Behavioural Patterns in spaces

Architecture, urbanism, design and behaviour: a brief review by Dan Lockton [email protected]

Continuing the meta-auto-behaviour-change effort started here, I’m publishing a few extracts from my PhD thesis as I write it up (mostly from the literature review, and before any rigorous editing) as blog posts over the next few months. The idea of how architecture can be used to influence behaviour was central to this blog when it started, and so it’s pleasing to revisit it, even if makes me realise how little I still know. ―There is no doubt whatever about the influence of architecture and structure upon human character and action. We make our buildings and afterwards they make us. They regulate the course of our lives.‖ Winston Churchill, addressing the English Architectural Association, 1924 In designing and constructing environments in which people live and work, architects and planners are necessarily involved in influencing human behaviour. While Sommer (1969, p.3) asserted that the architect ―in his training and practice, learns to look at buildings without people in them,‖ it is clear that from, for example, Howard‘s Garden Cities of To-morrow (1902), through Le Corbusier‘s Ville

Contemporaine and La Ville radieuse, to the Smithsons‘ ‗Streets in the sky‘, there has been a long-standing thread of recognition that the way people live their lives is directly linked to the designed environments in which they live. Whether the explicit intention to influence behaviour drives the design process—architectural determinism (Broady, 1966: see future blog post ‗POSIWID and determinism‘)—or whether the behaviour consequences of design decisions are only revealed and considered as part of a post-occupancy evaluation (e.g. Zeisel, 2006) or by social scientists or psychologists studying the impact of a development, there are links between the design of the built environment and our behaviour, both individually and socially. Where there is an explicit intention to influence behaviour, the intended behaviours could relate (for example) to directing people for strategic reasons, or providing a particular ‗experience‘, or for health and safety reasons, but they are often focused on influencing social interaction. Hillier et al (1987, p.233) find that ―spatial layout in itself generates a field of probabilistic encounter, with structural properties that vary with the syntax of the layout.‖ Ittelson et al (1974, p.358) suggest that ―All buildings imply at least some form of social activity stemming from both their intended function and the random encounters they may generate. The arrangement of partitions, rooms, doors, windows, and hallways serves to encourage or hinder communication and, to this extent, affects social interaction. This can occur at any number of levels and the designer is clearly in control to the degree that he plans the contact points and lanes of access where people come together. He might also, although with perhaps less assurance, decide on the desirability of such contact.‖ ―Designers often aspire to do more than simply create buildings that are new, functional and attractive—they promise that a new environment will change behaviours and attitudes‖ (Marmot, 2002, p.252). Where architects expressly announce their intentions and ability to influence behaviour, such as in Danish firm 3XN‘s exhibition and book Mind Your Behaviour (3XN, 2010), the behaviours intended and techniques used can range from broad, high-level aspirational strategies such as communal areas ―creating the potential for involvement, interaction and knowledge sharing‖ in a workplace (3XN, 2010) to specific tactics, such as Frank Lloyd Wright‘s occasional use of ―very confining corridors‖ for people to walk along ―so that when they entered an open space the openness and light would enhance their experience‖ (Ittelson et al, 1974, p.346). An appreciation of both broad strategies and specific tactics is valuable: from the perspective of a designer whose agency may only extend to redesign of certain elements of a space, product or interface, it is the specific tactical techniques which are likely to be the most immediately applicable, but the broader guiding strategies can help set the vision in the first place. For example, the ‗conditions for city diversity‘ outlined by Jacobs (1961)—broad strategies for understanding aspects of urban behaviour—have influenced generations of urbanists. Following the influence of Christopher Alexander (Alexander et al, 1975, 1977; Alexander, 1979), such strategies and tactics may be expressed architecturally in terms of patterns, which describe ―a problem which occurs over and over again in

our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice‖ (Alexander et al, 1977). The concept of patterns, and Alexander et al‘s A Pattern Language (1977) will be examined in detail in a future thesis extract, for their form, philosophy and impact, but, as an example, it is worth drawing out a few of the patterns which actually address directly influencing behaviour architecturally (Table 1). Among others, Frederick (2007) and Day (2002) both also outline a range of architectural patterns, some with similarities to Alexander et al‘s, including some specifically relating to influencing behaviour.

Two examples of pattern 53? Chepstow, Monmouthshire (restored 1524) and

Philips High Tech Campus, Eindhoven (c.2000)

Table 1. Summaries of a few of Alexander et al’s patterns (1977) which specifically address influencing behaviour, simplified into ‘ends’ and ‘means’. Title

End

Activity 30 nodes

To ―create concentrations of people in a community‖

Main 53 gateways

To influence inhabitants of a part of a town to identify it as a distinct entity

Means

―Facilities must be grouped densely round

very small public squares which can function as nodes—with all pedestrian movement in the community organized to pass through these nodes‖ ―Mark every boundary in the city which has important human meaning—the boundary of a building cluster, a neighborhood, a precinct—by great gateways where the major entering paths cross the boundary‖ ―Lay out common land, paths, gardens and bridges so that groups of at least 64 households are connected by a swath of land that does not cross traffic. Establish this land as the connected play space for the children in these households‖

To ―support the formation of Connected spontaneous play 68 play groups‖ for children To help ―all the members of the family… to accept, ―Make the kitchen bigger than usual, big fully, the fact that enough to include the ‗family room‘ space, taking care of and place it near the center of the commons, themselves not so far back in the house as an ordinary by cookingis as kitchen. Make it large enough to hold a good much a part of life as table and chairs, some soft and some hard, taking care of with counters and stove and sink around the Farmhouse themselves edge of the room; and make it a bright and 139 kitchen by eating‖ comfortable room‖ ―Make at least 70 per cent of all meeting To encourage smaller group rooms really small—for 12 people or less. Small meetings, which Locate them in the most public parts of the meeting encourage people to building, evenly scattered among the 151 rooms contribute and make workplaces‖

their point of view heard

Layout of physical elements Practically, most architectural patterns for influencing behaviour involve, in one way or another, the physical arrangement of building elements—inside or outside—or a change in material properties. In each case, there is the possibility of changing people‘s perceptions of what behaviour is possible or appropriate, and the possibility of actually forcing some behaviour to occur or not occur (see future article ‗Affordances, constraints and choice architecture‘). These are not independent alternatives: the perception that some behaviour is possible or impossible can be a result of learning ‗the hard way‘ in the past.

