Commercial success by looking for

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Commercial success by looking for Desire Lines

• Carl Myhill
• (working for but not speaking for, General
  Electric, Network Reliability Products and
  Services)

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What Are Desire Lines?
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Desire Lines are from Urban Planning
Kiwi desire line QE2 Swimming Pool, New Brighton
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Desire Lines are from Urban Planning
QE2 Swimming Pool new angle
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Desire Lines are from Urban Planning
Cambridge, UK New Supermarket (2003)
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Desire Lines Defined

• 100 year old urban planning term
• Show where people naturally desire to walk
• A perfect expression of human natural purpose
• Great design pattern for path design (Christopher
  Alexander)
• A little known concept / term
• Misused concept by modern planners

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Have Urban Planners Lost the Plot?
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Extending the Concept around town
Speed Bumps 200m
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Desire Lines from Speed Bumps?

• 376 accidents involving cyclists in 2003 (50
  serious, 1 fatal)
• 88 of accidents in County involve cars
  (including in contact with bicycles)
• 47 of accidents in Cambridge City involve
  bicycles

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Extending the Concept around town
Combined Use Pedestrian and Cycle Bridge 500m
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Extending the Concept around town
Rising Bollards 2000m
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Rising Bollard Desire Lines?
Rising Bollards following an authorised
vehicle
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Sue Hewitt, who manages the bollards for
Cambridge County Council, admitted she was
concerned at the number of accidents at the spot,
but insisted drivers were to blame. (Cambridge
Evening News, 9/8/2001)
Rising Bollards drivers to blame!
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Extending the Concept around town
Speed Cameras 6000m North
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Speed Camera Desire Lines?
Severe braking
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Speed Camera Desire Lines?
Skid marks
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Speed Camera Desire Lines?
Skid marks
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Speed Camera Desire Lines?
Susie Haywood, a spokesman, said "The Government
and the partnerships have an exceptionally long
way to go to win the hearts and minds of
motorists that cameras work to save lives and not
just to make their wallets lighter."
1,793 locations - 384 showed an increase in
casualties (Daily Telegraph, 16/6/2004)
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Extending the Concept a around town
A polite non-threatening reminder to reduce speed.
Speed Triggered Warning Sign 6000m South
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Extending the Concept back home
86 - inappropriate mapping of controls to
elements
Survey of 400 Cook tops for sale in the UK (2003)
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Extending the Concept back home
4 - inappropriate mapping but elaborate visual
aid
Survey of 400 Cook tops for sale in the UK (2003)
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Extending the Concept back home
10 - good mapping
Survey of 400 Cook tops for sale in the UK (2003)
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Cook Top Desire Lines?

• 1959 study - errors associated with cook top
  layout up to 11 (Chapanis and Lindenbaum)
• 1979 Ray and Ray replicated the results reporting
  errors up to 19
• 1997 UK Government report found
• Cooking to be the 2nd highest cause of household
  fire
• Cookers left unattended 75 of incidents

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Extending the Concept in the air
Common mistake made despite threatened delays for
incorrect form completion
Also Florida Ballot (2000)
US Visa Waiver I-94 Form
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Extending Desire Lines to Computers
Analogous to a muddy track across a park -
implications of human desire to interact a
computer
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Security questions failures
Security information sought a specific date
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Security desire lines?
23/7 23/07 7/23 07/23 23/7/68 7/23/68 23/07/68 07/
23/1968
23/7/1968 23/07/1968 23 july 1968 23 July 1968 23
JULY 1968 23rd July 1968 23RD JULY 1968
Actually required? Correct date and precise string
Records of Login failures
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Dept. of Concealment - Support
Support tell users how to overcome problems -
but not always.
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(No Transcript)
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1. Plant grass. 2. Wait for paths to appear
Apple iTunes Provide Feedback menu option
Few companies examine such desire lines
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Website Desire Lines
Auntie problem
BBCi - Hourly look at desire lines adapt UI,
indexes, etc.
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Website Desire Lines
Google Zeitgeist recent Blogger acquisition
all desire lines!
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Rate this page / Was this review helpful?
Microsoft MSDN Knowledge Base Rate this page
Making desire line explicit for user community
benefit (Hill, Holland Digital Wear)
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On-line Help
Does it help? Desire line...?
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(No Transcript)
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Automated Teller Machines (ATMs)

• Loose Design Pattern...
• Card in
• Enter Pin
• Select Cash Amount
• Card Out
• forced delay
• Cash Dispensed

• Alternative...
• Card in
• Enter Pin
• Select Cash Amount
• Cash Dispensed
• Card out

User goal satisfied BEFORE card returned desire
line?
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Natural Selection

• Desire Lines show us tracks left by natural
  human interactions
• Perhaps design evolution has parallels with
  natural evolution
• Capitalist economies arguably draw parallels with
  nature, maybe contributing to the commercial
  success of one design over another via natural
  selection

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Natural Selection

• Focus on Desire Lines, and adapting designs in
  accordance with what we learn from them should
  lead to successful adaption
• Survival of the fittest adaptions in the
  commercial context will perhaps become ever more
  evident
• Who focuses on desire lines now? Amazon,
  Microsoft, Apple, Google, Virgin, Smile how are
  they doing?

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Natural Selection
Normanian Natural Selection !!?
Don has provided us with a lens to focus our
observations of people interacting with
things And terms to describe elements of those
things, eg. Affordance (And has inspired many
of us to work in this field) If our focus on
peoples natural interactions with things, and
our emotional responses, leads to designs
evolving in the right direction, perhaps we
should call this...

• Actually, why Darwin?

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Finally...

• Desire Lines (the extended version) is a
  memorable concept reminding us about feedback
• There is no rocket science here but most
  companies are not paying attention to this WHY?
• Even when desire lines speak of very serious
  consequences we still have a tendency to say
  stupid user and not look to the design WHY?

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Finally...

• Smart, successful companies ARE paying attention
  to desire lines. But, typically in economics,
  such success factors are quickly copied why is
  this not the case here?
• Maybe its time for other companies to wise up
  and get on the right side of Normanian Natural
  Selection, for commercial advantage (!)