In my recent series of posts on design, I reviewed an article on transformation design. One of the openings explored by this article is that the practice of design is on the cusp of a major shift - from design as design of things to design as design of behaviors.
designers need to have interpretations of how behavior
is generated that enable them to shift behaviors.
One prevalent interpretation of how behavior is generated is that we act in ways to avoid pain and experience pleasure. This is the interpretation proposed by behavioral psychologists B. F. Skinner and J. B. Watson. James Flaherty calls this the "amoeba theory" of behavior referring to an amoeba's tendency to move away from sharp pins and toward sugar as discovered with a microscope.
For sure, there is some truth to the behavioral model of action. After all, most of us don't touch hot stove burners for enjoyment and fun. However, there are many times in life when we purposely act in a way that we know will generate pain. For example, childbirth, marathons, triathlons, war, etc. So the source of human behavior must be more complex than this "pleasure principle" theory can explain.
Another interpretation is that human being are rational desiring beings that act to satisfy their desires. Going back to Descartes and the Enlightenment, we've taken ourselves to be rational beings that operate by reason and desire. From this viewpoint, we use our reason to analyze our feelings into desires and then we use our rationality to invent ways to satisfy our desires through our behavior.
Just as with the pleasure principle theory, the rational theory of behavior is certainly at least partly true. We feel the pangs of hunger, declare ourselves hungry and desiring food, and find some food to eat (like this easy to desire cake to the left). This interpretation of human behavior has given rise to our approaches to marketing and sales. For decades now, marketers and sales people have understood their job as the manufacturing of new desires which their products will satisfy.
However, the rational interpretation is a rather impoverished and mechanistic view of human beings and the lives we live. Are we really only machines for desiring and satisfying our desires? Is that enough to make human life worth living? Is that what makes our work worth doing – satisfying our desires?
The failure of most New Year's resolutions is all the evidence we need that the rational interpretation is also incomplete and inadequate. If only our behavior were completely rational, then no one would have difficulty making the changes in their life. And yet many people find this very very hard to do.
or do we sometimes act to
generate something else?
So far we've looked at two interpretations of human behavior: the pleasure principle and rationality. How well do either of these interpretations help designers generate new behaviors?
More in the next post ...
Take care,
-Steve
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