Designing for Respect

Introduction

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”

Voltaire

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Today, designers have a lot of power. We are responsible for orchestrating innumerable interactions that transpire daily on a wide variety of digital devices. And sometimes we forget the influence we have on fellow citizens as we fall into the routine of executing our work and packaging the next deliverable. Often, our sense of accomplishment is rooted in satisfying business requirements for clients or internal strategy teams. When we do stick around to gauge the success of a design, it’s often measured in business terms: engagement, conversion, click-through rates, and so on. But what if we also measured success in more human terms, such as hours saved or smiles invoked? It is uncommon to attribute a portion of a product’s success to how it makes users feel. Apart from providing basic utility, did it speak to users’ human needs? Did it bring them joy? Was it patronizing or condescending? What if the end experience, while deemed successful from a business perspective, causes additional stress or confusion, or wastes a user’s time? If one moment is deceitful or wasteful, when multiplied by potentially millions of users, we realize designers have a responsibility that borders on the domain of public health. Two years ago, 67% of Americans were estimated to spend an average of 34 hours a month on smartphones alone. That’s a lot of interactions—we don’t need to do the math to realize that one design decision goes a long way.

I propose that at the core of our interactions with technology, as with one another, is the desire for a simple but crucial attribute: respect. When users are respected, it’s because we have acknowledged their efforts, their time, and their feelings. We’ve told the truth, listened, and given them space. And the scaled effect of many happy, respected users has a global impact because of the sheer scale to which digital interactions pervade our lives today. The reverse is also true for stressed or frustrated users.

In the world of UX design, many of our solutions may seem innocuous, but a great many are deceitful or cause user stress. Some of these misleading designs have become infamous and are categorized as Dark Patterns. In this report, we will examine digital design through an ethical lens with the hope of raising awareness that honest and respectful design is better for business, users, and society than trickery or carelessness. First, we will investigate some examples of disrespectful design and how they impact users’ trust, time, and emotions. We will also look at examples of respectful design for inspiration, as well as some original concepts for services that both aid businesses while respecting their users. Finally, to round out the exploration, we will give designers a framework for choosing clients or potential employers with an ethical lens. The hope is that this exploration will start a dialogue among designers, technologists, and business owners, with the hope that they can start to embrace the importance of ethics and recognize the value of respectful design.

Preface

What We Can Do: Design Principles for a Respectful Future

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Lao Tzu

We’ve looked at a number of examples of what not to do, but what should we do instead? What single steps can designers take?

Pretend your UI is human

If we were to follow only one rule to establish ethical and respectful UX, this would be it. Many of us have seen the skit in which Google is replaced with a real person. Joking aside, the general concept of imagining that the UI is human provides a useful litmus test for whether an interaction is respectful. If this was a human interaction, would you tolerate it? Don’t worry, in case you have forgotten about how to achieve a civil human-to-human conversation, here are some guidelines:

Be polite

Don’t be demanding. Use language that a user expects. Say hello, please, thank you, and goodbye.

Listen and respond

Don’t make users wait excessively while you “load” the answer. Provide many avenues for them to communicate with you: text search, messaging, chatting, and voice control.

Tell the truth

A user will always find out if you are lying, so save everyone time and be transparent. Consider the Comcast example of only providing an Upgrade tab. The functionality to make other service changes is there, but you have to dig.

Put users before trends

Whether or not you agree with the iOS Alarm UI example, the idea that designers sometimes forget the user’s needs in favor of supporting a design trend is very real. When we forget the user, we have lost our mission. Design fads and trends will come and go, but what is most important is that we remember the goal of respecting the user and solving the problem.

Leverage your data

By allowing customer data to inform designs, you can eliminate redundancy within experiences and also be more polite when interfacing with customers. In the call center example discussed before, the system should know based on caller ID alone who we are and even further, what we’re likely calling about. The same is true for digital services. Say for the sake of argument, we’re late on a credit card payment. If we were to log in to our credit card portal, the first thing we would expect is for the UI to display something like Hi there, did you know you’re late on your payment?.

