SOCIETY

CENTRED
DESIGN
ISSUE #1
WINTER
EDITION
How can design use implicit memory and touch to inuence user behaviour?
Memory Touch Branding
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CONTENTS
1
Intro
3
Design & Society
7
Design & Implicit Memory
9
Branding & Implicit Memory
10
Touch & Memory
13
Touch & Emotional Branding
17
Conclusion
19
References
The social and physical environment that
humans develop in has been developed by
designers. Early experiences in this
environment then go on to shape adult
behaviour, even the ones that cannot be
recalled.
An environment that leads peoples behaviour
is currently almost irrelevant due to
predispositions about what elements actually
inuence user behaviour and it is a designers
responsibility to positively inuence behaviour
in such a way that it benets the collective
society and the individual user whilst allowing
the user to be unaware of the existence of
the designer.
Implicit memory is the deep subconscious
and emotional memory. It stores emotional
experiences that are integrated into the brain
and are able to inuence user behaviour
without any specic recall.
Design that integrates emotion may be able
to inuence user behaviour through implicit
memory and stimulate the nerve circuits in
the brain that are on standby to re.
The importance of touch in human
development is also essential. Everything that
is felt in the surrounding society can inuence
implicit learning and trigger emotional
responses.
When combined with branding, haptic
interaction can provide a tactile experience
that impacts on this emotional response to
provide deep emotional memories for the
user which could inuence their behaviour
towards a brand.
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Intro
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Social surroundings and social well-being are
directly related. Consumer led design is
responsive to consumer needs and is
pretty much held on a leash by the
consumers themselves however, is
consumer led design for or against society?
In 1964, Britain progressed from being a
consumer to becoming a consumerist
society. People essentially developed the
need to want rather than just need and this
had a major impact on the role of the
designer.
Designers had to cater for new wants by
creating and constantly stimulating new
human desires.
In the 1980s, the design boom enhanced
the consumerist society. Human desires
had further increased however, they were
only temporary and a constant ow of new
products were produced to satisfy this
temporary desire. This method of
satisfying temporary human desires was far
from solving any problems that society had
at the time.
By the way, consumer led design is still
around and is highly ubiquitous.
Consumers are encouraged to be
excessively materialistic and designers are
only beginning to touch the surface of
public and altruistic values however, more
often than not, these are engulfed by the
desire to constantly consume (Whitely, N.)
Design & Society
Some of the most inuential products of the
21st Century didnt come about through user
led innovation; they came about through
design holding the leash. Take Apple for
example, they have arguably created
continuous temporary desires for millions of
people that werent user led. Instead of
asking people what they wanted, they gave
them what they needed. In a way, the
company reverted back to the consumer
model and addressed the unspoken needs
of people and potentially society rather than
being led by the wants of people. IKEA also
has a similar model, their unspoken belief is
to show people the way ( Ideation. S. 2011).
Real design offering explicit and implicit
values far beyond its original function is being
avoided for seductively desirable products. If
designers are to move forward by trying to
inuence user behaviour for the benet of a
collective society then they must accept
responsibility for these issues.
Sustainable design is trending and it is
important however, sustainable behaviour
that has been inuenced by sustainable
design is arguably more important.
Good design should go far beyond its
immediate use and function and an
example of inuence beyond original
function would be the microwave. Its
immediate function is to heat up food very
quickly however; its unintentional inuence
is that families now join together for fewer
dinners. In this case, behaviour has been
mediated without being determined.
If user behaviour is to be inuenced to
show people the way, then the intended
user experience must be contemplated
and how the collective concern may conict
with the individual concern. Between these
two groups, there is not always a mutual
agreement therefore; it is the responsibility
of the designer to bridge this gap.
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To motivate a user to alter their behaviour, the
user experience will be an important factor.
Conditions need to be shaped for more
automatic responses and this is where
implicit design can provide desired
behaviour. A good example would be trafc
lights. When there are no trafc lights, the
automatic response of the user is to slow
down due to lack of visual information which
is the intended user experience.
Inuencing user behaviour can be
distinguished into 4 types: Coercive,
persuasive, seductive and decisive.