Barrier on the London Underground (Baker Street, from memory), preventing people running down stairs directly onto the track. Most stairs don‟t open straight onto the platform like this. The physical arrangement of elements can be broken down into different aspects of positioning and layout—putting elements in particular places to encourage or discourage people‘s interaction with them, putting them in people‘s way to prevent access to somewhere, putting them either side of people to channel or direct them in a particular way (e.g. staggered pedestrian crossings which aim to direct pedestrians to face oncoming traffic; Department for Transport, 1995), hiding them to remove the perception that they are there, splitting elements up or combining them so that they can be used by different numbers of people at once, or angling them so that some actions are easier than others (termed slanty design by Beale (2007), both physically and in metaphorical application in interfaces). Urbanists such as Whyte (1980) have catalogued, in colourful, intricate detail the effects that the layouts and

features of built environments have on people‘s behaviour—why some areas become popular, others not so, with whom, and why, with recommendations for how to improve things, in contrast to work such as Goffman (1963) which focuses on the social contexts of public behaviour in urban environments. The layouts of shops, hotels, casinos and theme parks, especially larger developments where there is scope to plan more ambitiously, can also make use of multiple aspects of positioning and layout to influence and control shoppers‘ paths— Stenebo (2010) discusses IKEA‘s carefully planned (and continually refined) ―fairyland of adventures‖ which routes visitors through the store; Shearing and Stenning (1984) examine how Disney World embeds ―[c]ontrol strategies in both environmental features and structural relations,‖ many to do with positioning of physical features; while Underhill (1999, 2004), formerly one of Whyte‘s students, describes how his company, Envirosell, uses observation approach to understand and redesign shopping behaviour across a wide range of store types and shopping malls themselves, much of which comes down to intelligently repositioning elements such as mirrors, basket stacks, signage and seating. Poundstone (2010) cites a study by Sorensen Associates which used active RFID tags fitted to shopping trolleys to determine that US shoppers taking an anticlockwise route around supermarkets spend on average $2.00 more per trip; the suggestion is that stores with the entrance on the right will be more likely to prompt this anticlockwise movement. Changes in material properties can involve drawing attention to particular behaviour (e.g. rumble strips on a road to encourage drivers to slow down: Harvey, 1992), or making it more or less comfortable to do an activity (e.g., as Katyal (2002, p.1043) notes, ―fast food restaurants use hard chairs that quickly grow uncomfortable so that customers rapidly turn over‖). The application of some of these physical positioning and layout and material property ideas to a particular social issue is described in the blog post ‗Towards a Design with Intent method v.0.1′ from 2008.

Often combining positioning and material properties, the effect of different seating types and layouts on behaviour comprises a significant area of study in itself, with, for example, work by Steinzor (1950), Hearn (1957), Sommer (1969) and Koneya (1976) helping to establish patterns of likely interaction between people occurring with arrangements of chairs around tables, and overall room layouts in classrooms and mental hospitals. Sommer‘s design intervention in the dayroom of an elderly ladies‘ ward at a state hospital in Canada—by reducing the number of couches around the walls and adding tables and chairs in the centre of the room, with flowers and magazines—led to major increases in the amount of conversation and interaction between residents.

Osmond (1959) introduced the terms sociofugal and sociopetal to describe spaces which drive people apart and together, respectively; Sommer (1969, 1974) notes that airports are often among the most sociofugal spaces, largely because of the fixed, single-direction seating and ―sterile‖ decor: ―Many other buildings… such as mental hospitals and jails, also discourage contact between people, but none does this as effectively as the airport… In practice the long corridors and the cold, bare waiting areas of the typical airport are more sociofugal than the isolation wing of the state penitentiary.‖ (Sommer, 1974: p.72). Hall‘s concept of proxemics (e.g. Hall, 1966) provides a treatment of personal space, its effects on behaviour, and its significance in different physical spaces as well as in different cultures. The different ‗distance zones‘ identified by Hall—intimate, personal, social and public—have implications for the design process: ―If one looks at human beings in the way that the early slave traders did, conceiving of their space requirements simply in terms of the limits of the body, one pays very little attention to the effects of crowding. If, however, one sees man surrounded by a series of invisible bubbles which have measurable dimensions, architecture can be seen in a new light. It is then possible to conceive that people can be cramped by the spaces in which they have to live and work. They may find themselves forced into behavior, relationships or emotional outlets that are overly stressful‖ (Hall, 1966, p.129).

Emergence, desire lines and predicting behaviour ―All buildings are predictions. All predictions are wrong‖. Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn, 1994, p. 178. ―I built skyscrapers for people to live in there and now they messed them up— disgusting‖. Ernő Goldfinger, commenting on tabloid reports of violent crime in the Trellick Tower, above (quoted in Open University, 2001)

In How Buildings Learn, Stewart Brand (1994) contrasts ‗Low Road‘ architecture designed to permit adaptation by users, with visionary ‗High Road‘ architectural plans which seek to define at the design stage the future behaviour and lifestyles of buildings‘ users. High Road plans often ‗fail‘ in this sense, unable to anticipate future needs or usage patterns (as Ittelson et al (1974, p. 357) put it, ―we are all living in the relics of the past‖), while Low Road architecture can cope with changing requirements, appropriation (Salovaara, 2008) and emergent behaviour. The stereotype of architect as a ‗High Road‘ planner—perhaps living in the penthouse at the top of the tower block he has designed—resonates in both fact (e.g. Ernő Goldfinger‘s comment quoted above) and fiction (e.g. Anthony Royal in J.G. Ballard‘s High Rise (1975).* The parallels of the the High/Low Road approaches with the design and use of other systems—in particular software, but perhaps also economic and political systems in general—are evident throughout Brand‘s book, although never explicitly stated as such; there are also parallels in planning at a level above that of buildings themselves, such as the clash in New York (Flint, 2009) between the bottom-up approach to urbanism favoured by Jacobs (1961) and the top-down approach of Robert Moses. While it will unfortunately not be considered in detail in this thesis, the emerging power of ubiquitous computing, when integrated intelligently into physical space—‖city as operating system‖ (Gittins, 2007)—could permit a kind of Low Road ‗read/write urbanism‘ (Greenfield & Shepard, 2007) in which the ‗city users‘ themselves are able to augment and alter the meanings, affordances and even fabrics of their surroundings.

