only increases the cost, but also increases the burden of user understanding. The design of locks and keys is very confusing at present. Some locks can only be opened by turning clockwise, while others are counterclockwise. The direction of rotation of the key alone creates a burden for users to understand. If you let go of the constraints , The user can open the lock no matter from which direction, or can let the user clarify the correct method of use, that is a good design.
Guiding user behavior through restrictive design is very common in the design of public spaces. For example, the design of the blind track provides a spatial constraint for the blind through the protrusion of the road surface, and guides the walking behavior of the blind. In fact, many normal people also use the blind way to walk under special circumstances. For example, when they are concentrating on texting, this may be a conscious behavior or a subconscious behavior. If the designer observes and understands this , May be able to create more designs.
The design of seats in public spaces has always been a topic of concern to designers. Everyone will find that the use of benches in parks or squares is very low. Generally, benches designed for three or four people are often only seated on by one person. Although many people wander around and cannot find a seat, they are unwilling to share the same bench. The others are sitting together, why? Because many people need private space, they will instinctively reject strangers. The traditional form of benches makes them feel too close to other people, although benches can provide enough space for three to four people to sit. If you change the horizontal arrangement of bench wood strips to vertical, or just add some small partitions to the benches, things will be greatly changed, and the utilization rate of benches of the same length will increase.
(2) Stimulus
As discussed earlier, “good-looking items are better to use”. The product shape, color, material, and even sound are used to stimulate users, stimulate thinking, and guide users to change their behavior in a predetermined direction.
Products that stimulate user psychology to change user behavior have a long history, and wind chimes are a good example. In the hot summer days, when there are no air conditioners and fans, people become irritable because of the heat and behave restlessly. In this case, people’s work efficiency and enthusiasm will be significantly reduced, and will cause more Mistakes. And the small wind chimes, through the light, transparent and bright appearance and the sweet and fresh sound, make people feel peaceful, and their behaviors are also more elegant and calm.
Shigeru Ban’s toilet paper roll is an excellent example of using design to guide user behavior. In fact, it contains guidance on two levels: restraint and stimulation. The core of the toilet paper roll designed by Shigeru Ban is quadrangular, so the toilet paper is rolled into a similar square shape. If it is an ordinary round paper tube, you can pull the paper smoothly when you use it, and when the toilet paper rolled in the quadrangular paper tube is drawn out, there will be a “click-” due to resistance. The sound of “click”, pulling up the paper is not so cheerful. This design is particularly long due to the inconvenience it causes. The resistance generated by the four-corner paper tube and the not-so-pleasant sound irritated users, aroused thinking, stimulated their potential awareness of resource saving, and turned the user’s behavior toward benign. Direction guide. In addition, the square paper tube saves the gap between the paper tubes, which can effectively reduce the manufacturing and transportation costs.
Design is human-centered. After understanding users and user behaviors, discovering and understanding design requirements, design problems are actually half solved. We will further deepen our understanding of users and user behaviors, and develop specific designs from all aspects of the improvement, so that the problem can be solved.
In the final analysis, the relationship between people and things occurs through behavior. In a certain sense, design is actually the design of behavior. When human behavior reflects the need to support objects, or when there is a certain degree of difference between the user’s behavior and the designer’s intention, it actually constitutes In order to realize a new relationship between people and products, the result of materializing this relationship is the emergence of new designs.
