Arranging to Persuade: Tunneling or Guided Persuasion

Long Tunnel

Fogg’s Principle of Tunneling:  “Using computing technology to guide users through a process or experience provides opportunities to persuade along the way.”

            This month we take a journey to tunneling in our series on B. J. Fogg’s seven tools of persuasion from his book Persuasive Technology:  Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do.  Fogg cites software installation as a tunnel.  That frequently involves staying near the computer and answering questions every so often.  You are a captive audience as the installation proceeds.  As such, you may experience promotions for other products or about the benefits of your new purchase.  You and the company share a journey of software installation, with the company selecting the sights along the route.

              In his narrative, but not in his Principle, Fogg defines a tunnel as a committed journey, like an amusement park ride.  Once you sit in that gondola (or begin software installation), you’re committed to the entire journey.  In information arrangement, tunneling encompasses a wider definition.  You are enticed along a journey that you may or may not complete.  At any point you may decide what you are looking for is not worth the effort, or you may complete the journey, ending it only when you find what you are looking for.

One example of persuasive tunneling is the arrangement of a grocery store.  Many people pop into the store just for a quart of milk.  Milk sometimes goes bad suddenly so you pick it up on a quick errand.  That’s why milk is always at the back of the store.  If it was at the front, you would buy that one item and head on home.  When it’s at the back, you travel through the store aisles, experiencing other products and perhaps buying something else.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial (VVM) provides a more complex tunnel.  Its 140 panels increase in height from 8 inches at the ends to over 10 feet in the center.  Names are inscribed in chronological order by date of casualty and alphabetical order within each day.  So it would seem that visitors take a journey from the beginning of the war to the end.

That is the case, but the journey actually begins in the center.  Maya Lin wanted the VVM to symbolize a circle so the names begin and end at the tall center panels, indicated by the only two dates on the Memorial, 1959 and 1975.  No other dates appear.  Walking along the panels, the only indication of a new day is the beginning of a new set of names in alphabetical order.  Even though this is the journey of the Vietnam War, it does not feel like a persuasive tunnel, since we only see a massive display of names.

Many visitors believe the chronology begins at the short left panel.  That’s logical since we read from left to right, not from the center to the right to the left and back again to the center.  When we experience the VVM from left to right, the shape of the memorial helps us feel the shape of war.  A few deaths at the beginning, building to a crescendo at the center and winding down to just a few names at the end.  In this case, because we know the names are in chronological order, the shape of the VVM creates a journey along the panels, persuading us to experience feelings about the progression of war.

Illustration used with permission from Microsoft.


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Arranging to Persuade: Seven Persuasive Tools

 

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial (VVM) is arguably the most powerful memorial in the world.  Maya Lin’s choice of chronological order for name arrangement may be the primary element of that power.  In making that choice, she engaged six of the seven persuasive tools identified by B J Fogg, in his book, Persuasive Technology:  Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do.  Along with technology, Fogg’s tools explain the persuasive aspects of information arrangement.  He defines a persuasive technology tool as one “designed to change attitudes or behaviors or both by making desired outcomes easier to achieve.”  He further divides these into macrosuasion and microsuasion.  The only purpose of a macrosausive tool is to persuade.  For example, the museum exhibit and computer game HIV Roulette persuades players to practice safer sex.

Microsuasive tools are the persuasive components of technologies whose primary purpose is other than persuasive.  The primary purpose of the VVM is to honor those who died or went missing during that war.  The chronologic arrangement changes the attitude and behavior of visiting Vietnam vets by allowing them to experience their time of service as they stand in front of the names of their lost buddies.

Information arrangement is almost always microsuasive.  Following are Fogg’s seven tools with an explanation of how the VVM uses them.  This is an article about arrangement, so I will mention that the tools appear in the same order in which they appear in Fogg’s book.

1)  Reduction:  Persuading through Simplifying  

People are more likely to complete a simple task.  Amazon offers“one-click” sales.  Press the key once and the sale is complete.  You can change your mind after that, but it’s a hassle.  If the names on the VVM were in alphabetical order, each name would have to be remembered and found individually.  But with chronology, a vet need only retrieve one name from his decades of memory.  The printed index shows where that name is on The Wall, surrounded by others who died on the same day, in the same battle.

2)  Tunneling:  Guided Persuasion 

In the journey of software installation, with a captive audience, the producer may demonstrate product features or try to sell more software.  The VVM also takes us on a journey.  Symbolized as a circle, the chronology begins and finishes in the center of the memorial.  Panel sizes, small at the two exteriors and huge in the center, encourage the view of a journey into a war that started small and grew and eventually ended.

3)  Tailoring:  Persuasion through Customization 

Shopping sites customize the buying experience by offering products based on previous purchases.  The VVM’s chronology gives each surviving Vietnam vet a personal place of remembrance on the memorial.  The names of his buddies will always be in that one location, a location he can return to again and again.       

4)  Suggestion:  Intervening at the Right Time 

Traffic trailers that give your speed as you drive by provide a suggestion at the appropriate moment, while you are driving.  The appropriate moment at the VVM is the occasion of a visit.  Any memorial’s purpose is to encourage thoughts about the memorialized event.  Because the VVM names are in a chronology, vets easily find their friends in one place, eliciting more memories with deeper thoughts.

5)  Self-Monitoring:  Taking the Tedium Out of Tracking 

Self-monitoring technologies include pedometers that record steps taken in a day.  This persuasive tool is not included at the VVM.  One information arrangement technique that does involve self-monitoring is the use of facets.  Let’s say a clothing site offers selection by the attributes (facets) of its products.  A user may first select gender, with the system only displaying products that meet the selection.  The user then selects shirts, changing the display to only available shirts in that gender.  Size may be selected next, etc.  Users self-monitor by evaluating the results of their choices as they proceed.

6)  Surveillance:  Persuasion through Observation

We are all familiar with the announcement that our conversation with a call center may be monitored.  Obviously the call center employee knows this too.  I have not yet seen an information arrangement example of surveillance.  However there is a form of surveillance at the VVM. Visitors leave items everyday at the base of the panels.  These are gathered by the Park Service, cataloged and placed in storage. Knowledge that the offerings become part of the historic record encourages this tradition.

7)  Conditioning:  Reinforcing Target Behaviors  

As positive reinforcement, an online game may award points or prizes to keep people playing the game.  Chronological order at the VVM offers positive reinforcement by helping vets remember their time of service and their friends who died.  These are intimate emotions the vet may want to have again, so the arrangement itself encourages him to continue visiting.

Conditioning, of course, can also be negative.  With information arrangement, negative reinforcement may be inadvertent.  If, for example, alphabetical order had been selected for the VVM, it would just be another list of names, with nowhere near the power of chronology.  But in a different situation, it could be the alphabet that provides the persuasive element.  Like all communication, persuasion changes with context.

Illustration used with permission from Microsoft.


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