Hostile Design of Everyday Experiences

Consequence Design The hostile design of everyday experiences Ron Bronson Indy Design Week 2020

Hei! I’m Ron. Twitter: @ronbronson Github: @quarterback ron@ronbronson.com

This isn’t a talk for wizards

Definitions

What are anti-patterns? A user interface crafted to deceive a user into doing something they might not otherwise do. Not just online Misdirection Trick Questions Mimic usability heuristics UI dark patterns exist in the everyday world from self-checkout lanes to transit ticket booths. People expect one thing and get something else, either through sleight of hand or outright deceptive design. Deceptive languages or coercion aimed at generating sympathy or stress is another common dark pattern tactic. Dark patterns use best practice heuristics to confuse, trick, or unwittingly convert users.

Let’s talk terms Affordance The physical characteristics of a thing influence its function and use. Friction Anything that prevents users from accomplishing their goals or getting things done. Attention Theft “If I’m spending time and space on something that is bad, then that is time and space not [being] used to boost the awareness of something good…”– @warrenellis

Let’s talk terms Stress cases > edge cases Edge cases diminish user problems. Stress cases acknowledge that not all user journeys are the same & design for it. Closure Experience Wicked Problems Designing the experience for cancellation, closure, or end of a customer journey. “A wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize.”

This isn’t a talk about ethics

Hostile design is deliberately deceptive & arouse stress cases Design frictions can be helpful & are not intentionally deceptive

– Victor Papanek (Design for the Real World, 1971)

Let’s marinate on empathy

How often do you think about closure?

Start asking what happens when people stop using our product or service?

Passive Aggressive Design Decisions are still hostile

A word about integrity No, not that kind.

What about integrity? Engineering discipline associated with the design, assurance and verification functions that ensure a product, process, or system meets its appropriate and intended requirements under stated operating conditions.

Stop abdicating responsibility for hostile design.

Takeaways

Things we should do Listen to people Audit UIs Walk down the street. Canvass unfamiliar people. Diverge from “ideal” cases. Listen to teammates with right perspectives. Not just interactions. Content, too. How will people break it? Who are your non-ideal users? Logging abusive patterns Designated Dissenter Document and flag abusive patterns in things that’ve already shipped. Fix them. In prototyping, call out things that are abusive. You won’t always win, but the conversations are still important. In social media, it seems “devil’s advocates” abound. Every project team needs a designated dissenter. Shift the role amongst team members, too. (Think active threat modeling)

Things we shouldn’t do? Talking about it. Good. Doing nothing? Bad. Cede control to ethicists Create more barriers Blame Management Some people think the best way to solve these problems in tech, is to make it more like a licensed industry with an ethical code. Who will regulate it? How do we solve for the shortage of people in the field already? The problems are structural and societal. Hostile architecture exists everywhere, and tech is subsumed into this paradigm. But it’s an everyday problem, not just a structural problem. Hiring a bunch of ethicists to work in organizations — even if there were budgets to make them proliferate — will not save us. We have to do the hard work.

The last thing design needs is a bar association.

Reading List Stuff you should read

Future Ethics Adversarial Design The Best Interface Is No Interface Design For Real Life Dark Matter & Trojan Horses How To Make Sense of Any Mess Ends

Kiitos! Twitter: @ronbronson Github: @quarterback ron@ronbronson.com