1. Create a perceivable barrier for undesired
behaviour (pain)
2. Make unacceptable user behaviour overt (shame)
3. Make the behavior a necessary activity to perform
to make use of the product function
4. Provide the user with arguments for specic
behaviour
5. Suggest actions
6. Trigger different motivations for the same
behaviour
7. Elicit emotions to trigger action tendencies
8. Activate physiological processes to induce
behaviour
9. Trigger human tendencies for automatic
behavioural responses
10. Create optimal conditions for specic behaviour
11. Make the desired behaviour the only possible
behaviour to perform
Design & Society
The diagram above was created by
Massachusetts Institute of Technology for an
article about Design for Socially Responsible
Behaviour. It shows the relationship between
design strategy and design inuence.
If design is categorised by user experience
such as above, then essentially the user is in
charge of the categorising. Different
users however, may not categorise a product
into the same inuential categories, therefore
strategies can be assigned to these
categories to show how designers can
trigger different psychological processes to
affect the user experience (Tromp, N.,
Hekkert, P, Verbeek, P. 2011).
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Figure 1. Four types of inuence and related
strategies. Tromp, N., Hekkert, P, Verbeek, P. (2011)
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Implicit memory affects behaviour without
conscious awareness and without strategic
effort to use memory (H.E. Schendan 2012).
This type of memory received little
attention until the 1960s and it allows
people to express stored information in the
absence of conscious awareness. Human
activities adaptively improve via experience
and this principle is based on every neural
connection in the brain having the potential to
change to reect experience (Paul J. Reber
2013).
Whenever actions are repeated such as tying
a shoe lace, implicit learning is taking place
and the biggest phenomenon in implicit
learning is repetition priming.
Design & Implicit
Memory
When a recently encountered stimulus is
re-encountered, it is processed differently,
usually more quickly
(Paul J. Reber 2013). This is because when
re-encountering, less neurons are required
to represent the same information.
Good designers understand aesthetics, they
understand function, they know about
psychology however, the next depth to which
we should go is to begin to understand the
brain itself, how it works and human
behaviour. The performance of the brain is
inuenced by the quality of the built
environment and society surrounding it. The
mind then adds information to what is
receives from the physical environment
during daily activities (Badger, E. 2012).
Imagine walking across a beach, this
experience includes memories and emotions
linked to previous experiences you have had
with similar environments throughout your
lifetime. Connections are regularly being
drawn between place and memory
without awareness and these emotional ties
are something designers should look to
expand on.
Imagine an Alzheimers facility that helped
its residents remember who they are just
through its architectural design or the way in
which the physical structure interacted with
other technology.
Neurobiologist Fred George along with
other scientists conrmed the process of
Adult Neurogenesis.
Instead of neurons in the brain decreasing
with age, our capacity to add new
memories and skills continuous to expand.
The speed in which these new cells are
added seems directly inuenced by the
quality of the interactions between people
and their environment therefore, changes
in the environment change the brain and
therefore change behaviour (Badger, E.
2012).
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The ability of humans to store small details of
implicit information allows the presumption
that exposure to brand names, images and
context affects their subsequent brand
choices however, these are affected by
different involvement conditions. The main
two conditions are stimulus involvement vs.
memory involvement.
During stimulus involvement, the users
choice of brand is assumed to be a rational
scrutiny of information where all of the
alternative choices along with all of their
attributes are present.
Branding & Implicit
Memory
In memory involvement, the consumer rarely
has such information available about the
alternative choices and therefore, tries to
consciously recall all of the relevant
information through memory (Seh-Woong
Chung and Katrin Szymanski 1997).
Most real life purchases are achieved using a
mixture of both types of involvement.
There is however one other scenario that
effects brand choice. It is essentially where
brand choice meets implicit memory. Imagine
yourself in a rush to purchase a specic type
of product, lets take a chocolate bar for
example.
You have no time for any stimulus or
explicit memory choices and instead you end
up choosing a product based on its familiarity
and perceptual uency.
This is linked to incidental exposure to brand
names using repetitive priming
unaccompanied by awareness throughout
your life.
Consumers rely on perceptual features of the
alternatives and essentially choose the brand
that catches their eye, especially in the rush
scenario. Goods that are frequently
purchased by consumers who are not
exactly highly motivated to choose
alternatives such as chocolate bars would
benet from a visually simple design that just
emphasises the brand name/ image in
context and this should allow for successful
priming (Katrin Szymanski 1997).
