This post is Part III of a three-part series on Persuasion and Information Architecture.
Principle of Suggestion
You may also be interested in these fine products! Your information architecture will have greater persuasive power if it offers suggestions at opportune moments.
Mental extrapolation
Jesse James Garrett ascribes a promise to each link within an information architecture navigation system. Users form a mental expectation about the content behind a link, which he terms “mental extrapolation”. A persuasive link label can convince users that clicking the link will fulfill the mental expectation that has been set – keeping the promise, as in the theory of information foraging.
“The Good, the True, and the Beautiful” - categorization, that is
Iversen & Pertou (2008) draw on parallels between classical rhetoric and information architecture. Martin Cothran describes classical rhetoric as such:
The classical ideal of a great person was a good man speaking well. This meant that, in his education, a great man must not only study the rules and principles of eloquent expression, but he must know and do the good; he must not only have mastered certain techniques, he needed to be familiar with the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. The discipline that taught a man these things was called classical rhetoric. (source)
The step of inventio (“preparation”) within classical rhetoric involves finding persuasive elements to improve one’s case. The orator has a sort of checklist call the Topics, which help him not to forget important issues. The Topics are a storage area where it is clear what knowledge the orator possesses, and what is possible and relevant for him to ask for. Given that the human mind has a tendency to abstract and generalize, it is important for the orator to be clear on how the audience comprehends the persuasive argument (or in the IA parallel, the conversion point or product).
This is where it becomes challenging. According to cognitive science, objects in the world cannot exist in a single fixed hierarchy or definition. Categories created by individuals are open-ended and heavily influenced by embodiment of the mind, our perceptual and motor systems, our unconscious thoughts and our use of metaphor to understand abstract concepts.
Hence, an information architect must create a categorization that strengthens his or her persuasive intentions. The authors delineate three levels of categorization:
- Basic-level categorization
- People use the basic level of categorization as an unconscious understanding of how to interact in the world
- When faced with basic levels of categorization, a user recognizes what to do and how to behave; as such, they are more likely to be persuaded
- Prototype theory categorization
- A prototype is a member of a category that has a special cognitive status – that of being a “best example” that fit the most accurately to our bodily experience of the category
- An information architect aiming to persuade should think about which members of the designed categories are prototypes
- Metaphor categorization
- Metaphor evokes emotions be recalling sensory perceptions of the physical object and can thus influence human behaviour
- This type of categorization is useful when the information architect must categorize abstract concepts; care must be taken not to appeal to an emotion that contradicts the persuasive goal
The authors offer a particularly helpful example wherein the IKEA website presents products organized by “room”, thereby encouraging customers to purchase the concept of a full-room experience as opposed to an individual piece of furniture. In this way, IKEA persuades customers to buy an overall design solution via a well chosen type of categorization.
Key takeaways
- When categorization concepts or products, consider which level or type of categorization best fits the situation and architect the website accordingly.
Computers as persuasive social actors
What does everybody else think? When designing your information architecture, leverage principles of social influence to motivate and persuade. One of Robert Cialdini’s six weapons of influence is “social proof” – wherein people will do what others are doing. Another is “authority” – people will tend to obey authority figures. Both of these social influence factors play a role in persuasive information architecture.
Website, can I trust you?
The Stanford Web Credibility study devised a set of guidelines for those who design websites (information architects included) to maximize website credibility.
Web credibility plays an important role in a website’s persuasiveness. Information architects design a website in hopes that users will behave in certain ways – purchasing items, submitting information, clicking on advertisements, or participating in a forum. Users can be heavily influenced towards these behaviours if the website is credible – that is, conveys trustworthiness and expertise (and by extension, authority). When users believe website content, the website is more likely to achieve its goal.
Several of the credibility guidelines align with Fogg’s later principles of persuasion, most notably tailoring the user experience such that content matches what a user is seeking.
Taxonomies for folks
A folksonomy is a collaboratively-created taxonomy or classification system; also called social tagging, its strength is that it directly reflects user vocabulary. A folksonomy represents a fundamental shift in that it is derived not from professionals or content creators, but from the users of information and documents.
In Metadata for the masses, Peter Merholz (2005) argues that a folksonomy can be quite useful in that it reveals the digital equivalent of “desire lines”. Desire lines are the foot-worn paths that often appear in a landscape over time. An intelligent landscape designer will let walkers create paths through use, and then pave the emerging walkways, ensure optimal utility. Ethnoclassification, or folksonomy systems can similarly emerge.
Such a controlled vocabulary truly speaks the users’ language and provides instant feedback. Here, users are influenced to participate via social proof and familiarity.
Conclusion
There is a rich set of research at the intersection of information architecture and persuasive technology. Specifically within Fogg’s principles of tailoring, tunnelling, suggestion and reduction we can find firm evidence of information architecture tactics informed by persuasion principles. Many of these can be attributed to online information foraging behaviours, the hypertext nature of the web and the unique architectural properties of the online space.