Acknowledge the entire experience

Often when we work on designing a website or app, we forget to acknowledge that the user engages with many other services too, sometimes immediately before and after ours. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking the user is only involved with our service and we make decisions that contribute negatively to the user’s overall experience. For example, every app wants to send users notifications, but if every app has their way, the user will be overwhelmed with interruptions. As we design and build services that have the capability of reaching out to customers directly, we should keep in mind all the other apps trying to do the same thing, and reach out in the smartest, not most frequent way.

Anticipate the ads

The example of advertising with click-bait navigation exposes a vulnerability in our design process. Much of the time, we design around ad space. In our wireframes, the ad space is kind of a placeholder, and in our visual designs, it’s usually a best guess. Ad services fill in the necessary gaps with content of their own, often out of the control of the designer. We can agree that this example isn’t a good user experience and that the ad designers are mostly responsible for these shortcomings. But moving forward, what control can we take back to ensure a great experience, or at least one that doesn’t undermine the primary purpose? Should we design the ads ourselves? Should we have rules for what types of ads should be allowed? Can we see the ads ahead of time? Can we smartly anticipate ad content and use those predictions to inform our work?

Looking Forward

So what might some of these principles look like put into action? Here are a few thoughts, concepts, and scenarios that could help provide for a more ethical and respectful future:

Messaging is the new medium

The world is moving toward messaging and conversations as ways of transacting. Imagine if canceling a service was as simple as sending a text message. There are already some services that are beginning to base themselves entirely on messaging. Magic and Facebook’s M are a couple of services that take the idea of conversation as service to the next level. Apart from these personal assistant solutions, can businesses leverage conversation as a new way of servicing customers?

I know you know me

Given all the data that businesses have on their users, can’t they guess why we are probably calling, or signing in? Let’s build a system that makes some smart guesses. Similar to the credit card example from before, can we save users time by proactively making guesses about what they are most likely curious about? The key here is that the user often knows what data the business knows, so why not use it? Imagine if the next time you log into your bank’s website, a chat box pops up and says, Hi, thanks for your recent payment. I see that there was a strange charge on your card—would you like to investigate that?. This ideal experience could be a recording or a human; the key is, given all the data we know they know, it’s possible to save time and get to the heart of the issue more quickly.

HI is the new AI

There is an opportunity for human intelligence to come back where it has been replaced. Is there a future where we interact less with our digital interfaces and more with people, because employees of the future are augmented with knowledge and tools that outpace users’ ability to self-serve? Amazon’s mechanical Turk is a very compelling example of leveraging large numbers of actual people to deliver answers and solutions. What if the respectful designs of the future don’t involve self-serve UI at all, but involve phone and chat experiences with informationally-fortified humans that are extremely responsive, helpful and efficient?

Updates, outdated

Imagine a world without system or software upgrades. What if you subscribed to a service that provided upgrades piece-by-piece and always in the background? Google Chrome seems to accomplish this already. Imagine the time the world would save with no more OS downloads or Saturday mornings spent upgrading to the latest version of app version x or OS z.

Crowdsourcing honesty

The Dark Patterns team has started a great archive of tricky and devious design patterns. Moving forward, let’s remain vigilant and contribute to these archives. By raising awareness and demanding respect, we can create a world that expects quality and civil digital conversations.

The Notification Police

Let’s make it easy for users to take control of incoming bids for attention. How about, when a notification comes in, the OS gives a prompt asking Was this a good time to contact you?. Then we can choose to work with the OS and help arrive at an algorithm together that benefits both of us. Similar to Pandora’s thumbs up/thumbs down paradigm, a quick preference expressed, over time, can build a more respectful notifications service.

Emotional response

There have been some recent advances in real-time emotional recognition by analyzing facial expression. In the near future, how about creating digital experiences that respond to our expressions, the way people would? What if new options are displayed, in real time, that respond to my dissatisfaction? Perhaps we should leverage this technology to make interfaces more respectful of our emotional reactions.

For Inspiration

So as we begin to think about our next design project, it will help to view a few quick examples of services that in some way or another, make us feel like our time, feelings, and trust matter:

Some examples that respect time

• Google Chrome can automatically update in the background and requires no effort from the user.

• In offline mode, Facebook’s app clearly states that you can continue to post. This saves users time by allowing them to continue interacting while not connected (Figure 4-1).

