Using User Inyerface felt like I was caught in a web of intentional manipulation. It constantly used deliberate confusion like buttons that weren’t active, time pressure and reversed color cues. It felt like my cognitive load was very heavy and I found it very overwhelming to begin with. User Inyerface uses the same mechanisms that normal website use but made them completely obvious and painfully frustrating. It is designed to highlight the features that companies/designers use to hold our attention, wether it is frustrating or not.
What I noticed was how effectively the designers captured the struggle between users and designers is a satirical way. I found that my attention was constantly on the wrong thing but as I started to ignore the noise and intentionally looked at all of the screen I was able to see what was important. I had to really focus my attention to filter the over stimulating features.
This whole process was a kind of experiential learning experience in the features used by designers and companies to persuade users. It forces us to become aware of how our attention is a valuable product.
After doing this exercise and watching the videos I noticed how time and attention is a resource to be protected and how technology distracts us from our real timelines. (Harris, 2017). User Inyerface systematically leads users away by using inaccurate but familiar choices. Tufecki (2017) explores how attention economy is a “feedback loop” that doesn’t allow for reflection. This coincides with User Inyerface which I found led me to mindless clicking rather than thoughtful decision making.
References:
Harris, T. (2017, July). How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day [Video]. TED.
Tufekci, Z. (2017, October). We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [Video]. TED.