What does it take for a city to nudge playful active urban living as a lifestyle for its citizens? In this edition of Behavior Design Amsterdam, we explore how the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences’ research project PAUL uses beacons, big data, sports science and artificial intelligence to create the fitness application designed to convert its user into a healthier urban lifestyle. We are very happy to have three super interesting speakers lined up! Pamela Pavliscak (Change Sciences, US), Elger Blitz (Carve), Marije Deutekom (AUAS). 

How to design for social change? How do you make your audience aware of their own behaviour or state of mind? And how do you take into account long-term and unintended consequences of what we design and produce? These questions and more will be discussed in the next edition of the Behaviour Design AMS meetup, brought to you by guest curators Ramon Schreuder and Klasien van de Zandschulp. We're inviting two inspiring speakers who will share their view on the topic of conscious design. We'll wrap up with a moderated panel discussion involving the whole audience in a conversation that we believe is much needed – a first step towards building more sustainable, responsible products and services.

Is AI is the hype of the moment, or is it the new iteration of our networked life? Regardless, it requires a different view on design for sure. Don't focus on the presence but on the rules. How do we interact with the intelligent machines and what does it mean for the role of a designer?

It's time for the second meetup of the year. Conversational Interfaces are a hot topic. The idea of a butler at hand that serves you within seconds is a powerful thought.

It's also the idea of the perfect interface, no interface. Many have tried, most have failed.

For this meetup we have invited speakers to discuss everything related to Behavior Design and Conversational Interfaces. How to persuade when there is no interface. We are happy to have a nice mixture of backgrounds both from design, research and product.

Niels ‘t Hooft, Hybrid writer

Martine van der Lee, KLM

In January we're hosting a special new years drink to celebrate the new year with our community. To make it even more special we invited one of the speakers in the field we like to follow as inspiration.

We are very happy to have Dan Lockton to join us from the UK to talk about Design intentions.

The 11th edition will take place during E-Week at Tuesday October 6. We choose as a theme to invite people from the marketing and communication field to share how they use behavior thinking in their campaign strategies.

We are happy to have three interesting speakers:

Ingmar de Lange from Mountview

Ellen van den Berg, together with Apo J. Bordin, from DDB & Tribal Worldwide

On Monday August 31st the Quantified Self and Behavior Design meetups will join forces and organize a collaborative event where quantified self meets behavior design. Design your own behavior with personal data.

You can expect the three interesting and diverse speakers with design, product and scientific backgrounds. We invited 

Josephine Worseck   Trained molecular biologist at Metabolomic Discoveries  

Gonny van der Zwaag iCulture/Fithacking

We have a great line-up

Martijn de Waal; Researcher urban media & citizen empowerment HvA, Assistant Professor UvA, founder The Mobile City & The Public Matters

Anna Noyons; Chief Product Officer Peerby

Paul Manwaring, co-founder and creative director Glimworm Beacons

Registration is already full, RSVP on the reserve list might still get you in. Some spots open up in the last days. The meetup is June 18th in the office of Info.nl, Amsterdam.

We have announced our speakers for the coming Behavior Design AMS meetup next March 5. The waiting list is filling up so maybe we will make space for more attendees, don’t hesitate to RSVP…

Jaap-Henk Hoepman is an associate professor of privacy enhancing protocols and privacy by design in the Digital Security group at the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences of the Radboud University Nijmegen. He is also scientific director of the Privacy & Identity Lab. His research interest is privacy by design and privacy friendly protocols for identity management and the Internet of Things. He will talk on his vision of the framing of privacy by a designer of online services.

Ardin Mourik will talk on his work as political strategists (‘spin doctor’) in a world of hyper transparency in our social media world. More and more politicians are supported by and depending on political advisors.  He was political advisor for minister Van Bijsterveldt (Education, Culture and Science) and is candidate for the coming elections for province government representing CDA Utrecht.

Michael Dieter joined Center of Interdisciplinary Methodologies in October 2014 from the University of Amsterdam and the Centre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana in Germany. He holds a PhD in Culture and Communication from the University of Melbourne on media arts practice and theory. His current research focuses on publishing practices after digitisation, cultural techniques in interface and user-experience design, and genealogies of media at the intersection of aesthetic and political thought. He will present on the history and critique of design patterns.

After seven rather successful editions of the Behavior Design AMS meetups we have discussed our plans for 2015. And we are looking forward to another interesting year. Let us share our ideas a bit. And announce our upcoming meetup at the 5th of March.

We had five editions in 2014, more than we had planned before. We were invited in the beginning of the year to connect our meetup to Interaction14 conference in February, and decided to do the same at The Next Web in April, and eWeek in November. We had our first external hosted session at AMC hospital in September and had a special on e-coaching in June. All in its own successful editions in our opinion with very nice and diverse crowd and great speakers with interesting stories. Thanks to you all for that!

We are discussing the role of themes in our meetups now and than. We did a very clear one at AMC, but also the one on e-coaches was a bit themed. We will explore this more the next year. Next to that we keep on trying to mix speakers from the field of design, science and products with the technology angle as linking pin.

As said, organising five meetups was a bit more than planned so we are setting our goal at three events in 2015. But we will always be open for special occasions of course.

The planned meetups will be one in October, one in June and the first will be held in March, on the 5th. Save the date!

As the first theme we decided to make it into ‘the evil edition’. Not so much real evil, but with the field of behavior design the ethics discussion is always nearby. On manipulating, on data and privacy. Enough to talk about and we are now inviting our hotlist of speakers.

We hope you will be joining us in 2015 again at our meetups and be the engaged audience as you were in 2014. We are really looking forward to the coming meetups!

Have a great 2015!

  Dennis, Iskander, Marco, Wilbert

Invisibilia   Launching in January 2015, Invisibilia is a new NPR program about the invisible forces that control human behavior – ideas, beliefs, assumptions and thoughts. Hosted by Lulu Miller and Alix Spiegel, public radio veterans who helped create and regularly contribute to Radiolab and This American Life, the program interweaves personal stories and dynamic …

This month NPR is starting a new podcast series called Invisibilia. The series will be about Behavior.

Subscribe here

NPR makes some of my favorite podcasts like This American Life, Planet Money and Serial. Looking forward to this one.