Ethics in Experience Design

Experience Design is the language through which the functionality talks with the needs. As much as this sounds like it takes the high road, at times, it does not. Quite often, more than one could notice, experience design does exploit the need knowingly or unknowingly. The question at hand is that, should there be a playbook that sets an absolute standard of what it can exploit and what it cannot. If yes, how easy or difficult would it be to come up with such an ethical playbook. Through this write-up, I will try to dissect this seemingly abstract problem and come with a thought guide to better understand and respond to this dilemma. However, before we arrive at any judgment, I must put aspects from different perspectives to appreciate that this is not a conversational problem to solve. Also, to better substantiate my arguments, I will try to put forth conceptually similar theories from different disciplines because somewhere, I see them glaringly identical to the problem at hand.

First, let’s arrive at it from the point of view of business since it presents an objective perspective. It looks quite straightforward: a company is built to gain customer trust and, consequently, wallet share. Once it figures out how to do it, it directs its all functions to rally in that direction. Most of the functions operate with this mandate, rather bluntly except experience design. It chases in every so sweet way. It can turn a blunt functionality into an irresistible feature that could draw out wallet share from its customer without making them feel that companies are doing anything but being awfully unethical. It sounds wrong in many ways only while looking back and perhaps not while going through it.

To better explain this abstract behaviour, I will paraphrase the Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman’s theories from his book -Thinking Fast and Slow. The brain is our decision making headquarters with two systems — System 1 and System 2. System 1 is the one that jumps in quickly and takes charge whenever there is a need to make any decision. It is the less rational one among the two. However, since it needs to act relatively quickly, it takes short cuts in thinking by accessing information in the brain and creating a simple framework to act, which might be biased most of the time based on limited information it has, or it can access. System 2 thinks and acts more deliberately, but it is sluggish. We are surrounded by so many products that try to steal our attention all the time. Even when we consciously choose to adopt one product, there are several decisions to be made. Experience design, if done right, makes it easy for the brain to make a decision. However, it does not have a moral guide of its own. It can prey on the quick and abrupt decision-making tendency of System 1 and, most of the time, purely in the organization’s commercial interests without understanding or act knowingly in the best interests of the customers. What makes the problem worse is that people at the helm of an organization are too few to imagine all the consequences that their thoughts and actions might have. And even if they can imagine, the pressure to deliver- for a designer to its team, for the project manager to his business head, the business head to its CEO, the CEO to its board and investors, so on -keeps them ruthlessly attached to business goals which are mostly monetary than ethical. There are two examples that struck in this context- The delete account feature of Amazon and its one-click purchase. While it is super easy for the customer to create an account on the Amazon website, the option to delete the account is not intuitive. It almost feels that the “delete account” is hidden under a complicated maze of steps and it makes it extremely difficult for the customer to find it. Moreover, even if the customer does find it, she has to explicitly contact the customer support who would then make it hard for her to delete it. Similarly, amazon one-click purchase on the phone plays on the customer’s impulsive behaviour on the phone compared to more composed decisions that they make while purchasing on the desktop.

From the consumers’ point of view, it is natural to demand that companies act well in advance and well in good faith, keeping the totality of consumers’ interests in mind. Needless to say, they expect the companies to act ethically naturally and not create any dark patterns while weeding out the needs and finding irresistible solutions. Between the companies, which are mostly people, and the consumers -how do we elect a moral judge? This conflict is quite similar to the tussle between the capitalist and socialist view of the economy. Is the money the bigger king or the people? The answer in my mind at the end always boils down to what people want. I believe all the consumers over a larger interval of time will exhibit wiser judgment which will work in the best of their interests. In my view, it will be rare that any of the dark patterns designed by the companies will ever go amiss by all the consumers all the time. They will reveal themselves. When they do, people will choose to act in a way that is in their greater good. This too like other elements of voice of the customer (VoC) will be tapped by the designers as a part of their consumer research. When these consumer signals become overwhelmingly large to ignore, companies will accommodate them into their new products or new features. This in turn, will become a cue for the rest of the companies to emulate. Consequently, the larger good of the people will eventually be restored.

Consumers across the globe inevitably have to go through this journey full of agony. Just like the way we are going through the agony of global warming. At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, let me elaborate further. As a global economy, we are at our peak of consuming non-renewable resources, and at the same time, many technology leaders are investing in greener energy solutions. While they are flashy and trendy for today, they will become a norm in the coming times. Hopefully, in a decade, the entire economy will correct itself and switch to greener solutions because it is the only resort for humans to survive.

Similarly, ethics in experience design will too evolve through a similar cycle. While the current actions and decisions are blindly motivated by monetary interests and a wiser part of the consumer community does not have the authority to alter it. Over time, being ethical and moral will be the only way for companies to survive in the market and attract consumer attention. What is a minor trend today, of taking the higher road, will eventually become the only way to gain a consumer’s trust.