- [Instructor] Sorry to break this to you, but when you're going about your day, minding your own business, you're being controlled. Okay, you're not exactly being told what to do, but if you're
walking down the street, throwing away your trash, or even sitting on a bench, there are ways you are being manipulated. How? Design. Here are 10 ways governments control your behavior with clever design every day. (electronic music) - [Cartoon Figure] Amazing. - [Instructor] Number
10, fake CCTV cameras. It seems nowadays that
there's a CCTV camera everywhere you look, inside every shop, outside every building, on streetlights, telephone poles, you name it, there's a camera. However what you may not know is that a lot of them are fake. They're placed there at
a fraction of the cost of a real camera just to make you think you're being watched, and to deter you from doing anything you shouldn't. The exact same thing goes for a lot of speed cameras on the road. Number nine, the Camden Bench. During 2012, in the trendy
London borough of Camden, huge slabs of concrete started to appear on the streets. It turned out these were actually benches, but not your ordinary, comfortable, welcoming benches. These benches were designed specifically to influence and deter all sorts of bad behavior. For example, the bench has no crevices, so drug dealers can't use them to hide their merchandise, like they do with other benches. Also, the angular design
deters skateboarders from skimming across its edges, and it also prevents the bench from being used by rough sleepers, as the sloped surface makes it difficult to lie on. Another clever feature of this bench is that it has a waterproof coating to make graffiti impossible on it. Finally, it deters bag theft due to recesses along the
benches front and back allowing people to store their bags behind their legs out of harm's way. This bench has received a lot of criticism for being anti homeless,
but what do you think? Is the design a cause of controversy, or is it just a pragmatic solution to these problems? Number eight, armrests. Staying with benches,
governments have used other designs to curb behavior, like loitering and rough sleeping. If you see a bench in
your town that is sloped or has an armrest in the
middle, that's intentional. They stop people lying down, discouraging homeless people from sleeping in the area. The government in Rotterdam
went one step further. They installed half benches. These are benches you can lean on, but you can't sit or lie on them. They're designed to stop people loitering in certain areas of the city. Number seven, anti-skateboarding designs. If you've ever seen seemingly random strips of metal placed on low walls, curbs, or pavements outside buildings, these aren't just to make the place look a bit avant garde. They are there to discourage skateboarders from grinding the ledges,
jumping the curbs, and generally using public space as a skate park. These metal chunks actually have a name, and are known as pigs' ears, and were first used in San Francisco, but have now spread across the world. Number six, more anti-homeless designs. Homelessness is a big problem in most cities across the world. Unfortunately, rather than tackling the source of the problem, many cities are trying
to stop homeless people from sleeping rough by making it as hard for them as possible. If you see bumpy, rocky
surfaces under bridges, or outside buildings,
chances are they're designed to stop homeless people sleeping there, as it's not very comfortable. A private property company in London took it a step further,
by placing sharp spikes outside their flats. There was a massive public outcry, though, and they were eventually removed. Number five, trash cans. Not even the harmless act
of throwing your litter away is free from design manipulation. Many government trash cans nowadays are slanted so people can't sit on them, although why you'd want to sit on a bin in the first place is anyone's guess. They also have smaller openings. This is to stop people disposing of their own large items
in public trash cans. Go to the tip, people. Number four, anti-sticker streetlights. Have you ever seen
streetlights in big cities which have bobbly plastic
coverings around them? These aren't to give passersby a pleasant sensation to
touch as they walk past. They're to stop people putting stickers on the streetlights, so
if you've lost your cat, or are advertising your band's next gig, you'll have to look somewhere else to stick your sign. Sorry. Number three, ATM boundaries. Here's a more positive one, showing that sometimes the powers that be have our best interests
at heart after all. And it's another one from our old friends at Camden Council. In 2003, they decided to put yellow excursion zones around some ATMs in the town. Only the person using the ATM is allowed in the box. It's designed to stop people from shoulder surfing, which is basically when fraudsters lurk behind the ATM user trying to look at their pin. Number two, no seats. Let's give governments a break, and quickly turn the spotlight on private companies using design to control what we do. In this case, spending your money. 35 million people use
London Heathrow airport's terminal five every year. That's just under 100,000 people a day, so how many free seats
do you think there are in the terminal? I'll tell you. 700. If you want to sit down while you wait for your plane, and these seats are taken, you're welcome in one of the 25 bars, cafes, or restaurants. There's everything from Starbucks to Gordon Ramsey's restaurant. Of course you'll have to spend money on food and drink before you can take the weight off your feet. This feature of manipulative design exists to take the money from your pocket, and it has paid off
fantastically for Heathrow. In 2015, retailing at Heathrow brought in over 500 million pounds. Number one, light manipulation. Even the way things are lit can be used to manipulate your behavior. In 2009, residents of a housing estate in England were bothered by
teenagers hanging around, getting up to all kinds
of anti social behavior. So what did they do about it? Well, the people that ran the estate installed fluorescent pink lights by all the areas the teenagers gathered, but why pink lights? Well pink lights highlight blemishes on the skin, such as teenage acne. The hope was the teenagers would turn up, everyone would see how
spotty their faces were. They'd be embarrassed
and go somewhere else. Mad, but true. More seriously, though, some councils even put fluorescent blue lights
in their public restrooms, and this blue light stops people injecting drugs in there. Blue lights make it more difficult for drug users to find
their veins, apparently. This practice is also used in night clubs, so if you go into a night club toilet and everything's lit in blue, there's a reason for that. Which one do you think is the smartest? Do you know of any other ways we're being directed by design? Leave a comment and let us know. Also, if you enjoyed this video, please make sure to like
the video and subscribe. We'll be making more videos like this in the future, so it
will keep you notified. Thanks for watching.