Touch & Memory
Social behaviour can also be inuenced by
tactile stimulation. Responses to touch
during day to day activities, positive or
negative, are inuenced by previous
experiences in early childhood.
This is achieved by receptors located in the
human skin that store information regarding
the situation where touch was generated
(Alberto Gallace, Charles Spence 2010).
The skin is constantly collecting information
about its surrounding environment. The
messages humans receive through their
skin in early life, even when just a foetus,
has a resonating effect on their behaviour
in later life. Imagine a baby exploring a toy,
where does that toy go?
The mouth of course.
Why?
Not for the taste but to actually feel the
object. (Lots of sensory neurons are
located in the skin of the upper lips and
tongue). The way an infant is touched or
touches in its rst few years or even hours
of life, inuences not only whether it
survives or not but also how it copes in later
life (Benjamin, B).
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So how does this link to design, society and
implicit memory?
The shapes and structures that are touched,
felt, seen and explored in early life most likely
inuences the choices that are made in later
life. When feeling objects, choosing brands
and socially interacting, implicit priming will
take place where perceptual familiarity will
step in and make certain choices for us,
especially in a certain rush scenario.
Research on visual objects has shown that
perceptual variables such as size, right/left,
reection, location, colour, surface, pattern,
contrast and illumination only impair explicit
(conscious) memory.
Touch & Memory
On the other hand, attributes such as an
objects shape and structure are sensitive to
implicit memory ( Ballesteros, S., Reales, J.,
Manga, D. (1999).
When testing shapes with people that were
temporarily visually impaired, symmetric
shapes were more accurately detected
compared to asymmetric shapes and
objects encoded structurally were judged as
symmetric or asymmetric faster than objects
that were encoded semantically. On the other
hand, semantic encoding allowed observers
to recognise objects more accurately
compared to speed ( Ballesteros, S., Reales,
J., Manga, D. (1999).
What this test shows is that when touch is
used to explore an object, kinaesthetic
information is instantly created. This
information then taps into implicit
representations of objects from past
experiences.
Haptic exploration combined with
implicit memory seems to rely on structure
and shape therefore; symmetric shapes
could inuence user behaviour to choose a
brand when there is no time for stimulus or
conscious memory involvement. It is
important to note however that haptic
perception does not allow for the same speed
of processing information as visual
perception (Sandra Littel, Ulrich R. Orth,
2013).
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A persons emotional response to a product
is inuenced by their tactile experience with
it. If a brand can create a unique feel for its
products, then it can create a unique tactile
memory for its consumers through the feel of
its products.
This could be achieved through sensory
marketing. This is when a consumers senses
become engaged and this affects their
behaviour. Sensory aspects such as:
emotions, memories, perception,
preferences, choices and consumption are all
effected by the feel of products and
therefore, touch is perhaps the most
underutilized sense in the design industry.
Touch & Emotional
Branding
Research has shown that the choices
consumers make are affected by touch
where warmth for example signalises
sympathy/ liking whereas heavy objects
symbolise something more serious and
competent. (Think of the current trend for
thicker business cards) (Design and Paper.
2013).
When it comes to packaging, consumers
perceive congruent designs more positively
for competence, sophistication and quality
however; a brand is perceived more exciting
when haptic cues are paired with low
congruence visuals.
Congruence seems to facilitate uency and
uency relates to aesthetic appeal (Sandra
Littel, Ulrich R. Orth, (2013). When
congruency is linked to price, consumers
expect higher prices for higher congruency.
Tactile sense is the most immediate sense.
(Think of a gentle lovers touch). It enables
humans to wrap their consciousness around
their physical environment and as brand
recognition begins to decline, the use of touch
increases. Consumers are more likely to feel
a product to aid in its evaluation in order to
compensate for an absence of information
from the brand. As a result, the only snippets
of data that can be recalled are those that are
consciously plucked from memory however,
if there is no time for this, then the reliance
on implicit perceptual familiarities increases.
(Gobe, M. (2009).
Consumers want to imagine how they will
interact and experience a product before
committing to a purchase therefore;
haptics are utilized to achieve this. There
is a problem however and that problem is
current packaging design. Any secondary
packaging around a product should be
designed to allow the user to feel and
imagine using the product before purchase.
