The best thinkers in graphic design have long held that information and persuasion were oppositional modes of design, representing the competing cultures of graphic design and advertising. But I have been considering the possibility that this long-cherished notion is no longer pertinent, especially in this new era of interactive electronic communications. In fact, many boundaries seem to be blurring these days, including work and play, entertainment and information, education and games, with commerce permeating everything.

This conventional distinction between information and persuasion has been based determined by the type of content contained in a piece of communications, as well as the sender’s intention. Some content is understood as information and some content is labeled as persuasion, promotion or even propaganda. In this scheme of things, information is noble. Note that Richard Saul Wurman, trained as an architect, has coined the term "information architecture" to describe the graphic design of his highly successful Access Press travel guides. This inspired the venerable graphic designer Massimo Vignelli to proclaim himself an information architect too. This vision of communications fits well with the Modernist ideal of objective, rational design. In this paradigm, persuasion is distasteful, associated with the worlds of advertising and marketing— emotional, subjective, manipulative, superficial.

But might there be an alternative to this tidy dichotomy? I suspect things aren’t that simple. Perhaps information and persuasion are not an either/or opposition. More likely they are modes of communication that overlap and interact.

Information/persuasion might be considered as more than types of content and the sender’s intention. It seems that the reader’s motivation and the communications context— the situation in which communications happens— might also be important factors. For instance, factual information can fall on deaf ears without a motivated audience.

Consider three examples of what we might generally consider "information design" and how they interact with audience members of various motivation levels. An airport monitor would seem to be a purely informational condition. A traveler hurrying to catch a plane is highly motivated and will make full use of the flight monitor— no need to persuade this audience member. A stop sign or red light would also seem to be highly informational with no promotional character. But when a driver in a hurry encounters a stop sign, that driver has a low motivation level. Although the content is informational, the driver may ignore it, making only a rolling stop— especially in Chicago, where red lights and stop signs are merely suggestions! Thirdly, what happens when a junk food enthusiast encounters a food package with nutritional information? This audience member has low motivation and probably ignores message content completely.

Even ostensibly informational content— factual, objective, even numerical— conceived with pure "informational" intentions of the sender— the airport, the local government, the food manufacturer— with no promotional intentions, must persuade many readers to pay attention, to get involved.

Desire and necessity would seem to be part of the communications process here. Both of these factors affect the audience’s motivations. Even an audience member that "needs" some information (i.e. the overweight junk food enthusiast) must also possess the "desire" for this information to complete the communications loop. If a tree falls in a deserted forest, does it make any sound?

Persuasion creates desire. A basic definition of persuasion is an attempt to shape or change a user’s behavior or attitude. Since a change of attitude difficult to observe and measure, recent research has focused on behavioral change in response to persuasion. Persuasion exerts a direct influence on behavior and promotes a response. Promotional actions encourage behaviors.

A key tool for persuasion is seduction. I have always intuitively felt that seduction was an important part of communications design. Perhaps we need a theory of persuasion to explain how a piece of graphic design can seduce the reader/viewer into a useful encounter with its message. Seduction initiates the entry step in the communications process, promising a reward, a playback for the audience’s attention. Once drawn into the communications piece, the quality and relevance of information takes over, engaging the reader on deeper levels. In these days of media saturation, there is fierce competition for the reader’s attention, and reader’s have increasingly short attention spans. Seductive media can persuade a reader to pay attention, to get in bed with the message content and spend some time with it.

These ideas about the useful roles of persuasion and seduction seem especially relevant for the design of interactive electronic communications. Nonlinear communications messages make it difficult to orient and direct the reader with traditional graphic strategies conceived for linear message sequencing. For instance, an internet site’s reader may be distracted by competing media (phone, TV, stereo) options for multi-channeling, and may be diverted by links to other sites in the Web.

