The online game User Inyerface was a very difficult experience for me. As you can see, it took me at least 15 minutes to complete it, and this was even my second try. Every step of the way, the page was designed in a way that was confusing and was meant to keep me on the page longer. In Tristan Harris’s words from his TEDTalk in 2017, the website was very good at using “persuasive techniques to get people’s attention”. It was very evident that the main goal of UI was keeping the audience on the page longer so that there’s more time for ads to be pushed to them. This was done in a number of ways observed on the website:

  1. Making directions unclear.
    1. Password kept saying unsafe, but it didn’t explain what was missing.
    2. Password needed a Cyrillic character. This could not be typed and I had to go a Google search just so I can copy and paste the character.
  2. Moving the audience’s attention towards other places.
    1. The highlighting numbers at the top were very distracting and it made me want to keep clicking on them.
    2. The “Time is almost up” pop-up appearing frequently disrupted my train of thought.
    3. The timer at the top also makes me wonder if there would be consequences if I take too long.
  3. Making important information hard to see or hard to get to.
    1. When selecting an interest, the ‘select all’ and ‘unselect all’ were hidden from the other lists.
    2. Couldn’t search flags in alphabetical order when selecting the country.
    3. When selecting age, the scroll bar was difficult to slide to the correct number.
  4. Making things very un-user-friendly.
    1. Things moved very slow, such as scrolling to read the terms and moving the “Can we help you” sign out of the way.
    2. It was hard to close the pop-up for showing time is up because usually, the X is at the top of the box, but in this instance, there was no X.

The TEDtalk By Tristan Harris in 2017 was very enlightening for me. I think he raised a very interesting and critical behaviour change that social media companies like Facebook should make, which is the idea of “find and replace” (Harris, 2017). This idea brings us to find all the timelines that are steering us towards having more screen time, and replace them with what we want in our lives. It makes me reflect on my time browsing through my friend’s Facebook when I could have just scheduled a video call with her. My motivation for spending 20 minutes on her Facebook Wall was because I missed her and wanted to know more about what was happening in her life, but that didn’t help connect us or bring us closer together. I am now more aware when I am on the internet of the strategies that companies are using to keep me online for a longer period of time. This can empower me to make more informed decisions on staying online, or doing something that brings more purpose to my life. In Zeynep Tufekci’s TEDtalk about how we are building a dystopia to make people click on ads, she addresses the issues of algorithms detecting people that are most susceptible, and online content being pushed to us on our private screens. This makes me think about how ads are targeting my five-year-old daughter when she is watching YouTube and when she is playing a game on my phone APP. When I asked her why she doesn’t like YouTube for Kids, her answer was, “Because it doesn’t have ads.” The ads that are targeting her are so good at figuring out her interests that she actually chooses to watch them instead of clicking “skip the ad”. Rather than aiming to get my daughter to stay on screen for longer so that she can click on ads, wouldn’t it be better if AI could be used to support goals that would help lead my daughter to spend her time in a more meaningful way?

 

References:

Harris, T. (2017). How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_the_manipulative_tricks_tech_companies_use_to_capture_your_attention?language=en

Tufekci, Z. (2017). We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads. Retrieved from  (Links to an external site.)https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads?language=en (Links to an external site.)