A desire path or cowpath is forming across this grass area in the John Crank memorial garden, Brunel University…

One emergent behaviour-related concept arising from architecture and planning which has also found application in human-computer interaction is the idea of desire lines, desire paths or cowpaths. The usual current use of the term (often attributed, although apparently in error, to Bachelard‘s The Poetics of Space (1964)) is to describe paths worn by pedestrians across spaces such as parks, between buildings or to avoid obstacles—―the foot-worn paths that sometimes appear in a landscape over time‖ (Mathes, 2004) and which become self-reinforcing as subsequent generations of pedestrians follow what becomes an obvious path. Throgmorton & Eckstein (2000) also discuss Chicago transportation engineers‘ use of ‗desire lines‘ to describe maps of straight-line origin-to-destination journeys across the city, in the process revealing assumptions about the public‘s ‗desire‘ to undertake these journeys. In either sense, desire lines (along with use-marks (Burns, 2007)) could perhaps, using economic terminology, be seen as a form of revealed user preference (Beshears et al, 2008) or at least revealed choice, with a substantial normative quality. As such, there is potential for observing the formation of desire lines and then ‗codifying‘ them in order to provide paths that users actually need, rather than what is assumed they will need. As Myhill (2004) puts it, ―[a]n optimal way to design pathways in accordance with natural human behaviour, is to not design them at all. Simply plant grass seed and let the erosion inform you about where the paths need to be. Stories abound of university campuses being constructed without any pathways to them.‖ Myhill goes on to suggest that companies which apply this idea in the design of goods and services, designing systems to permit desire lines to emerge and then paying attention to them, will succeed in a process of ‗Normanian Natural Selection‘ (after Don Norman‘s work).

…whereas this one has been „paved‟ after pedestrians wore a definite path.

In human-computer interaction, this principle has become known as ‗Pave the cowpaths‘—―look where the paths are already being formed by behavior and then formalize them, rather than creating some kind of idealized path structure that ignores history and tradition and human nature and geometry and ergonomics and common sense‖ (Crumlish & Malone, 2009, p.17). Particularly with websites, analytics software can take the place of the worn grass, and in the process reveal extra data such as demographic information about users, and more about their actual desires or intention in engaging in the process (e.g. Google is a ―database of intentions‖, according to Battelle (2003)). This allows clustering of behaviour paths and even investigation of users‘ mental models of site structure. The counterargument is that blindly paving cowpaths can enshrine inefficient behaviours in the longer-term, locking users and organisations into particular ways of doing things which were never optimal in the first place (Arace, 2006)—form freezing function, to paraphrase Stewart Brand (1994, p.157). From the point of view of influencing behaviour rather than simply reflecting it, the principle of paving the cowpaths could be applied strategically: identify the desire lines and paths of particular users—perhaps a group which is already performing the desired behaviour—and then, by formalising this, making it easier or more salient or in some way obviously normative, encourage other users to follow suit. *It is worth differentiating, though, between a visionary approach which considers human behaviour and sets out to change it, and the approach attributed to some other treatments of the „visionary architect‟ personality, in which human behaviour is simply ignored or relegated as being secondary to the vision of the building itself. In fiction, Ayn Rand‟s Howard Roark (in The Fountainhead, 1943) is perhaps an archetype; Sommer‟s architect who “learns to look at buildings without people in them” quoted above is perhaps based on real instances of this approach.

The ticket hall of Stratford City railway station, London, with Westfield logo and the Olympic Athletes‟ Village under construction in the background, March 2010

The politics of architecture, power and control ―I was aware that I could be watched from above…and that it was possible to go much higher—to become one of the watchers—but I didn‘t see how it could be done. The architecture embodied a political message: There are people higher than you, and they can watch you, follow you—and, theoretically, you can join them, become one of them. Unfortunately you don‘t know how.‖ Geoff Manaugh, The BLDG BLOG Book (2009, p.17) Architecture can serve as a regulatory force (Shah and Kesan, 2007) and has been used to influence and control public behaviour through embodying power in a number of ways. Direct use of architecture to change the economic or demographic make-up of areas ranges from policies of shopping centres and Business Improvement Districts to shift the social class of visitors to an area* (Minton, 2009), to Depression-era Tennessee Valley Authority‘s mandate to revitalise impoverished areas through massive development programmes (Culvahouse, 2007), to government-driven use of settlements to occupy or colonise territories. In this latter context, Segal and Weizman (2003, p. 19), referring to Israel, comment that ―[i]n an environment where architecture and planning are systematically instrumentalized… planning decisions do not often follow criteria of economic sustainability, ecology or efficiency of services, but are rather employed to serve strategic and political agendas‖. Vale (2008) discusses Pierre Charles L‘Enfant‘s 1791 layout of Washington, DC, often seen as physically reifying the ‗separation of powers‘ principle contained in the US Constitution, by separating the buildings housing the branches of government, although Vale notes that L‘Enfant does not explicitly mention this as his intention. Along perhaps similar lines, Stewart Brand (1994, p.3) mentions Churchill‘s 1943 request that ―the bomb-damaged Parliament be rebuilt exactly as it was before… It was to the good, he insisted, that the [House of Commons] Chamber was too small to seat all the members (so great occasions were standing-room occasions), and that its shape forced members to sit on either one side or the other, unambiguously of one party or the other.‖ Indeed, Churchill‘s ‗crossing the floor‘ in 1904 (and again in the 1920s) perhaps relied on the physical layout of the chamber for its impact. Ittelson et al (1974, p.139) also note that ―[t]he eight months of deliberations in 1969, preceding the Paris Peace Talks, were largely centered on the issue of the shape of the table to be used in the negotiations.‖ Internal building layouts are analysed for their ‗power‘ implications by Dovey (2008), who uses a system of ‗space syntax analysis‘ developed by Hillier and Hanson (1984) to examine diverse buildings such as Albert Speer‘s Berlin Chancellery, the Forbidden City of Beijing, and the Metro Centre shopping mall in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. One recurring pattern in political buildings is the intentional use of something similar to what Alexander et al (1977, p.610), in a different context, call ‗intimacy of gradient‘—a ―diplomatic promenade‖ (Dovey, 2008, p. 65) selectively revealing a sequence of anterooms to visitors, their permitted progress

