The perfect ending to a perfectly frustrating excercise, the Carlton dance.
In this module we are looking at the fascinating topic of user interface. In task 10 this website game cheekily challenges all your assumptions which now come as second (clicking) nature, to make your way through a webform in which everything seems designed against your intuition, aptly named ‘User Inyerface‘. Full disclosure, I am publishing this late, not because I didn’t start on time, but because I tried so many times initially I gave up. I knew it was an option not to finish, but that just didn’t sit well with me. Upon reading one of my classmate’s (thank you Jerry Chen) submissions, I saw the “You Are Awesome” (similar to above) screenshot, and I thought, ok, it can be done! I took a deep breath and through the power of peer pressure, I accomplished the first time what I had been fighting with many times before. I had thought it was a race against a clock, in reality what I needed to do was slow down, read carefully and not follow any of my ‘instincts’ that have been developed in my mind over the years of surfing a webspace designed by people. Regardless of the motivations of these designers, over time, they have now created a set of expectations. Humans function on heuristics, learned mental short cuts, all the time as the world is far to complex to think about the why of every decision we make. It dawned on me through doing this excerise that the very same is true for the virtual landscape. We learn what is normal, we create the mental short cut and default to it. A number of assumptions becomes our second nature. With this knowledge UX designers can use that for good or ill user manipulation. The creator of User Inyerface deriberately designed everything to be difficult to demonstrate the phenomenon, but how and why was it difficult? Let’s take a look at a couple of user assumptions:
- The timer! This perhaps was the simplest and effectively deceptive to me. “Hurry up! Time is ticking” it says, giving you a sense that there is a time limit and rushing you so as you do not read carefully, relying on your mental shortcuts. But the timer is ticking up from zero to potentially 99hrs 99minutes, 99 seconds, but your brain quickly assumes it is a countdown. In actuality there is essentially no time limit.
- The default. When we are presented with a ‘choice’ the default is set to be the affirmative and made easy to choose. The designer will do this perhaps most frequently when asking you to agree to terms. It is really not a choice as it is most often waiving a legal liability or disagreement in order to continue. Should you not agree, you cannot continue. But we must go through the theatrics for some legal purpose. Do you agree to this 100 pages of small print to update your privacy settings: YES & CONTINUE. no & exit.
We see this default ‘flipped’ many times in the User Inyourface game. Here is but the first two examples:
What I loved about this game is that the designer demonstrated to you what you expect by challenging you to move through a webform in which everything is the opposite of what you have come to expect. This then presumably should challenge the user to question, why are things laid out the way they are, what is the designer’s goal and is that truly in line with the user’s goals?
Our readings go on to delve into the most common goal of designers today and that is attention, your attention! In an educational setting it is very relevant today to empower young learners with the tools to understand where, why, and how their attention is being directed.
References
- Bagaar. (2019). User InyerfaceLinks to an external site. [web game].
- Brignull, H. (2011). Dark patterns: Deception vs. honesty in UI design.Links to an external site. A List Apart, 338.
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