11 | “Evil by Design: interaction design to lead us into temptation” by Chris Nodder
This book by Chris Nodder, as the title already suggests, is concerned with the seven deadly sins pride, sloth, gluttony, anger, envy, lust, and greed. But what do these human traits have to do with design? First of all, it is about understanding human behaviour and comprehending that human frailty can provide a learning experience. As Nodder argues, designers work very hard to control behaviours and emotions, so design is all about persuasion. Only relatively late, did psychologists and researchers find out why people behave and react a certain way. So, design is also often used to make money out of our weaknesses even if the intentions might be good. Most of the time, we do not even realise that we are manipulated.
Nodder defines evil design as something that “creates purposefully designed interfaces that make users emotionally involved in doing something that benefits the designer more than them” (xv). Therefore, he groups design techniques and the seven sins together since they both relate to human traits:
“These days, the sense in which pride is bad is probably best summed up by the word hubris - arrogance, loss of touch with reality, overestimating one’s capabilities, thinking that you can do no wrong (...) It’s all about how the brain manages to rationalize or resolve two conflicting concepts: a state called cognitive dissonance” (1-2). -> changing opinions is much easier than changing behaviours!
Provide many reasons for people to use your product!
Social proof: make it/messages personal and emotional (by including friends)!
Eliminate doubt by repeating positive messages!
Change opinions by emphasising general similarities!
Use images of certification and endorsement!
Help people complete tasks, sets, and collections!
Depend on people’s desire for oder: make them clean up!
“(...) describes laziness, but laziness is the outcome rather than the source of sloth. Sloth is actually avoidance of work or a “don’t care” feeling. (...) Thinking of sloth as avoiding work or not caring about outcomes gives us a useful perspective; namely that people are not motivated to do more than the absolute minimum work to achieve their online aims. You could call this “lazy,” but that isn’t necessarily true. Instead, customers demand easy-to-use sites and software. We have been trained to look for cues that help us move forward in our tasks with the minimum of effort, and we’ll often abandon sites that make us work too hard (39)”.
Desire lines: From A to B with as few barriers as possible!
Create a path of least resistance and make sure that your end goal is the easiest way through the process!
Reduce options and include smart defaults to smoothen the decision process!
Emphasise your first choice and make people accept this as theirs too!
Make options hard to find or understand!
Negative options: sign people up by default and make it hard for them to alter their decisions by hiding the desire lines in plain sight!
“(...) occurs when we over-consume to the point of extravagance or waste. (...) Companies encourage this overabundance by making us feel like we deserve to be rewarded and by escalating our level of commitment beyond what we first intended, drawing us in from early engagement through to full-on compliance. Sites also make us fearful of missing out—scarcity, exclusivity, and loss aversion play on the fears behind gluttony (67)”.
Make customers work for (exclusive) rewards!
Hide the math (show answers rather than the workings)!
Show the problems (mention weaknesses before the user finds out) = build trust!
Foot-in-the-door: gain commitment to a small thing to convince about a big thing!
Door-in-the-face: first ask for a big thing and after being turned down ask for a smaller thing (the user is more likely to agree now since he/she is guilty of turning you down)!
Present hard decisions only after you are sure that the user is invested!
The Tom Sawyer effect: scarcity breeds desire!
(...) is fear with a focus: an understanding of what caused the fear and often also the capacity to resolve the fear by acting to remove it. It’s an active emotion; people want to deal with the cause of their anger in ways they don’t with other emotions. This happens on an intellectual and also a physical level, with biological changes as a result of feeling anger. (...) Anger has different effects on judgment and decision making than do other negative emotions. Anger influences how we perceive, reason, and choose. Its effects spill over from the initial cause to other things we’re doing, affecting how we respond to situations that have no bearing on the thing that initially made us angry (103)”.
Use humour to deflect anger and defuse the situation!
Use metaphysical arguments to beat opponents (have something that science can’t explain)!
Use anonymity to encourage repressed behaviours!
Give people permission and remove individual responsibility!
Scare people and remove that fear by presenting your product as the solution!
“(...) as a race we humans seem to be almost hard-wired to react to other people’s success with envy. (...) In other words, we hate feeling like we’ve lost out. That feeling of deprivation, inferiority, or shame is the basis of destructive envy. With destructive envy, it’s not just that we want the thing that someone else has; we also want that other person to not have it because their having it makes us feel inferior. In these situations, we make decisions based not just on benefit to ourselves, but also to make gains over others around us. So, even if we found ourselves in a situation in which we could gain more by cooperating with someone, destructive envy dictates that we’d often rather not work together than be in a position in which that other person benefitted more than we did. Whether the root of someone’s envy is benign or destructive, it’s a powerful motivating force. That means it can be harnessed to make customers do things (137-138)”.
Create desirability for your object to produce envy as a motivating force!
Create something aspirational and produce benign envy!
Make people feel ownership before they’ve bought!
Create status differences to drive behaviour (otherwise there is no envy)!
Emphasise achievement as a form of status and train them to keep coming back for more!
Let users advertise their status within a community!
Make people feel important and give them recognition to earn their trust/love!
“We might often think of lust as sexual, but it actually describes an intense desire for any item. When we lust after something we stop thinking rationally. We look only for additional reasons to have it, not for reasons to abstain. So, when people have that craving, it doesn’t take much of a nudge to turn desire into action by convincing them to fulfill those lustful feelings. (...) Lust is the starting point; envy and greed are the results. To harness lust, companies must first get people to like them so that they are inclined to do what the company wants (169)”.
Flattery makes people more responsive to persuasion!
Frame your message as a question and give the user a sense of being addressed directly and individually!
Create an in-group and show your customers that they belong there!
Give something to get something and people will feel obligated to give back!
Make something free and eliminate rationality this way!
Sell the intangible value and change the perception rather than the reality!
“(...) is the desire to get or keep more stuff than you need, either accumulating
money or possessions (“whoever has the most toys wins”) or just to feel
better than someone else does. (...) All talk of sin aside, there does seem to be a correlation between having more than one needs and being selfish. When talking about haves and have-nots, there are four possible behaviors: selfishness, altruism, spite, and cooperation. Greed happens when people pursue their own agenda at the expense of others, leading to selfish or spiteful behaviour (203)”.
Customers should win instead of finish/buy something (description matters)!
Further blow up people’s self-esteem and feeling of skills and mastery by giving them quick wins and train them to continue!
Make rewards look like they were earned by someone’s skills rather than luck!
Make sure that people have little reason to leave your site by walling them in!
Own the anchor point and control the terms of your offering!
Move from money to tokens with an arbitrary value!
Increase the price and people will appreciate your product more!
Aside from the smart idea to connect the seven deadly sins to design, this book provides a nice collection of tips to persuade people to something you want. This can be helpful when you try to make a profit. Nevertheless, I would be careful with some of these principles as the online user has already learned what not to trust and quickly realises when he is being manipulated. At that point it is already too late since he will have lost trust in you and maybe even avoid your product. Although most of the ideas are rather subtle and might really work, I am somehow repelled by his main message that design is all about manipulating, influencing, and exploiting human behaviour. But maybe I am too idealistic about the field, who knows. However, aside from my mixed feelings, the book is well-written, presents nice examples, and is definitely worth reading. You will find a new perspective on design tools and what to choose for your work.
Buy the book here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1118422147/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1118422147&linkCode=as2&tag=grumpyoldgit-20