through the structure (the deepest level being the president or monarch‘s private study) calculated both to reflect their status and instil the requisite level of awe. Nicoletta (2003) looks at the use of architecture to exert social control in Shaker dwelling houses, e.g. the use of separate entrances and staircases for men and women, and the lack of routes through the house which did not result in observation by other members of the family. City layouts have been used strategically to try to prevent disorder and make it easier to put down. Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann‘s ―militaristically planned Paris‖ (Hatherley, 2008, p. 11), remodelled for Louis Napoléon (later Napoléon III) after 1848, had ―[t]he true goal of…secur[ing] the city against civil war. He wanted to make the erection of barricades in Paris impossible for all time… Widening the streets is designed to make the erection of barricades impossible, and new streets are to furnish the shortest route between the barracks and the workers‘ districts.‖ (Benjamin, 1935/1999, p. 12). The Haussmann project also involved ―the planning of straight avenues as a method of crowd control (artillery could fire down them at barricaded masses)‖ (Rykwert, 2000, p.91). Scott (1998, p.59) likens the ―logic behind the reconstruction of Paris‖ to the process of transforming old-growth forests into ―scientific forests designed for unitary fiscal management‖—part of which involves, as Scott emphasies throughout his book Seeing Like a State, the idea of making a space (and the people in it) legible to whoever is in power by removing or simplifying inconsistencies, anomalies and local practices to ‗tame‘ potentially dangerous ceintures sauvages. Legibility affords measurement and standardisation, and these (fromDomesday Book to the standardisation of surnames, to biometric IDs) afford modelling, regulation and control. Drawing on Hacking (1990), Scott (1998, p.92) suggests that it is ―but a small step from a simplified description of society to a design and manipulation of society, with improvement in mind. If one could reshape nature to design a more suitable forest, why not reshape society to create a more suitable population?‖ Returning to the specifics of architectural schemes, New York ‗master builder‘ Robert Moses‘ low parkway bridges on Long Island are often mentioned in a similar vein to Haussmann‘s Paris (Caro, 1975; Winner, 1986). These had the effect of preventing buses (and by implication poorer people, often minorities) using the parkways to visit the Jones Beach State Park—another of Moses‘ projects. However, Joerges (1999) questions details of the intentionality involved, suggesting that the story as presented by Winner is more of a parable (Gillespie, 2007, p. 72) about the embodiment of politics in artefacts—an exhortation to recognise that ―specific features in the design or arrangement of a device or system could provide a convenient means of establishing patterns of power and authority in a given setting,‖ (Winner, 1986)—than a real example of architecture being used intentionally to discriminate against certain groups (see also the forthcoming blog post ‗POSIWID and determinism‘). Nevertheless, Flint (2009, p.44) suggests in his book on Jane Jacobs‘ battles with Moses over New York planning, that, at least in his earlier years, ―Moses strove to model himself after Baron Haussmann‖.

*Minton (2009, p.45) interviews a Business Improvement District manager in the UK who tells her explicitly that “High margins come with ABC1s, low margins with C2DEs. My job is to create an environment which will bring in more ABC1s.”

„Pig ear‟ skate stoppers near City Hall, London

Disciplinary architecture and design against crime ―Where the homeless are ejected from business and retail areas by such measures as curved bus benches, window-ledge spikes and doorway sprinkler systems, so skaters encounter rough-textured surfaces, spikes and bumps added to handrails, blocks of concrete placed at the foot of banks, chains across ditches and steps, and new, unridable surfaces such as gravel and sand.‖ Iain Borden, Skateboarding, Space and the City (2001, p.254) Perhaps difficult to extract from the political dimension of architecture is the notion ofdisciplinary architecture, covering everything from designed measures such as anti-homeless park benches to prison design, via Jeremy Bentham‘s Panopticon (1787) and Foucault‘s ‗technologies of punishment‘ (1977). Howell (2001) notes that this is often framed as ‗defending‘ the general public against ‗undesirable‘ behaviour by other members of the public—in this particular case again, measures to make skateboarding more difficult. Similar measures may be installed by members of the public to defend their own properties: Flusty (1997, p. 48) classifies ―five species‖ of ―interdictory spaces—spaces designed to intercept and repel or filter would-be users‖, many of which occur frequently in residential contexts as well as public spaces: stealthy space—areas which have been deliberately concealed from general view; slippery space—spaces with no apparent means of approach; crusty space—space that cannot be accessed because of obstructions; prickly space—space which cannot be occupied comfortably due to measures inhibiting walking, sitting or standing; and jittery space—space which is

constantly under surveillance (or threatened surveillance). Some of the ways of achieving these species of space will be familiar from other examples discussed in this thesis, particularly prickly space.

