Persuasive Design and User Experience Design

Persuasive Design is described as “the use of psychology in design to influence behavior” through persuasion and social influence instead of coercion. It’s an intriguing idea in that User Research helps to understand behavior and User Interface design generally enables behavior. There is the belief that Persuasive Design is the next step in using design to create a positive impact in the world instead of enabling already-existing behaviors. User Experience design may lag behind in this area. We should encourage designers to start incorporating influential design practices into their work in an effort to further advance the industry.