Monday 16th November 2015
In this lecture with Stephen, we covered influence and behaviour and picked it apart as to apply it to generation of ideas and how we can use different influences to form something meaningful - and what our behaviour was like in response to these influences.
As said in the lecture, influence means the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behaviour of someone or something. And behaviour is the way in which a person behaves in response to a particular situation or stimulus.
Key parts of the discussion made in the lecture consisted of understanding what people want and how that means you can influence the decisions they make through design. Other things covered in this discussion were how we can create or influence something or someone else - saying that as designers we need to attempt to solve a problem for the clientele which requires an understanding of contexts and positions of thought that our audience may adopt. The underlying factor that I took from this segment of the lecture was that so long as we can understand something we can indeed related to that something.
Things that affect us in the industry, or in my case will at some point have an effect over my in industry, are made up of many different factors. For example, you need to look at the personal, cultural, political, psychological, informational and social aspects of a topic before you can properly structure a response to it through a brief.
To conclude the lecture we were given a few bullet points to live by when designing for various things, i.e. campaigns. These bullet points being;
- Manipulation and deception shouldn't be used in the design, or at least should not be the intention of the design series for a campaign as they shouldn't be used when conveying a message, story or campaign.
- Things to consider whilst designing something would be to think of how the subject audience would respond to the audience of which you have created it for and how they are going to respond to what you have available.
- What aspects of the design do you want them to take away, in what context should the designs be taken as, what environment are they being displayed through and what should someone learn or appreciate about it?
And finally, something that we should always question is; why do people do the things they do, feel the things they feel and make particular choices? This is a question that should be answered either through design, narrative or language. I definitely see this information as important and something that I will be taking into account for any work I create where there is message and meaning behind it of which will be affecting my audience's behaviour over a topic and how I want it to influence them - whether it be to go out and purchase a product or get behind a movement of some form.
