Persuasive design in social interfaces externalizes decisions users could make themselves

Evidence

My own experience using Patchwork bears this out. There is nothing on it that could be called persuasive design, and it was surprisingly strange. Left alone in an uncrowded interface with nothing at all being suggested to me, I realized it is finally incumbent on me to decide what to say, when, and to whom—already the beginnings of context. And like Jonathan, I felt the knee-jerk urge to join a pub, because of what I was used to. Only afterward did I question why I assume social media needs to feel like a Wall Street trading floor. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 592

Categorization

• DEFINE: Illustrates what persuasive design means by showing its absence in Patchwork.
• XREF: Links to the technology-shapes-culture thread from Communication as Culture and 2001-era questions about interface intentionality.