Chapter 5. Influence: getting people to like and use your design
This chapter covers
- Understanding the principle of influence
- Ensuring your design accommodates the principle of influence
- Identifying opportunities to design to influence users
- Discussing influence with others
- Applying the principle of influence in digital design contexts
Francine watches birds as one of her hobbies. One day, she sees a rarely sighted bird as she’s walking to her car after work. She whips out her smartphone and takes a perfect picture of the bird as it’s in flight. She then posts the picture to Instagram so all her birder friends can see what she came across. When Francine arrives home, she sees that a number of people have liked and shared her picture. Some of them she has never even met. Francine feels proud of her picture and feels like she wants to express her appreciation to everyone who shared her photo. She logs in to Instagram and finds a photo to share from each person who shared her photo; even people she never met before, even photos she isn’t really that interested in sharing. Francine has just engaged in reciprocity: she received something and then felt obligated to do something in return, one of the key concepts of the principle of influence.