Prikka strips, a popular brand of add-on DIY plastic spikes for your wall. ‗Design against crime‘ has recently received significant attention in the UK via initiatives such as the Design Against Crime Research Centre at Central Saint Martins (e.g. Ekblom, 1997; Gamman & Pascoe, 2004; Gamman & Thorpe, 2007) whose work has addressed some high-profile areas such as bicycle theft and bag theft in restaurants and bars (AHRC, 2008) through innovative product design interventions taking account of the environmental contexts in which crimes occur. While the focus may be on ‗better‘ products (as was a much earlier programme by the Design Council focusing on design against vandalism (Sykes, 1979)), the parallel field of crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) has developed from the early 1970s to date, focusing on redesigning architectural elements to discourage particular behaviours. In the UK, compliance with an Association of Chief Police Officers‘ CPTED initiative, ‗Secured by Design‘—run by ACPO Crime Prevention Initiatives Ltd—has, according to Minton (2009, p.71), become a condition of planning permission for some large residential developments, leading to the situation where new estates are required to be ―surrounded by walls with sharp steel pins or broken glass on top of them, CCTV and only one gate into the estate.‖ Crowe (2000) provides a practical guide to implementing CPTED with diagrams and ‗design directives‘ for a wide variety of spaces, including schools and student residences. Poyner (1983), in a guide which is effectively A Pattern Language for CPTED, outlines 31 patterns addressing different types of crime in different settings—for example, ―4.7 Access to rear of house: There should be no open access from the front to the rear of a house. Access might be restricted to full-height locked gates,‖ addresses burglary and break-ins. Many of Poyner‘s patterns make use of the principle of natural surveillance, described in Oscar Newman‘s influential bookDefensible Space: People and Design in the Violent City* (1972). Natural surveillance implies designing spaces to afford ―surveillance opportunities for residents and their agents‖ (Newman, 1972, p. 78)—effectively, designing

environments so that building users are able to observe others‘ activities when outside the home, and feel observed themselves (a concept which, applied in the wider context of digital communications and social media, might be termed peerveillance**). There should be parallels with Jacobs‘ (1961) concept of ‗eyes on the street‘—although as Minton (2009) points out, implementing natural surveillance via enclosed, gated communities where strangers will necessarily stand out means that the residents can become isolated, targets even for burglars who know that it is unlikely there will be any passers-by (or even passing police) to see their activities. Katyal (2002) provides a comprehensive academic review of ‗Architecture as Crime Control‘, addressed to a legal and social policy-maker audience, but also interesting because of a follow-up article taking the same approach to examine digital architecture (see future article). One point to which Katyal repeatedly returns is the concept of architectural solutions as entities which subtly reinforce or embody social norms (desirable ones, from the point of view of law enforcement) rather than necessarily enforce them: ―Even the best social codes are quite useless if it is impossible to observe whether people comply with them. Architecture, by facilitating interaction and monitoring by members of a community, permits social norms to have greater impact. In this way, the power of architecture to influence social norms can even eclipse that of law, for law faces obvious difficulties when it attempts to regulate social interaction directly‖ (Katyal, 2002, p. 1075). *„Defensible space‟ covers “restructur[ing] the physical layout of communities to allow residents to control the areas around their homes.” (Newman, 1996) **The author used „Peerveillance‟ for a pattern based on this concept in DwI v.1.0, at the time (March 2010) finding only one previous use of the term, on Twitter, by Alex Halavais. As of May 2011, the tweet is no longer findable via either Twitter or Google searches.

Implications for designers ▶ Designed environments influence people’s behaviour in a variety of ways, and some have been designed expressly with this intention, often for political or crime prevention reasons ▶ This can range from high-level visions of influencing wider social or community behaviours, to very specific techniques applied to influence particular behaviours in a particular context; the use of patterns facilitates re-use of techniques wherever a similar problem recurs ▶ Most patterns involve either the physical arrangement of building elements—positioning, angling, splitting up, hiding, etc—or a change in material properties, either to change people’s perceptions of what behaviour is possible or appropriate, perhaps by reinforcing or embodying social norms, or to force certain behaviour to occur or not occur

▶ There are also patterns around aspects of surveillance—designing layouts which facilitate or prevent visibility of activity between groups of people ▶ In practice, patterns may be applied in combination to create different kinds of space with different effects on behaviour ▶ There is potential for ‘paving the cowpaths’ strategically through design, identifying the paths of particular users—perhaps a group which is already performing the desired behaviour—and then, by formalising this, making it easier or more salient or in some way obviously normative, encourage other users to follow suit ▶ By affecting so completely the way in which people spend their lives, political or police attempts to control behaviour through the design of environments can be controversial ▶ Some concepts related to influencing behaviour in the built environment may be transposed to other designed systems and contexts

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Goshen, C. (ed.), Psychiatric Architecture. American Psychiatric Association. Poundstone, W. (2010) Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It). Hill & Wang. Poyner, B. (1983) Design against Crime: Beyond Defensible Space. Butterworths. Rand, A. (1943) The Fountainhead. Bobbs Merrill. Rykwert, J. (2000) The Seduction of Place. Oxford University Press. Salovaara, A. (2008) ‗Inventing New Uses for Tools: A Cognitive Foundation for Studies on Appropriation.‘ Human Technology, 4, (2), p. 209-228. Scott, J.C. (1998) Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yale University Press. Segal, R. and Weizman, E. (eds.) (2003) A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture. Babel/Verso. Shah, R.C. and Kesan, J.P. (2007) ‗How Architecture Regulates‘. Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 24 (4), p. 350-359. Shearing, C.D. and Stenning, P.C. (1984) ‗From the Panopticon to Disney World: the Development of Discipline‘ in Doob, A.N. and Greenspan, E.L. (eds.) Perspectives in Criminal Law: Essays in Honour of John LL.J. Edwards, p.335-349. Canada Law Book. Sommer, R. (1969) Personal Space: The Behavioral Basis of Design. PrenticeHall. Sommer, R. (1974) Tight Spaces: Hard Architecture and How to Humanize it. Prentice-Hall. Steinzor, B. (1950) ‗The spatial factor in face to face discussion groups‘. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 45 (3), p. 552-555. Stenebo, J. (2010) The Truth About IKEA. Gibson Square. Sykes, J. (1979) Designing Against Vandalism. The Design Council. Throgmorton, J. & Eckstein, B. (2000) ‗Desire Lines: The Chicago Area Transportation Study and the Paradox of Self in Post-War America.‘ Available at https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/3cities/throgeck.htm Underhill, P. (1999) Why We Buy. Simon & Schuster. Underhill, P. (2004) Call of the Mall. Simon & Schuster. Vale, L.J. (2008) Architecture, Power and National Identity (2nd ed.). Routledge. Whyte, W.H. (1980) The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. The Conservation Foundation. Winner, L. (1986) ‗Do Artifacts Have Politics?‘ In The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology, pp. 19–39. University of Chicago Press Zeisel, J. (2006) Inquiry by Design (rev. ed.). W.W. Norton.

Reminiscent of a scene from Ballard‟s Super-Cannes, the Philips High Tech Campus also includes this lake and boardwalk, perhaps affording breakout meetings and secret discussions away from the earshot of office colleagues, although in full view of the surrounding buildings.

Design and behaviourism: a brief review by Dan Lockton In a meta-auto-behaviour-change effort both to keep me motivated during a very protracted PhD write-up and demonstrate that the end is in sight, I’m going to be publishing a few extracts from my thesis (mostly from the literature review, and before any rigorous editing) as blog posts over the next few weeks. It would be nice to think they might also be interesting brief articles in their own right, but the style is not necessarily blog-like, and some of the graphics and tables are ugly. ―It is now clear that we must take into account what the environment does to an organism not only before but after it responds. Behaviour is shaped and maintained by its consequences… It is true that man‘s genetic endowment can be changed only very slowly, but changes in the environment of the individual have quick and dramatic effects.‖ B.F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, 1971, p.24 Behaviourism as a psychological approach is based on empirical observation of human (and animal) behaviour—stimuli in the environment, and the behavioural responses which follow—and attempts in turn to apply stimuli to provoke desired responses. John B. Watson (1913, p.158), in laying out the behaviourist viewpoint, reacted against the then-current focus by Freud and others on unobservable concepts such as the processes of the mind: ―Psychology as the behaviorist views it… [has as its] theoretical goal…the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness‖.

Classical and operant conditioning In an engineering sense, Watson‘s behaviourism perhaps treats animals and humans as black boxes* (Sparks, 1982), whose truth tables can be elicited by comparing

inputs (stimuli) and outputs (responses), without any attempt to model the internal logic of the system—an approach which Chomsky (1971) criticises. As Koestler (1967, p.19) put it—also heavily criticising the behaviourist view—―[s]ince all mental events are private events which cannot be observed by others, and which can only be made public through statements based on introspection, they had to be excluded from the domain of science.‖ However, learning (via conditioning) is inherent to behaviourism—both Watson‘s and the later perspective of Skinner—which means that the black box is somewhat more complex than a component with fixed behaviour. Classical or respondent conditioning, of the kind explored with dogs by Pavlov (1927)—and often applied in behaviour change methods such as aversion therapy (as for example, the ‗Ludovico technique‘ in Burgess‘s novel A Clockwork Orange (1962))—repeatedly pairs two stimuli so that the reflex behaviour provoked by one also becomes provoked by the other.

Operant conditioning, as developed by B.F. Skinner (1953) via famous experiments with pigeons, rats and other animals, is essentially about consequences: it involves reinforcing (or punishing) certain behaviours (the operant) so that the animal (or person) becomes conditioned to behave in a particular way: ―When a bit of behaviour is followed by a certain kind of consequence, it is more likely to occur again, and a consequence having this effect is called a reinforcer. Food, for example, is a reinforcer to a hungry organism; anything the organism does that is followed by the receipt of food is more likely to be done again whenever the organism is hungry. Some stimuli are called negative reinforcers: any response which reduces the intensity of such a stimulus—or ends it—is more likely to be emitted when the stimulus recurs. Thus, if a person escapes from a hot sun when he moves under cover, he is more likely to move under cover when the sun is again hot.‖ (Skinner, 1971, p.31-32) It is important to note here that in Skinner‘s terms, positive and negative reinforcement do not imply ‗good‘ and ‗bad‘, and negative reinforcement is a different concept to punishment. Positive reinforcement is giving a reward in return for particular behaviour; negative reinforcement is removing something unpleasant in return for particular behaviour. These are subtly different. Pryor (2002) gives the example of a car seatbelt warning buzzer as negative reinforcement—a device designed to be irritating or unpleasant enough to cause the user to take action to avoid it. We might consider that a recorded voice saying ―Thank you‖ after the seatbelt is fastened could be a positive reinforcement alternative. Positive and

negative punishment are essentially the inverse of each of these—a fine for not wearing a seatbelt while driving is a form of positive punishment, and taking away someone‘s driving licence would be a form of negative punishment. Clicker training with animals such as dolphins and dogs (e.g. Pryor, 2002) arguably combines features of classical and operant conditioning, using an audible clicking device to help ‗mark‘ particular behaviours immediately they occur, which can then be positively reinforced with treats—or the click itself can act as a reinforcer. A major factor in operant conditioning is the schedule of reinforcement that occurs: variable schedules of reinforcement, where a reward occurs on an unpredictable schedule—either ratio (amount of behaviour required) or interval (time required)— can be particularly effective; as Skinner (1971, p. 39) notes, variable ratio scheduling is ―at the heart of all gambling systems‖. Pryor (2002, p. 22) comments that ―[p]eople like to play slot machines precisely because there‘s no predicting whether nothing will come out, or a little money, or a lot of money, or which time the reinforcer will come (it might be the very first time).‖ This principle is inherent in all games of chance—Schell (2008, p.153) recognises it as something a designer can work with explicitly: ―a good game designer must become the master of chance and probability, sculpting it to his will, to create an experience that is always full of challenging decisions and interesting surprises.‖ *A „black box‟ approach to modelling human, animal and other system behaviour has also been discussed extensively within cybernetics, e.g. by Ashby (1956) and Bateson (1969).

Social traps ―Like their physical analogs, social traps are baited. The baits are the positive rewards which, through the mechanisms of learning, direct behavior along lines that seem right every step of the way but nevertheless end up at the wrong place. Complex patterns of reinforcement, motivation, and the structure of social situations can draw people into unpreferred modes of behavior, subjecting them to consequences that are not comprehended until it is too late to avoid them.‖ Cross and Guyer, Social Traps, 1980, p.16-17 Platt (1973) and Cross and Guyer (1980) discuss ‗social traps‘, situations in which there is both reinforcement which encourages a behaviour, but also a punishment or unpleasant consequences of some kind, affecting either the person involved or someone else, at some later point or in some other way. ―The behavior that receives the green light becomes supplanted by or is accompanied by an unavoidable punishment…[C]igarette smoking provides a simple example: the gratification associated with smoking encourages future behavior of the same kind, while the painful illness associated with that same behavior does not occur until a point very distant in the future; and when, finally, the illness does occur, no behavioral adjustments exist that are sufficient to avoid it‖ (p.11-12). There are perhaps parallels with Bateson‘s concept of the double bind (Bateson et al, 1956), in which a person is subject to conflicting ‗injunctions‘ (reinforcers or punishments) about what ‗right‘

behaviour is, with the result that whatever he or she does, will be wrong (and perhaps punished) according to one of the injunctions. Countertraps—what Platt (1973) suggests might be called ‗social fences‘—also exist, where people avoid a behaviour because of (fear of) punishment or undesirable consequences, even though the behaviour would have been desirable. Often the reinforcer is a short-term, local gain, whereas the punishment is a longer-term effect, perhaps affecting a wider group or area: Platt cites Hardin‘s tragedy of the commons (1968) as a well-known example of social trap with worldwide social and environmental consequences. Costanza (1987) examines how different kinds of social traps are responsible for a range of environmental problems. Cross and Guyer‘s (1980) taxonomy of social traps is potentially interesting for two reasons from a design perspective, since (in common with some of the cognitive biases and heuristics to be discussed in a later post), design could seek to help users avoid such traps, by redesigning situations to avoid them (hence influencing behaviour), or in some way exploit the effects to influence behaviour, if they are useful in some other way. In Cross and Guyer‘s taxonomy, there are five classes of trap (including countertraps), together with a ‗hybrid‘ category for traps comprising more than one of the others: time-delay traps, where the time lag between a behaviour and a reinforcer is too high for it to be effective, e.g. ―the high school dropout who, avoiding the present pain and unpleasantness of school, finds himself later lacking the education which could have prepared him for a more rewarding job‖ (p.21); ignorance traps, in which people fail to make use of generally available knowledge when making a decision, but simply rely on immediate reinforcers or superstitions; sliding reinforcer traps, ―patterns of behavior [which] continue long after the circumstances under which that behavior was appropriate have ceased to be relevant, producing negative consequences that would have been avoided easily had the behavior stopped earlier… The trap occurs because the rewards establish a habit which persists in the succeeding period‖ (p.25); externality traps, where ―the reinforcements that are relevant to the first individual may not coincide with the returns received by the second… If Peter spends five minutes in a cafeteria line choosing his dessert, he does not suffer for it, but all the people waiting behind him certainly do‖ (p. 28); and collective traps, which involve tragedy-of-the-commonstype externality traps, involving reinforcers or consequences for multiple participants based on behaviour by one or more. Cross and Guyer (1980, p.35) suggest ‗ways out‘ of the traps, including their ‗conversion‘ into trade-offs, ―presenting the individual with a set of reinforcers that occur in close proximity to the behavior in question and which closely match the actual reward and punishment patterns that underly [sic.] the situation. The trap then becomes a simple choice situation in which rational and learned behavior are coincident. In some cases—particularly those of time-delay traps—this might be accomplished simply by altering the timing of reinforcers somehow bringing the punishment or proxy for the punishment into closer proximity with its causative

behavior.‖ This could well be the principle behind a design approach to removing social traps, although it relies on being able to determine the structure of reinforcers and punishments which are affecting current behaviour, and somehow redesigning them accordingly.

Means and ends Studer (1970, p.114-6) discussed applying operant conditioning principles to the design of environments (such as buildings), by treating them as ―learning systems arranged to bring about and maintain specified behavioral topographies…What operant findings suggest, among other things, is that events which have traditionally been regarded as the ends in the design process, e.g., pleasant, exciting, comfortable, the participant‘s likes and dislikes, should be reclassified. They are not ends at all, but valuable means, which should be skillfully ordered to direct a more appropriate over-all behavioral texture.‖ Reconsidering means and ends in this way may provide a useful alternative perspective on design for behaviour change. What may be an end from the user‘s perspective (some kind of reward for turning off unnecessary equipment, perhaps) effectively becomes the means by which the designer‘s end (the user turns off unnecessary equipment) might be influenced. The designer‘s intended end is the user‘s means for achieving the user‘s intended end (Figure 1). If the end the user desires can be aligned with the means available to the designer, then the behaviour is reinforced. The mapping between ends and means (in both directions) may not seem to be one-to-one on first inspection. For example, the user‘s end probably reflects an underlying need—not examined further in a behaviourist context—and likewise with the designer‘s end. ‗Receiving feedback on my energy use in the office‘—a favourite designer‘s means for influencing reduced energy use—is probably rarely expressed as a desired end from a user‘s point of view, but if successful at reinforcing conservation behaviour, it presumably fulfils some underlying psychological needs.

Figure 1. The designer‟s end and user‟s means may be seen as reflections of each

other, and likewise with the designer‟s means and user‟s end. Based on ideas from Studer (1970).

As an informal warm-up exercise in a workshop run at the Persuasive 2010 conference in Copenhagen, the author asked participants (designers and others involved with planning persuasive technology interventions) to map some intended ends relating to socially beneficial behaviour change, and some of the means they could think of to achieve them (Figure 2), using the labels ‘People will do this…’ and ‘…if our design does this’ for ends and means respectively. Viewing the designer‘s means from the user‘s point of view, as an end, sometimes involves the end being avoiding something rather than receiving something—i.e. negative reinforcement. It is debatable whether this has much value beyond being simply a warm-up exercise, but it does encourage designers to think about trying to align the ends desired by the user with the means available to the designer. Weinschenk (2011, p.120), in appealing to (mainly web) designers to consider operant conditioning as a strategy for influencing behaviour, asks, ―Hungry rats want food pellets. What does your particular audience really want?‖

Figure 2. Some means-end pairings suggested by workshop participants in Copenhagen.

Impact of behaviourism Despite many of behaviourism‘s principles having been adopted in other fields—not just animal training but therapeutic applications (e.g. with autism), athletic training, programmed learning via ‗teaching machines‘ (e.g. Kay et al, 1968), to the emerging self-help industry (Rutherford, 2009)—it was largely supplanted in the mainstream of academic psychology by the ‗cognitive revolution‘ (e.g. Crowther-Heyck, 2005), re-emphasising cognition as something to be understood as a determinant of behaviour. Pask (1969, p.21) refers to ―the arid conflict between behaviourism and mentalism,‖ while Ericsson and Simon (1985, p.1) suggest that ―[a]fter a long period of time during which stimulus-response relations were at the focus of attention, research in psychology is now seeking to understand in detail the mechanisms and internal structure of cognitive processes that produce these relations.‖ Images of Skinner-like scientist figures peering at rats pressing levers to obtain food, with the implication that this was what was proposed for humanity, to some extent cast a shadow of ‗the psychologist as manipulator‘ over subsequent work on behaviour change—as Pryor (2002, p. xiii) notes, ―to people schooled in the humanistic tradition, the manipulation of human behavior by some sort of conscious technique seems incorrigibly wicked.‖ Winter and Koger (2004, p.116) suggest that ―[s]inister motives are attributed to those who would implement behavioral technology, and Skinner himself has been badly misrepresented and misunderstood as a cold, cruel scientist‖. Skinner‘s Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971), which proposed a new society—―the design of a culture‖ based on a scientifically refined ―technology of behaviour‖

reinforcing only behaviours which were beneficial to humanity, many of which were essentially about ensuring environmental sustainability—was widely read as promoting a totalitarian future. Chomsky (1971) suggested that ―there is nothing in Skinner‘s approach that is incompatible with a police state in which rigid laws are enforced by people who are themselves subject to them and the threat of dire punishment hangs over all,‖ and this view persists, although Skinner eschews the use of punishment in favour of reinforcement. Slater (2004, p. 28) argues that ―Skinner is asking society to fashion cues that are likely to draw on our best selves, as opposed to cues that clearly confound us, cues such as those that exist in prisons, in places of poverty. In other words, stop punishing. Stop humiliating. Who could argue with that?‖ In a later work, Skinner (1986) offers an explicit ‗design for sustainable behaviour‘ view of the possibilities of intelligent use of operant conditioning: ―[W]e have the science needed to design a world…in which people treated each other well, not because of sanctions imposed by governments or religions but because of immediate, face-to-face consequences. It would be a world in which people produced the goods they needed, not because of contingencies arranged by a business or industry but simply because they were ―goods‖ and hence directly reinforcing. It would be a beautiful and interesting world because making it so would be reinforced by beautiful and interesting things… It would be a world in which the social and commercial practices that promote unnecessary consumption and pollution had been abolished… A designed way of life would be liked by those who lived it (or the design would be faulty).‖ (Skinner, 1986, p. 11-12) Rutherford (2009, p.102) notes that Skinner himself designed and ―constructed a variety of gadgets and devices that allowed him to control his environment, and thus his behavior. For example for many years Skinner rose early to write, often going directly from his bed to his desk. He would then switch on his desk lamp, which was connected to a timer. When his writing time was up, the timer would switch off his desk lamp, signaling the end of the writing period… For Skinner, setting up environmental contingencies for personal self-management was a natural outcome of behavior analysis.‖ Regardless of the position of behaviourism in current academic psychological discourse, there are certainly elements which are relevant to design for behaviour change; indeed, the principles of reinforcement can be seen at work underneath many designed interventions even if they are not explicitly recognised as such. As Skinner (1971) argued (see quote opening this section), the environment shapes our behaviour both before and after we take actions, antecedent and consequence (even the absence of a perceived consequence is a consequence, in this sense). This is an important point, since much work in behaviour change focuses on one or the other. A system designed to suggest or cue particular behaviours, and then reward or acknowledge them, covers both intervention points, particularly given the fact that much interaction with products and systems is part of a regular schedule, and users

do learn how to operate things through an ongoing cycle of reinforcement: behaviour change does not necessarily happen in a single step. The concept of variable or unpredictable reinforcement has potential design application in situations where a reward cannot be given every time, and also (as noted by Schell (2008)) in the design of games and game-like features in other interactions. The idea of shaping behaviour towards an intended state through progressive rewards for improvements in behaviour rather than every time has relevance in changing habits, which can be important in (for example) establishing exercise and healthier eating routines. Winter and Koger (2004, p.118) propose what a behaviourist approach to a sustainable society might involve in relation to influencing more environmentally friendly transport choices, which suggests a mixture of different kinds of reinforcement designed into the system: ―All the cues encouraging driving alone would be gone. Nobody would be climbing into a car alone, cars would be expensive to operate and roads would be less convenient. People would live within walking or biking distance to their workplace, commute in groups, or use public transportation… Schools and shops would be arranged close by, allowing people to complete errands without the use of a car… We wouldn‘t try to change out of moral responsibility or pro-environment attitudes. We would emit environmentally appropriate behaviors because the environment had been designed to support them.‖

Implications for designers ▶ Behaviourism is no longer mainstream psychology, but some of the principles could have potential application in design for behaviour change ▶ There is a recognition that the environment shapes our behaviour both before and after we take actions—a useful insight for designing interventions ▶ There is also a recognition that behaviour change does not necessarily happen in a single step, but as part of an ongoing cycle of shaping ▶ Where cognition cannot be understood or examined, modelling users in terms of stimuli and responses may still offer valuable insights ▶ Positive and negative reinforcement, and positive and negative punishment can all be implemented via designed features, and often underlie designed interventions without being explicitly named as such ▶ Schedules of reinforcement can be varied (e.g. made unpredictable) to drive continued behaviour

▶ Design could either exploit or help people avoid ‘social traps’ where both reinforcement and punishment exist, or reinforcement is currently misaligned with the behaviour, converting them into ‘trade-offs’ which more closely match the intended behavioural choices ▶ Considering means and ends may provide a useful perspective on design for behaviour change. The end from the user’s perspective effectively becomes the means by which the designer’s end might be influenced

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