Many brands either choose not to do this or
they simply have no idea of the great
opportunity that they are missing.
Design should be made worth working
with. Societies taste in everything varies
from decade to decade, its the same for
design and this needs to be catered for.
Design trends need to match trends in
society however; this needs to be highly
localised, relevant and responsive to their
environments.
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A comprehensive view has to be nurtured
about the value system that has been
created for society. This article was not a blue
print for the future of design but instead a
critique of its current values and
considered depths to which responsible
designers should go.
The social implications of a design can never
be fully predicted however, this is not an
excuse for the designer to hide behind. There
is a responsibility and this entails shaping
society by translating the collective concern
with the individual one.
Could this mean a shift from user
centred design to a society centred one?
Conclusion
Could there be joint degree programs in
the future offering both design and
neuroscience?
It doesnt seem too far off.
A sensory experience is essential for the
development of humans and society. It will
provoke the most efcient brain responses
and this will enable humans to direct their
energy more efciently towards tasks that
they were naturally designed to do such as to
be curious, learn, develop and create.
In a tactile deprived world encouraged by the
internet, brands that cater to touch could be
future successes by translating their identities
into the feel of their products.
Design needs to reect the key values of its
time, and currently those values are to be
responsive to peoples emotional needs and
desires for tactile pleasure.
The Paperazzo haptic award was created
because they consider haptic communi-
cation the only chance to really emotionally
touch people in a world full of sensory
overload.
Brands will begin to use neuroscience to
learn how to interact with their communities
more effectively. This will create a trend for
neurobusiness however, these brands will
need to employ people or outsource skills
that understand how to use neural
information and apply it successfully into
projects that benet society.
By shaping the conditions of the user
experience, a brand could potentially
re-shape the brain. (Errens, J. 2013).
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References
Paul J. Reber, The neural basis of implicit learning and memory: A review of neuropsychological and neuroimaging
research, Neuropsychologia, Volume 51, Issue 10, August 2013
Sandra Littel, Ulrich R. Orth, (2013) Effects of package visuals and haptics on brand
evaluations, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 47 Iss: 1/2, pp.198 - 217
Tromp, N., Hekkert, P, Verbeek, P. (2011) Design for Socially Responsible Behaviour: A
classication of inuence based on intended user experience. Design Issues: Volume 27,
Number 3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [online] Available at:
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/DESI_a_00087
Whitely, N. (1993) Design for society. Reaktion Books Ltd.
Gallace, A. Spence, C. The science of interpersonal touch: An overview, Neuroscience &
Biobehavioral Reviews, Volume 34, Issue 2, February 2010, Pages 246-259
Badger, E. 2012. Corridors of the Mind - The Science of Society - Pacic Standard: The Science of Society.
[online] Available at: http://www.psmag.com/culture/corridors-of-the-mind-49051/
Ballesteros, S., Reales, J., Manga, D. (1999) Implicit and explicit memory for
Familiar and novel objects presented to touch, [online] Available at: http://www.psicothema.com/
pdf/328.pdf
Benjamin, B. The Primacy of Human Touch, Issue2, [online] Available at:
http://www.benbenjamin.net/pdfs/Issue2.pdf
Chung, S., Szymanski, K. (1997) ,Effects of Brand Name Exposure on Brand Choices: an Implicit Memory
Perspective, in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 24, eds. Merrie Brucks and
Deborah J. MacInnis, Provo, UT : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 288-294
Design and Paper. 2013. Feel The Brand Haptic Communication and Sensory Marketing. [online] Available
at: http://www.designandpaper.com/?p=3199
Errens, J. 2013. Beer, European culture and haptic design. [online] Available at:
http://brandperfect.org/index.php/knowledge/articles/499-beer-european-culture-and-haptic-
design-new-fonts
Gobe, M. (2009) Emotional Branding
H.E. Schendan, Implicit Memory, In Encyclopedia of Human Behavior (Second Edition), edited by V.S.
Ramachandran, Academic Press, San Diego, 2012
Ideation. S. (2011) User-Led Innovation Cant Create Breakthroughs; Just Ask Apple and Ikea. [online]
Available at: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663220/user-led-innovation-cant-create-break-
throughs-just-ask-apple-and-ikea
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