Human Behavior Insights to Beat the Digital Giants
Welcome to The Attention Architect — A Publication
As a kid, I could tell by the way my dad put the key in the door — or ice cubes in a glass — whether it would be a good night or a bad one.
But at six years old, what could I do to make the situation better? Stand up to a 230-pound prickly man with whisky breath?
Strange as it sounds, my 57-pound instincts told me I could change the way someone feels, acts, or treats others just by tinkering with the atmospherics of a room.
So rather than fight, flight, or freeze, I designed. I turned the lights down, moved furniture around, and put on some Marvin Gaye — and it worked — the “Big Bad Wolf,” as my brother and I used to call him, settled down.
Fifty years later, I’m still creating spaces that promote prosocial behaviors and healthy relationships between people.
But rather than redesigning my family room, my colleagues and I assist businesses and institutions with “physical places and spaces” as part of their business model to stay relevant and profitable. We do this by creating attention-grabbing, sensory-activating, and emotionally-engaging experiences the online behemoths can’t touch.
