Design as choice architecture: informing consumers about debt related behaviors
Date
Credits
- Alberto Rigau Designer
- Aberto Rigau Graduate Student
- Meredith Davis Thesis Advisor
Type of Work
Locations Made
There is no denying that choice improves the quality of a person’s life. It provides access to getting exactly what is wanted out of any situation (Schwartz 2007, 3), particularly when the contemporary commercial sphere provides a plethora of products and services to choose from. There is a right to choose, and people use it.
Contemporary choice in buying is facilitated by the cultural acceptance of credit-based payments. Today, if no cash is available to make a purchase, there is always the credit card to bridge the distance between assets and the immediate needs. Such reliance on this payment method generates specific patterns of consumer behavior that often translate into financial debt.
As a response to such context, this study tries to understand the consumer’s relationship to credit card use in its broader sense—in its ecology—and evaluates the ways in which design can address consumption-induced behaviors through tools that help manage, control, and personalize fiscal activities.
Three areas of focus were identified to frame a series of design explorations: system defaults, choice, and feedback. A study in system defaults reiterated the importance of metaphors in a consumer’s understanding of numerical information. A study in choice revealed some of the problems associated with abstracting a consumer’s relationship to money. To understand the larger implications of a consumer’s actions, this second study explores the context of spending-related choices. A study of feedback demonstrated the possibilities of an interactive system in managing personal behavior. A balance between reminders, rewards and encouraging messages proved promising in building a platform that not only reprimands a person, but also provides the necessary motivation to move forward in a controlled manner.
As a whole, the investigation explores moments, opportunities and conditions for a design intervention to bring about reflective thought about spending habits as they are occurring.