of the design depends on whether or not it supports the goals its users have for the sort of place it creates. But there is another important set of goals the environment must accommodate: those of its creators. Lillian wants to be able to easily curate a document, and Microsoft wants to continue to generate revenues from providing access to its software. Successful environments bring these goals into balance. The next chapter examines what motivates people to behave in specific ways in their environments and what the incentives are that lead them to design environments to influence those behaviors.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
—Upton Sinclair
CHAPTER
3
Incentives
The next time you walk into a bank branch—even an old one, like One Montgomery—take some time to consider your behavior. You speak a certain way when you’re in a bank. You walk to certain areas in the space and not others. If there are other people waiting to be helped, you wait in line. Why do you act like this when you’re there? Does the organization of the environment have anything to do with your behavior? The answer to this question is yes: the environments you inhabit have an important effect on your behavior.
Since this is the case, it’s important to examine why you use and create different types of environments. You go to bank branches for different reasons than those that compel you to visit football stadiums. Banking and sporting events fulfill different social needs, and these needs require different ways of acting. Our species has developed particular types of places that influence our behavior in ways that are conducive to meeting these social needs. Underlying it all are incentives that motivate you to act in particular ways.
For example, if you’re like most bank customers, your goal in using the bank branch is to do your banking there as quickly and efficiently as possible and then leave. If you behave with civility while there, following directions and standing in line patiently awaiting your turn, you are rewarded with prompt service. However, if you cause a ruckus, whooping and hollering (something that wouldn’t be unseemly in the stadium) or jumping the line, you may get in trouble. And if you attempt to enter certain parts of the environment (e.g., the vault) without permission, you may be arrested. Both of these latter outcomes are at odds with your goal of being done with your transaction as quickly as possible.
On the flip side, the bank is also subject to incentives. If it doesn’t offer you a particular level of service—for example, if you have to stand in line for too long—you may switch to a competitor. Thus, it is in the bank’s best interest to encourage certain behaviors and discourage others. In controlling the environment where the interaction happens, the bank has a great deal of influence in how you behave while you’re there.
Let’s look at this example in more detail. The internal layout of many bank branches imposes a separation between the bank’s tellers and its customers. A barrier (in the form of the counter) keeps the two groups physically separated. On the teller side of the counter, the layout of the space is organized to allow multiple tellers to focus on individual customers and their needs. If you peek behind the counter, you will see cubicles, each with the necessary equipment (a computer, printer, money counting machines, etc.) for an individual teller to serve a customer’s requests. On the client side of the counter, space is set up to encourage queuing, often by means of a simple tape barrier, and in some cases by using a virtual line such as a log book.
A typical bank branch interior encourages customers to queue so that they can be served individually by tellers who sit in stations behind a barrier.
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The bank’s internal layout encourages a particular process. One teller deals with the needs of one customer at a time, although there may be multiple tellers available at any one time. Customers form a single queue, and
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