I’ve been working on an idea for an ITP class that explores the psychology of human decision-making, and applies this powerful science to interaction design. The best way to learn something is to teach it, so on Sunday I did the first run of an hour-long presentation on the subject at BarCampNYC3. I talked about biases, heuristics and Cialdini’s “weapons of influence” including social-proof, reciprocity and a host of other persuasive methods. The slides for this trial run gave a rough overview of decision-making psychology, after which we had a spirited discussion of examples and ethics. The next version is going to conclude with some compelling illustrations of real world applications.
According to their web site, “BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants.” This one was held on the campus of Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, probably soon to be a new division of NYU. Lots of interesting people came, including my hacker buddies from NYCResistor and a few intrepid presenters from Canada and even Europe.
The next version of my Designing Attraction talk should be presented ITP in a couple weeks, as a Friday lecture.