Design has become addictive

As a digital designer, the things you work on can have a serious impact on those around you.

Since its beginnings there has always been individuals who have warned against the addictiveness of computer use. Jumping forward to today, dark patterns, used to manipulate how individuals act online is more rampant than ever.

This is defined as Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) and classed as a form of behavioural addiction.

Ethical design

Ethical design refers to design that resists manipulative patterns, respects data privacy, encourages co-design, and is accessible and human-centered. Currently, no universally sanctioned framework exists, though there are individual frameworks to handle some of the key aspects:

Usability

Today, usability has established is a fundamental need for every digital interface. If a product is not intuitive to use, it is viewed as a design failure and users will leave in droves. And rightly so; with things like cars having digital user interfaces it is our moral responsibility as designers to make things that are simple to use, secure, and devoid of mistakes that could cause accidents.

A good places to get started when creating usable interfaces is the Material Design System by Google. Material is a design system created by Google to help teams build high-quality digital experiences for Android, iOS, Flutter, and the web.

Accessibility

Like usability, inclusive design has become a standard item in the requirement list of many designers and companies. Accessible design benefits all, as it attempts to cover as many needs and capabilities as possible. The definitive source for all things accessibility are the WCAG Guidelines. These are an internationally recognised set of recommendations for improving web accessibility. If you find these guidelines a bit daunting then a few other great resources are Accessibility resources by Andrew Hick and the Gov wiki for Accessibility testing.

Privacy

The topic of privacy has become much more prevalent in recent years. More and more services are using privacy as their USP (unique selling point). With analytics and trackers corporations have access to an abundance of personal information. As designers we have to consider what information is strictly necessary for services to work. If sensitive information is needed, think how to be as transparent about how this will be used; make people aware of the potential risks without overloading them. There re no frameworks that I am aware of for general privacy. However, when conducting deign research The Little Book of Design Research Ethics is a great place to start.

Dark UX

I often find myself on my laptop scrolling through recommended feeds on social media.

Social media apps are designed to be addictive. Utilizing genuine Psychology, they are designed to keep our eyes on our screens because the more time and attention we give to these platforms, the more profit the companies generate through advertising. So, designers intentionally create features to be addictive.

Dark UX patterns can also be used to manipulate user journeys, forcing you onto pages or into subscriptions you didn't originally want.

There is a responsibly for designers to lower the addictiveness of these products. The Center for Humane Technology has some useful information on this topic.

It is tough to create a business case for ethics

Ideally, in design projects, we should always map out exactly how we can prevent creating addictive and inaccessible products. However, the reality is much less simple.

There are many constraints (time, budget, resources) to consider all the ethical implications of our work.

In many cases, companies simply do not see the value of investing into it. As a designer you have to push against many existing internal paradigms which if not managed correctly are akin to the task faced by Sisyphus.

Some of the best ways to get started are:

Company Values

If mission and values of the companies we work for align with any of these ethics, we can challenge the company to truly live up to its promises and support it in carrying out its mission. This is tough if the values do not line up.

Testing

Conducting regular user tests with stakeholders, and working collaboratively with different departments helps to identify the edge cases. Many forms of testing don't require a large group of participants to yield effective results.

Frameworks

Some UI frameworks like the aforementioned Material Design System can really help to handle accessible and usable components. Gov.uk has some good component examples too.

If you are looking to create your own component library then Storybook.js is a great tool. It helps build UI components and pages in isolation and has ally plugins to make sure components are accessible.

Being Brave

The last option is the one im sure everyone likes the least, I know I do. If you truly care about making the internet a better place for everyone then sometimes you just have to put your foot down and call some meetings. It might not get you too far but if you gave it your all then there is nothing more you can do.