Behavior Space: Play, Pleasure and Discovery as a Model for Business Value

by Alexander Manu

Behavior Space proposes that corporations do not design products or services they design behavior spaces. Facebook is not a product, not a technology, but a behavior space. Innovation is the creation of a new behaviour space. The product or service is simply the catalyst that enables a new behavior space to emerge. The size of the behaviour space footprint, represents the potential value a product or service offers; the greater the value potential, the greater the monetization potential. Alexander Manu illustrates how these new concepts are transforming design and product development so that the process changes from a static and product-centred approach to one that is entirely centred on the user and their behaviours that emerge as they interact with what they have bought. He provides a new language to describe the way in which the physical, intellectual and emotional features of products and services achieve a relationship between the user and the brand. And he explains the concept of Play Value, which underpins the attraction for customers and depends on compelling experiences that are challenging, rewarding and absorbing; that never frustrate and that encourage repeated use. Designers and brand managers seeking to understand and exploit commercially the fundamental changes in consumers that are driven by technology, experience and social interaction will find Behavior Space a wonderful place to start.

234 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

I have spent much of my professional life asking what happens after a new possibility enters the world. A technology appears. At first, it seems extraordinary. Then we use it. Soon we depend on it. Eventually, we stop noticing it altogether. But somewhere during that progression, something remarkable happens: the technology does not simply become ordinary. We become different.
That question connects much of my work as an author, professor, designer, and foresight strategist.

My books examine technology, imagination, innovation, disruption, human behaviour, and the future of the self. I am particularly interested in the moment when technological possibility becomes human behaviour, when behaviour becomes habit, and when habit begins to reshape identity.
My latest book, You Were Never Just Using It: How Technology Rewrote the Self, One Click at a Time, examines this transformation through the technologies that gradually became inseparable from everyday life.

We search instead of remembering. We photograph instead of simply seeing. We carry access to almost all human knowledge in our pockets. Increasingly, we work alongside artificial intelligence capable of generating, recommending, predicting, and anticipating. The question is no longer simply what these technologies can do. The more interesting question is: what are we becoming because they can do it? That question continues to guide my writing, teaching, and research.