Seductive communications strategies can direct and prompt the reader/user to follow comprehensible reading paths and to make appropriate responses in software operation. Thinking of seduction in this way, the smallest graphic moves— directing the user to the "OK" button, for instance— use persuasion to reduce effort and channel the reader to useful paths through complex material and difficult software tools.

Three steps to seduction are outlined in an article by Julie Khaslavsky and Nathan Shedroff, titled "Understanding Seductive Experiences". Enticement attracts attention and makes an attractive promise. The relationship stage gives small fulfillments (or feedback) and promises more fulfillment. Finally, there is delivery on final promises and the experience ends in a memorable way. The authors note that effective seduction need not actually reach the third stage to be effective— that useful ongoing long-term relationships can be based on incremental fullfillments. The sexual overtones to this process are both humorous and instructive.

Are persuasion and seduction manipulative, an evil conspiracy of the client and designer? The potential for negative manipulation as well as positive direction would certainly seem to be a concern. A key element for the ethical application of these strategies is disclosure, suggests a group of ethical studies at Stanford. The designer must be overt and upfront with the strategy.

In recent years, the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, directed by B.J. Fogg, has been exploring some of these ideas under the name "captology", the study of persuasive media. Their focus is on software programs and smart products that encourage or change behavior in the fields of health, safety, environment and personal management. For instance, they have studied the persuasive impacts on teenagers interacting with the "Baby Think It Over" doll in high school programs. This smart doll simulates the responsibilities of caring for a newborn with random crying every 2 1/2 hours, tracks the teenage "parent’s" behavior and reports the student’s behavior to the teacher.

Beyond these applications, I am thinking that persuasion and seduction are not only useful but essential strategies for all communications design, from traditional print to interactive media, and from micro graphic "moves" to large-scale strategies. They have clear applications to promotional/entertainment/shopping websites, but also promise to solve problems for sites and software involving numerical/factual work and content like medicine and computation.

We know persuasion is necessary for distracted unmotivated users. But it can also increase productivity for motivated users— for instance, through the use of prompts and cues for accurate use of spread sheet software. In product design, persuasion/seduction can clarify operation sequences for smart products and enrich the user’s product experience. Persuasion provides motivation for those unmotivated through disinterest, unfamiliarity with the content, or lack of competence for a software tool or a product’s operation.

Perhaps information/persuasion is not an "either/or" choice, but rather an "and/also" interaction between communication modes. I am thinking that there is a complex interaction between the sender’s intentions, message content, the audience/user’s motivations, the communications context and the designer’s strategies.

Rhetoric – the departure from normal language usage for the purposes of persuasion— holds promise for the expression of seductive messages. To identify graphic rhetorical moves for interactive electronic communications" onscreen text, we can establish the non-rhetorical base of "normal graphic language usage" as the typewriter’s on-screen equivalent— the Wang word processor and VDT— generic meat-and-potatoes display of low rez letterforms on a light gray background. All recent graphical interfaces and screen design strategies are rhetorical devices to persuade the user/reader to use the software correctly.

Seen in this light, almost any piece of communications design uses persuasion. The red color of a stop sign is a persuasive rhetorical tactic to attract the attention of drivers, alerting them to potential danger, promising safety through avoidance of a collision, and fulfillment when cross traffic passes smoothly in front of them— the three steps of the seduction process. The Mac’s smiley face when booting up promises a positive experience and effective operation, persuading us to wait patiently and happily for fulfillment.

Persuasive rhetoric is the bold face type highlighting a name when we scan a newsmagazine paragraph. But screen-based electronic media have interactivity, sound and motion which create both the opportunity and imperative for a far deeper application of persuasive rhetoric. These new design dimensions can create smart persuasive character, attitude and behaviors. Recent explorations with agents, prompts and cues advocate certain behaviors to persuade users/readers to make the right moves for effective operation.

Persuasion and seductive rhetoric can be developed as theories to explain and evaluate existing communications phenomena, expose and clarify current design strategies, and codify new design strategies for generalized application in communications design.

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