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Human behavior is difficult to predict. Unfortunately, that is the chief job of the interaction designer.
A successful designer will create a site that anticipates what the user thinks, what they want, and what they will do.
This becomes an increasingly tall order given the fact that the things that the designer wants them to do are often
cross-purposes to what the user might do normally.
Let's take, for example, a software company. The main purpose of the site (if they want to stay in business) will likely
be to sell their software products. However, the default position of most human beings is not to rush out and spend
money. The interactive designer must find a way to marry the purposes of the site with the psychology of the user.
I've found the best analogy for this circumstance is a political one. Let us compare the designer to the leader of a
country. The leader wants his people to do something that they might not normally choose to do, say, go to war
against the neighboring nation. The quickest, most simple way would be to force them. Make them go to war at
gunpoint. This would be the equivalent of designing a site with a single "Buy Now" button. Simple. No one can do
anything you don't want them to, because the option isn't there. However, this approach would drive people out of
your country (site) in droves, and you would be left with a small army of disgruntled slaves and a handful of super-
patriots.
The effective dictator (interactive designer) must be more subtle than that. He must make the people believe his
choices are their choices. In A Psychological Warfare Casebook, put out by the CIA in 1979, it says:
"If you give a man the correct information for seven years, he may believe the incorrect information on the first
day of the eighth year when it is necessary, from your point of view, that he should do so.
Your first job is to build the credibility and authenticity of your propaganda, and persuade the enemy to trust you
although you are his enemy."
So you must establish credibility. Even though the visitor to your site knows that your ultimate purposes are to
sell your software, they are much more likely to do so if you have convinced them that you are a respectable company
with quality products and the needs of the consumer at heart.
There are a number of ways to establish credibility, many of them extending outside the scope of a business' web site.
But there is one point, which, in my opinion, is the most important thing a designer must do do establish credibility:
Yes, just that. It makes a world of difference. If you don't know what I mean, take a look at any upper-echelon
technology company's web site (IBM, Sun Microsystems, Adobe). Almost without fail, they will look professional. If
you're still looking for tips, check out "The Principles of Common Decency" on this site.
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