Are You a Pinball?

Image by Marty.FM via Flickr

I’ve pointed you to Dan Lockton’s Architectures of Control blog before, I’ll do it again…

He’s been working on a design model he calls Design With Intent. And, now, he’s trying to break down users into three categories. They are (provisionally):

* Pinballs: “pretty much, very simple components of your system, to be shunted and pushed and pulled around by what you design, whether it’s physical or digital architecture”

* Shortcut users: “primarily interested in getting things done in the easiest way possible, with the least effort”

* Thoughtful users: “assumed to think about what they are doing, and why, analytically: open to being persuaded through reasoned arguments about why some behaviours are better than others, maybe motivating them to change their attitudes about a subject as a precursor to changing their behaviour mindfully”

These are three very different types of users (though, I think any given person could be any one of these types at different times and in performing different tasks).

For instance, how would you get these three types of users to, say, use less gasoline? The pinball, you might have to give a smaller gas tank, making it harder for him or her to drive long distances — or force him or her to drive a hybrid so that unchanged driving behavior would lead to lower fuel consumption. The shortcut user, depending on his or her situation, could be offered an alternative — public transportation, for instance (if it were quicker and cheaper, he or she might take it). Alternately, I suppose, the shortcut user could be offered a tax incentive to drive a more fuel efficient car or penalized for excessive driving with an increased gas tax; if I understand the model, this would constitute the user trying to get something done with the least effort (or, in this case, money). The thoughtful user could be given information on the MPG of various vehicles at the sale point, or convinced to live in a city, or convinced that telecommuting is better for the environment.

We all like to think we’re “thoughtful users,” of course. My suspicion, though, is that most of the time we’re pinballs. On our better days, we think hard enough to take shortcuts. On our best day, perhaps we actually think through all the implications of our various actions.

So, perhaps, in cases like a car purchase — where our disposition on a single day will affect our effect on the environment for years to come — the question for the libertarian paternalist is how to make a pinball think. For the pure paternalist, the question is how to whack the ball where you want it.