When I first started this game, I was reminded of a flash game I played when I was younger: The Impossible Quiz. Truthfully, as soon as I began, I was filled with anxiety and worry. I wasn’t sure how the game would unfold and the countdown timer and the flashing boxes didn’t help at all. The “Hurry up, time is ticking” message was definitely unhelpful.

The first two pages seemed relatively simple. Creating a password that met the guidelines and selecting or deselecting the boxes were straightforward tasks. I quickly realized that I needed to read the instructions carefully, as they often contradicted what I was accustomed to clicking or responding to.

By page 3, the information page frustrated me. I didn’t enter my real information initially to see if it would work, and wasn’t as easy as I hoped. Since I was lacking the creativity to come up with fake street names or postal codes, I entered my real information. Pretty straight-forward. After my initial attempt, I went back and used random words and it worked fine.

One thing I must mention was that the age scroll bar was particularly annoying. I would drag it to the middle expecting a certain number, but it rarely cooperated. When I couldn’t get the specific age I wanted, I adjusted the birth year to move forward to the next page.

On the final page, I had to select all the “bows”. Surprisingly, I figured out quickly that the images either depicted the action of “bowing” or featured a “bow” object.  It was interesting to see how language can be manipulated in such a way. In the end, I was surprised at how quickly I completed User Inyerface, considering my initial panic and doubt that I would be successful.

Overall, User Inyerface effectively illustrates Tristan Harris’s point about how design can exploit our cognitive biases. The mini help box and the “time is ticking” feature were persistent ways of capturing our attention. The game demonstrates how certain emotions, such as frustration, can be used to drive engagement. The more annoyed a user gets, the harder it is to take a breath, think clearly, and read carefully between the lines. Harris argues that outrage can be a powerful tool for capturing attention, and this game nearly elicited that emotion from me. The Impossible Quiz I mentioned earlier definitely succeeded in doing so in the past.

References

Harris, T. (2017). How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every dayLinks to an external site. [Video]. TED.

• ETEC 540