[sizzle]

As an ethical UX designer, unethical UX designers/PMs/ need to be shamed for creating/allowing dark pattern in their work. This goes against the fundamental tenets of empathetic UX design and in downright manipulative and bordering evil.

[wastedhours]

But who/where do we draw the line for "ethical" design? Every design decision is on a spectrum, and anything above helping someone eat, sleep or shit, is to some degree "un-needed" design.

[sizzle]

I'd say anything that faces a user in a digital experience that utilizes cheap psychological or behavioral manipulation/UI obsfucation to benefit from their interaction in achieving a desired business metric/outcome in which a user may not have otherwise consented to/authorized said interaction had the user interface been written clearly in plain language (no jargon) and accessibly designed for the common lay person (user testing).

In design, everything is intentional and I fail to believe these cheap UI tricks were anything other than intended as designed by whoever designed it. Any seasoned UX designer worth their title knows if what they are designing removes their agency in deciding on how to act or if it feels icky or wrong in a manipulative sense.

[wastedhours]

But where do you draw the line between offering genuine convenience for the end user and UX tricks? Is underlining a link unethical because it's giving undue weight to highlight an action you want the user to notice? (I know, reductio ad absurdum, but I think it's valid to point out personal interpretation of ethics can be stretched beyond usefulness).

That's more of a rhetorical point - I don't believe most things related to "morality" can ever be as clear as black/white, ethical/unethical, and think it muddies waters to assert it does.

Considered design does not always exactly equal purer-than-pure ethical design.

[GuiA]

Out of curiosity, who or what has designated you an “ethical UX designer”? I’m sure you could find an Apple designer who would claim that forcing people to upgrade ensures that their device is patched and secure, preventing many potentially livelihood threatening problems down the line, so they are just as ethical of an UX designer as you are, if not more so since you do not want to protect people from their device being hacked into and their personal info stolen.

[sizzle]

"Out of curiosity, who or what has designated you an “ethical UX designer”?"

Simply put, I would never allow these dark design patterns into the product if I was the designer, by arguing that it would affect perceived trustworthiness of the company and brand credibility if dark patterns start to become pervasive and the norm across the product. As a professional UX designer, it's my duty to be the voice of the user and I'd put my neck on the line to make sure I voiced my concern before they went over my head and implemented dark patterns. I'll never sign off on it.

The issue is a lack of accountability by designers/PMs who hide behind the company name when these dark patterns are exposed. In an era when companies like Facebook sway political elections through their dark pattern designed newsfeeds, watchdog groups and regulatory bodies need to be created to keep them in check.

[Firadeoclus]

What was described is not "forcing people to upgrade" but tricking people into unintentionally upgrading. Your argument can be used to justify the former but not the latter.

[antoinevg]

Only if the incessant streams of breaking updates were primarily about device security would this be a valid argument.

[amazingman]

The invocation of “primarily” here suggests that your mind is refusing to address reality because it conflicts with your ideals.

[salvar]

What an amazingly deep analysis of a person's mind just based on a few words.

[rorykoehler]

From the UX I've studied it seems that ethics is unrelated. Typically in consumer apps the goal is to increase MAU and engagement and UX is dictated by whatever moves the needle on those areas. It's hard to separate whether people are using the app more because of it's better design through UX design feedback loop iterations or if it is a dark pattern.

For example it is entirely plausible that the sms notification being sent once you put in a 2FA number is completely unrelated. In a normalised database there will only be one phone number for multiple uses. If notifications are set to send to the phone number by default and 2fa uses that phone number the app will not necessarily have knowledge whether the phone number was entered due to a 2fa prompt or something else. It only checks for a phone number and acts accordingly. The 2 people/teams who designed each feature would most probably have no idea how else the number is being used such is the nature of complexity.

[koliber]

> In a normalised database there will only be one phone number for multiple uses.

No! Normalization does not mean keeping only one copy of each piece of data, regardless of category and context. I see this behavior all the time in junior and even some senior devs, both in databases, and when they code.

A piece of information has a type, but it also has a context. A 2FA phone number is different than a marketing contact phone number. It should never be normalized into just one field.

My favorite example of this is people re-using a constant in multiple places in code just because it happens to have the same value. Imagine you have a constant defined as `USER_DISPLAY_AS = 'first_name'`. Then, somewhere, you are building sorting and want to be able to sort by first name or last name. You notice you already have a constant that contains a value 'first_name', so you use it. Not you have tied two completely different things together in your code because you thought you are being DRY.

[rorykoehler]

I don't disagree with you on the type issue but you can see in a large organisation how this would easily fall through the cracks. It's also entirely plausible that an intern came up with the sms notification idea and it wasn't caught in code review. I don't really subscribe to Hanlon's razor but in this context I can understand how it could happen quite easily.

[koliber]

This is a type of error that is often found in code and data modeling. I haven't come across a name for it yet. It most definitely can and does fall through the cracks, in small, medium, and large organizations. It is a code smell and should be eliminated whenever it starts happening. However, it is often quite subtle, and a developer's ego is often stronger than the explanation for why it should not be done that way.

I shall dub it "Krystian's Overoptimistic Denormalization Error", or KODE for short.

[solatic]

> From the UX I've studied it seems that ethics is unrelated. Typically in consumer apps the goal is to increase MAU and engagement and UX is dictated by whatever moves the needle on those areas. It's hard to separate whether people are using the app more because of it's better design through UX design feedback loop iterations or if it is a dark pattern.

No matter which metrics you choose, you run the risk of PM's ordering unethical means of increasing those metrics. A bakery can measure itself by sales volume and ensuing revenue numbers - that doesn't by itself prevent bakery managers from adding addictive drugs to the recipes, nor does it mean that those are poor metrics.

What it does mean is a) the company made some poor hiring decisions along the way, and the best way to deal with that problem is by having some b) ethical review board.

[gt_]

I like the example here. I want to outwardly acknowledge the obvious force that is preventing the baker from putting drugs in their recipe: government regulation and law enforcement.

I am an American but I am well accustomed to learning that other countries are able to prevent certain consumer abuse before it replicates at massive scale by acting early and adjusting along the way.

Does this happen in Europe?

[Normal_gaussian]

We're just introducing the GDPR Europe wide which iterates on the member states existing privacy laws to provide definitive rights to any human in Europe, and obligations to any company dealing with their information.

Abusing the 2FA number is likely illegal in most member states now, and is definitely so at the end of May.

[cja]

Probably you mean EU when you say Europe

[Normal_gaussian]

Absolutely, sorry- bad habit

[gpvos]

MAU = Monthly Active Users