Companies have a mantra, ‘human centered designed’. Design that is by its very nature, intended for humans. Don Norman, one of the founding fathers of human centered design (HCD)helped bring the concept mainstream while working at Apple.
I am a user experience designer and for the most part, HCD is wonderful. As a UX designer, I help design why an interface functions the way it does. HCD is an umbrella term that encompasses a whole suite of tools, fundamentals and frameworks that myself and other designers use to design interfaces for your tools, your car, your television, your home thermostat, your doorbells, lights, computer, phone, pretty much anything with a screen. HCD extends into the physical world as well but I am going to focus on the digital space because that’s where I spend my professional time.
As a designer it’s my job to put the user first. In the industry we have tools to remind ourselves who our users are. Who you are. We create personas, journey maps, service design blueprints to understand, to remind us that you, the user, are at the center of our universe. We study how, where, and why you interact with our products to fine-tune them. To make the experience of using them pleasurable, to improve your (the user’s) experience.
Sure, in the beginning, yes, the user was at the center of our universe(by ‘ours’ I mean the business’s universe). But as time has progressed it’s less about Human Centered Design and more about Business Centered Design. Most businesses have conflated the creation of a digital product with data mining, and one of the single most effective tools to increase adoption of products is a positive user experience.
How can we get the user to comply with what we want as a business with as little friction as possible?
Businesses have systematically weaponized user experience.
Instead of designing products that are radically transparent and are designed, by default, with the best possible intentions for you as a user — for you, as a human. Almost ever single product has, by default, been designed in such a manner to allow that business to be as invasive as possible. I’ll give you a simple example:
Tik Tok is a platform that allows users to create and share short videos or ‘toks’. Tik Tok doesn’t care about the quality of the ‘toks’ you’ve created, they care about adoption. Which is why new users to the platform have a higher chance that one of their first few toks will go viral. They’ve hooked users into mindlessly creating new videos with the hopes that they’ll go viral again—weaponizing user experience. And for what? For Tik Tok to guzzle up as much of your data as possible without the full awareness of their users.
Could Tik Tok create an app that doesn’t wolf down as much data as possible and still function properly? Absolutely.
Would they? Certainly not.
This of course boils down to choices. On one had, we could design a product with the user at the center. A product where we really do have the user’s best interests at heart. Part of those interests being a user’s privacy. By default, settings are tuned on that protect users. We ask for as little information as possible and we use this information responsibly and delete as much data as possible.
Or, we choose to build a product that by it’s very nature is very much business centered—designed in such a manner to trick users into thinking that we have their best interests at heart while actively collecting as much information as possible about them, store it forever and uses this information to influence.
Making money and creating a product with the user’s best interests and privacy in mind are not diametrically opposing principles.
However! Currently, we are all making a subconscious choice. Choose convenience or choose privacy. For example, Apple’s ecosystem is systematically designed around convenience and security. Buy into this ecosystem and you now have all your information available on any(of their) devices, anywhere.
At the cost of (that) Apple device and your privacy, you have the privilege to use their single sign on to keep you private from other websites , you can use Apple Pay and their credit card to keep your purchasing private from other merchants, and you can use their App Store that let’s you know what data other apps are collecting.
Yes. Apple has realized how powerful of a marketing tool privacy is. As long as Apple knows everything about you they’ll gladly protect you from everyone else. Unlike Tik Tok you’ve paid Apple for the device and yet they still collect data on you.
But that choice is for you to make, as long as you are AWARE you are making it. However, all of these experiences are designed in such a manner so you don’t have to make a choice — Apple has made it for you by product designers who use human centered design principles to create experience so delightful and ‘friction-less’ that you’d never want to choose otherwise. Tik Tok has designed an experience that is intentionally addicting so that users are compelled to habitually create videos so that their app stays on your device as long as possible.
I believe people, users, humans have the right to choose what is best for them. But in order to choose, they first need to be made aware of their choices(and the true truth, the factual truth in order to facilitate choice). I also believe that when it comes to most digital products, which are increasingly more complicated, a lot of people don’t know what is best for them. I believe most people trust that the products they buy, the services they use, and the apps they download are, by default, designed with their best interests in mind. You know, human centered.
I believe that most companies are exploiting that trust and instead, they’re putting the onus on the user to disentangle what the product is actually doing by asking them to read through the enigmatic Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. And, intentionally designing an experience where users click ‘Accept’, capitulate, and move on with as little thought as possible.
Its effortless for a company to state that they are human centered. Creating slick looking interfaces with as little fiction possible to accomplish some Key Performance Indicator (KPI) isn’t human centered design. A good litmus test would be to actually sit down with your users and show them all the data you have on them. If they’re reaction is ‘what the fuck’ then maybe what you’ve designed is less human centered and more business centered.
Businesses don’t have an inalienable right to user’s data just because they built a product. And I am not vilifying cash flow. Plenty of companies have built products that are truly user-centered and respect their users. ProtonMail and Signal are two that come to mind.
I can’t help but wonder, is the unspoken goal for most digital products (free or subscription based) data collection? We as product designers should be striving for radical transparency with our users, there should be no surprises.