  

• Another example from a smaller service is from a local realty page (Figure 4-2). We can appreciate how straightforward the main call to action is about what will happen next. It clearly lets the user know that they are “almost done” and that there is bit of a process involved in getting a home valuation. This is a great example of how simple language can inform users how best to use their time.

  

Some examples that earn trust

• Although this example doesn’t fix our notification overload problem, the App Store messaging shown in Figure 4-3 provides a useful warning when about to download files over cellular. This builds trust that Apple is on our side with regard to data and cellular fees.

  

• Those of us who use Gmail place a large amount of trust in Google, so it is appreciated when some of its efforts further that trust. While not revolutionary functionality, Google and a number of services will let you know when suspicious logins to your account occur. For example, after signing in using a different machine, you receive an email notification detailing the event (Figure 4-4). While the sign-in was innocuous, it is comforting to know there are systems in place that allow further trust in Google’s products.

  

Some examples that improve mood

• Capital One’s credit card app designates a conversational space that serves to greet the user with tips or light-hearted conversation. While a matter of taste, we can argue that for some, it strikes a great balance of polite, engaging, and informative (Figure 4-5).

  

• The Google homepage has a customized message and design if it’s your birthday. Not necessary, but very welcoming and respectful (Figure 4-6).

  

• The popular workplace service Slack brings some welcome personality by displaying quips as the service loads (Figure 4-7) These display for varying lengths of time, but provide enough variety to sometimes make users smile.

  

For Designers: Choosing the Right Work

There are additional steps you can take to bring ethics and respect to your work. One of those steps is simply choosing respectful projects to work on. When making this decision, it may help to have an ethical compass for determining which companies will receive your skills and perspectives.

I will often ask designers to identify their dream clients or projects. After reflecting on this myself, I created a framework for how I choose ideal projects. Not everyone has the privilege to choose projects, but it’s helpful to know, if given the choice, how you would go about making the best decision. Of the millions of design problems that need solving, what calls to you and why?

Before any project, I will ask myself two questions—one selfish, and one unselfish. First, I selfishly ask, Is this work interesting and will it build my skills or grow my career as a designer? The less selfish question is Will solving this client’s problems make the world better or worse off than before? Ultimately, is the work interesting, boring, good, or evil, and to what degree? I created the chart shown in Figure 5-1 so I could visually gauge each opportunity.

“Good” means: Is it good for the world? Will helping client x or y have an end result that will eliminate some human suffering, even if on a tiny scale?

“Interesting” means: Is it stimulating for you as a designer? Is it a new problem? Will it help grow your skills and keep you engaged? Of the many combinations possible within this framework, I strive to work in the upper-right quadrant, as it yields the most rewarding work (Figure 5-2).

I invite you to try this exercise. In your opinion, what companies fall on the right side of the graph for you? And then ask yourself what initiatives within those companies would hold your interest and improve your skills and career?

Now, imagine which companies and projects might fall into the other zones.

Are you currently working on a soul-sucking project? Do you have the option to work with clients on the right side of the graph? If not, are you at least challenging yourself as a designer? These are the questions I try and ask as much as possible. Because of the infinite number of ways we can spend our time, why not try to do something rewarding, or at least satisfying?

Final Thoughts

The Internet now permeates our daily lives on a massive scale. We rely on it for work, to communicate with our loved ones, make travel arrangements, pay our bills—and that’s usually just in the first hour of our day. And right now, the portals to connectivity—our digital devices and the services that flow through them—are the customer service representatives of connectedness. Every screen, portal, button, notification, and message creates a conversation that can either make our lives easier, more frustrating, or somewhere in between. By examining the degree of respect in our digital services, we can begin to expose its importance for our highly connected lives. For the designers tasked with orchestrating these conversations, let’s add a little bit of efficiency, friendliness, and honesty on top of the core solution. Our users, businesses, and society will thank us.

Further Reading

The goal of this report is to raise awareness for the value of respectful digital design, but it only scratches the surface. Many others are working in depth on the subject of ethics and UX, so I encourage further reading and involvement. Out of respect for your time, I’ve compiled some key references: