Event Date and Time:
March 28, 2008 – March 28, 2008
6:30pm - 8pm
Location:
ITP
721 Broadway, 4th Floor
Want to attract people to your project, design persuasive interactions and influence user actions? Then it's crucial to understand how people think.
Recent work in a variety of fields, from neuroscience to social psychology and economics has shed light on the human decision-making process. The human brain is a wonderful tangle of quickie rules, biased processes, evolutionary flotsam, and attentional diversions. People are not strictly logical, but we are predictable, often in surprising ways. This talk is a preview of a planned class called "Designing Attraction". The full class will take a journey through the remarkable psychological tools for attracting, guiding and influencing human beings. Students will learn how how to guide their viewers, influence their users, predict the outcome of community situations and gain a mastery of designing for the mind. This introductory talk will summarize the biases, heuristics and tools of influence that affect us every time we make a choice. We'll also discuss real-world examples, applications, and the ethics of using psychologically persuasive methods to influence interaction.
BIO:
Robert Faludi has an M.A. in Cognitive Psychology from New York University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He recently completed a second Masters degree in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU. For ten years, his San Francisco-based Faludi Computing supported Internet startups like Match.com and Salon, and created web sites for companies like Gap, Visa, Lonely Planet and American Eagle Outfitters. As a researcher for NYU's Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science, he investigated the connections between visual perception, motor action and the mathematical properties of environmental affordances. At ITP he specialized in physical computing, dense social networks and networked objects. Projects include Social Genius, a multimedia name-learning game; WildLight, a networked device that brings organic light to dark or windowless spaces; BlueWay, a networked location and wayfinding system; and Botanicalls, a system that allows thirsty plants to place phone calls for human help.
