Task 10: Attention economy

User inyerface – an exercise in frustration!

The user inyerface game was anything but subtle about trying to be annoying, since it represented (almost) every tactic I could think of to require a user to slow down, repeat and stay on the website. I was extremely frustrated with the game, which was the point, I know! Maybe the only thing really missing is the extremely annoying audio or music that starts playing on some sites within the first few seconds of opening a page. I absolutely hate that. The user inyerface was surprisingly quiet. They should have added some ticking sounds to that clock that popped up at the beginning of the game!

The time you can see in my screenshot represents the time it took me to actually finish a version once I had figured out how to get past the first page! That took me many attempts and many, many minutes! Once I figured out the right mind-set, I was able to get through it relatively quickly, but the experience makes me shudder to think of how much time, information and personal details I’ve given other websites with similar tactics!

Even though I knew from reading the ‘dark matters’ article, that there were these psychological insights that web developers could use, like hiding information, making it easy for users to make mistakes with default options and buying negative feedback, I still approached the game quite naively.

My experience with the game…

As I started the game, I now can see how the company, Bagyar, was trying very overtly to use the first psychological insight mentioned by Brignull (2011), to hide key information. The text box where the user needed to come up with a password, had instructions that were quite small and really difficult to fulfill, requiring the user to spend time to think about how to come up with a combination (combinations of upper and lower case, numbers, use of special characters). This entangled me at first, especially when that timer came up that appeared to ‘lock’ the page! This tool right there was the source of the most frustration for me. I started and restarted the game numerous times because of it.

Once I progressed past the username and email, I tried out the frustratingly slow ‘help’ bot (these appear everywhere now), and I could see how the Bagyar designers were laughing at us with this tool! I laughed along with it when nothing worked in the help box itself, and it gave some arbitrary number of people already waiting for help when you press ‘help’ (424 people were waiting for help last time I checked). This is like waiting on hold on phone lines more than on websites (“There are 54 people ahead of you in the queue”), but it was amusing!

Baygar also delayed how quickly a user could progress through the website by using a sort of decoy ‘Terms and Conditions’ link that was phrased as a negative. You had to unclick the button to NOT accept the Terms and Conditions to progress, but for naïve users like me who click on links (thinking they should open everything has a hyperlink, especially legal things like terms and conditions!), once you reach this document, the user is again forced to pay attention (in this attention economy, I wasted precious time and effort here) to try to scroll through a document that could not be simply scrolled through at more than a snail’s pace! I actually hurt my index finger trying to desperately force the little button on my mouse to get through this document before the timer popped up around 60 seconds. In retrospect, it was quite funny ☹. Finally, I realized that the timer contained a disguised ‘Close’ link within what I assumed was the copyright information! This was a game-changer for me! At this point, I went back to the dark matter article and began clicking on every link, looking for every trick I could find.

This made going through the second page, the ‘required information page’, relatively easy because I put in gibberish, but actually gave my real birthday so I wouldn’t be caught up with needed to use the age tool at the bottom of the page. I hate these pages that try to require personal information from me. Why would I provide it unless I am paying for something (even then, why do I need to tell them so much detail??).

The third page was a selection of ‘three personal interests’. This was a blatant ploy to get personal information out of me, so I chose randomly, but I did get tripped up by the box that ‘checked all the other boxes’ – this was another example of a psychological trick (a sort of a default box that you click and then makes all the other boxes), so takes more of your attention or maybe a user might just leave all the boxes checked (a sort of goldmine for the company because they could get access to the rights to send you emails on all sorts of things).

The final ‘captcha’ page with the required checking of boxes that represented ‘bows’ was pretty easy for me because I’m a language/communication teacher, so word forms are my forte. Everything was a ‘bow’, just a verb or noun form. This was a tricky way to keep our attention on the web page if you weren’t thinking this way though.

Getting to the end of the game led to a page on Bagyar’s website that showed current openings to apply for a job, which as everyone remarks, is a clever way to get potential candidates to apply to work for them (with the backhanded compliment that if you are ‘good enough’ to get through the game, you are ‘good enough’ to work for them).

Reflection

This game made me very aware of the way a website can be designed to keep a user on a web page, presumably to get more information and time (attention) from our use. Combined with the resources in this module on the history of marketing, and the TED talks given by Harris and Tufekci, this week’s material is sobering, though not entirely new to me. The user inyerface game made it clear how many ‘tricks’ can be inserted into set of seemingly innocent text boxes and hidden links within a website. This reinforced what Harris was saying about how each of us as users of online content needs to be aware that we are persuadable. This is a powerful message to understand because everyone I know has a conceit that somehow we will ‘beat the algorithms’ or the avoid the psychological tricks built into a website. I know this isn’t true for myself, especially as I am bombarded by online forms and requests for information on websites as I am usually quite distracted and multi-tasking as I make my way through a normal day online. I have been tricked into the ‘forced continuity’ using ‘freemiums’ for apps and software, and am still trying to extricate myself from some of these contracts (Course Hero is so frustrating). Currently when I click on any new website, I receive a popup box that asks me if I agree to the use of ‘cookies’ to track my use of that site. I think this must be because of a new (probably EU-directed) ruling about privacy. However, I question how effective these popup requests are since it is difficult to make decisions or to be clear how choices about using different kinds of cookies on a website would affect your experience. I definitely am experiencing some ‘consent fatigue‘ as explained here. I question the sincerity and good intentions from all these websites who are setting up these ‘cookie consent’ boxes since must be known most users will simply select ‘all cookies’ (the ‘default’ option explained by Brignull, 2011).

I am very concerned about the use of cookies and tracking. Many of us as individual, personal users, don’t truly understand the repercussions behind the fact that companies can and do sell your data to marketing companies, and that your data, though ‘de-identified’ when sold, can be quite easily traced back to the original user. This has major implications for privacy, obviously, but also safety (physically, socially, politically). I’m sure many have read about the case of the Catholic priest who was ‘outed’ publicly after being tracked based on his use of Grindr. How was his personal data traced by the conservative website that released what should have been completely private? Once data has been collected from websites, apps or social media platforms, there is also the issue of whether a company that has amassed all this personal data can be compelled to release this data. I’ve seen this play out in relation to political or social activists. It’s extremely sobering.