I’d happily encourage you to read further on any of the research mentioned in this post! Please see the references below.
While it can be argued that some well-known website features cover these principles from the perspectives of social media, online calculators, and virtual coaches, from an information architecture perspective there remains exploration to be done.
Here are some interesting questions to think about.
- Can guided navigation offer positive reinforcement on a website?
- How can self-monitoring be successfully integrated into a website? What architecture best combines traditional web content with a self-monitoring tool?
- As personalization technologies grow more complex, what other methods of persuasion can be implemented on websites?
- As the landscape of the web expands to include the social graph, as with Facebook Connect, what are the implications for a traditionally architected digital space? Does it morph into something different, and how are existing persuasion principles affected?
- How much control will information architects retain over websites as the web moves towards a semantic, linked data model, as predicted by Tim Berners-Lee? What new manifestations of persuasion can be exploited in this new model of the web?
- How will the ethics debate continue to shape itself in light of increasingly sophisticated persuasive technologies? This is especially relevant within the principle of surveillance.
>> Return to Part One: Principle of Reduction
>> Return to Part Two: Principles of Tunnelling and Tailoring
References
- Berdichevsky, D., & Neunschwander, E. (1999). Toward an Ethics of Persuasive Technology. Communications of the ACM .
- Bolchini, D., Garzotto, F., & Paolini, P. (2008). Value-Driven Design for “Infosuasive” Web Applications. WWW 2008 Proceedings.
- Build and Grow with Facebook Connect. (n.d.). Retrieved December 9, 2009 , from http://developers.facebook.com/connect.php
- Chak, A. (2003). Guiding Users with Persuasive Design. Retrieved December 9, 2009, from http://www.uie.com/articles/chak_interview/
- Cialdini, R. (1993). Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. New York: William Morrow.
- Danaher, B. G., McKay, H. G., & Seeley, J. R. (2005). The Information Architecture of Behavior Change Websites. Journal of Medical Internet Research .
- Eisenberg, B. (2002). Do You Want To Inform Or Persuade? Retrieved December 9, 2009, from http://www.clickz.com/1474771
- Fogg, B. J. (2003). Persuasive Technology: using computers to change what we think and do. Amsterdam: Morgan-Kaufmann.
- Fogg, B. J. (2001). What Makes Web Sites Credible? A Report on a Large Quantitative Study. Persuasive Technology Lab, Stanford University .
- Garrett, J. J. (2002). The Psychology of Navigation. Retrieved December 9, 2009, from http://www.digital-web.com/articles/the_psychology_of_navigation/
- Gram-Hansen, S. B. (2009). Towards an Approach to Ethics and HCI Development Based on Logstrup’s Ideas. INTERACT 2009, (pp. 200-203)
- Hasle, F. V. (2006). The Persuasive Expansion - Rhetoric, Information Architecture, and Conceptual Structure. ICCS , 2-21.
- Iversen, S. D., & Pertou, M. E. (2008). Categorization as Persuasion: Considering the Nature of the Mind. PERSUASIVE 2008, (pp. 213-223).
- Khaled, R. (2008). Culturally-Relevant Persuasive Technology. Victoria University of Wellington .
- Merholz, P. (2005). Metadata for the Masses. Retrieved December 9, 200, from http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/essays/archives/000361.php
- Miller, C., & Remington, R. (2004). Modeling Information Navigation: Implications for Information Architecture. DePaul University and NASA Ames Research Center .
- Morville, P., & Rosenfeld, L. (2006). Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites. O’Reilly Media.
- Murphy, J., Hofacker, C., & Mizerski, R. (2006). Primacy and Recency Effects on Clicking Behavior. Journal of computer-Mediated Communication .
- Neilsen, J. (2002). Information Foraging: Why Google Makes People Leave Your Site Faster. Retrieved December 9, 2009, from http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030630.html
- Pegnato, K. (2009, June 2). Marketers’ Abilities Leap Forward with Sitecore’s New Online Marketing Suite Software. Retrieved December 9, 2009, from http://www.sitecore.net/en/News/Press-releases/2009/Sitecore-Online-Marketing-Suite-for-Enhanced-Marketing-Abilities.aspx
- Pirelli, P. (2007). Information Foraging Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Tam, K. Y., & Ho, S. Y. (2005). Web Personalization as a Persuasion Strategy: An Elaboration Likelihood Model Perspective. Information Systems Research , 271-291.
- Taraborelli, D. (2008). How the Web is Changing the Way We Trust. Current Issues in Computing and Philosophy .
- Verbeek, P.-P. (2006). Persuasive Technology and Moral Responsibility. Persuasive06 .