Designing for Behavior: How I Created a Wall that Monkeys Can’t Climb
I was sitting at my desk and reading. when I looked outside the window, a monkey was casually walking along our boundary wall. I kept watching it for a moment. For the monkey, it was probably just another route.
For us, it had become a recurring problem.
I live in an area close to forested region, where monkeys frequently enter residential spaces. Over time, there have been incidents of monkey bites, things being stolen, and growing concerns about their increasing presence in our locality.
But that day, instead of simply thinking about the problem, I started looking at the wall.
Why does the monkey choose to walk on it?
And the answer seemed obvious.
- The wall was flat.
- It was stable.
- It was easy to walk on.
In other words, we had unintentionally created a convenient pathway. That small observation made me look at the problem differently.
The obvious solutions weren’t very appealing
There are already ways people try to keep monkeys away from residential areas like thorn wires, electric fencing, and other physical deterrents.
But these solutions come with their own concerns.
- They can potentially hurt animals and humans.
- And some of them can also be expensive for individual households.
So I started asking a different question:
Instead of making the wall dangerous, can we make it difficult to walk on?
That became the starting point of my exploration.
I wasn’t trying to completely eliminate monkeys from the area. That wouldn’t be realistic.
Instead, I wanted to explore whether I could reduce the likelihood of them using the boundary wall as a route, while keeping the intervention safer and more affordable
Designing for “No Grip”
I started exploring a simple question:
What if we changed the top of the wall instead of adding something to it?
The existing wall has a flat, horizontal surface. That gives a monkey a stable place to put its feet, maintain balance, and continue walking along the boundary.
So I explored a different wall profile.
Instead of ending with a flat top, the wall would transition into a curved or angled surface. The top would gradually change direction, reducing the amount of stable, horizontal surface available for walking.
The idea isn’t to make the top extremely sharp or pointed.
It’s to remove the things that make the wall comfortable to walk on:
- Less room to place its feet
- Harder to maintain balance for long time
- Harder to move along the edge
- Avoids turning the wall into a physical hazard
- No additional wires, spikes, or electrical systems
In simple terms:
Don’t make the wall dangerous. Make it a bad walking surface.
And that became the core idea behind my exploration.
Looking at it from a UX perspective
This is where an ordinary wall started becoming a UX problem for me. I wasn’t designing a screen or an app. I was designing around behaviour and observed what was happening.
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Then I looked for what in the environment was enabling that behaviour.
The flat wall was essentially an affordance.
It communicated:
“You can walk here.”
So instead of trying to fight the behaviour directly, I started thinking about changing the environment that was enabling it.
What if the wall communicated:
“This isn’t a comfortable path.”
But I don’t expect it to “solve” the monkey problem
There is an important distinction here. I don’t expect a redesigned wall to completely stop monkeys from entering an area. Monkeys are adaptable. If one route becomes difficult, they may simply find another.
So the goal isn’t:
“Stop monkeys completely.”
It’s:
“Can we reduce the likelihood of them using this particular route?”
Even if only some monkeys decide that the wall isn’t worth walking on, that could still make a difference. And importantly, the intervention is trying to achieve that without relying on methods that could seriously harm animals or people.
The next question: Does it actually work?
This is where the concept needs to move beyond an idea. I’d want to explore different wall profiles and test questions such as:
- What shape makes the surface difficult to walk on?
- How much curvature or angle is actually necessary?
- Would monkeys adapt to the new shape over time?
- Can it be built using affordable materials?
- Would homeowners actually be willing to modify their existing walls?
Because having an idea isn’t the same as having a solution.
It needs to be tested.
What a monkey taught me about UX
What started as an ordinary moment at my desk turned into a small design exercise.
That, to me, is one of the interesting things about UX.
Design problems don’t always arrive as project briefs.
Sometimes they appear while you’re working.
Sometimes they are sitting outside your window.
And sometimes, they have four legs, a tail, and a very convenient walking path.
The wall was never really the problem.
The way it was designed was.
The Idea May Not Work, But the Thinking Matters
Even if this idea doesn’t work because of factors like monkey adaptability, the wall design, weather, or other practical constraints, I still love the process of exploring it. Taking an everyday problem, questioning the obvious solutions, and thinking beyond what already exists is what strengthens me as a designer.
