When does good UX become a problem?
On improving the usability of addictive experiences
Internet addiction is now a recognised disorder, and a very real one at that. Surveys in the United States and Europe have indicated alarming prevalence rates between 1.5 and 8.2% (Cash et al, 2012). Given there has been a recent shift to place a focus on creating user friendly digital products, this percentage is only likely to increase. In today’s society, we’re conditioned to think that instant gratification and seamless digital experiences are a source of happiness and improved quality of life. Yet, this is contradicted by increasing rates of depression in Westernised countries. In this short post I ask the question: when does providing seamless and enjoyable user experiences become a problem? Where do we draw the line?
Addicted to the Digital World
Internet addiction has become so severe that there are now treatment options available. Such is the case in China, where there are now specialised internet addiction bootcamps (Aldama, 2015). Further, ubiquity of mobile devices and apps is making this digital world even more accessible. That’s no secret — sit on the London Underground in the morning and watch everyone fixated on their screens. Watch people nearly walk into their death because they’re too focused on their phone. Watch families ignore each other in restaurants because of that little device in their hand. Watch couples fighting with a phone for their partners attention. Watch people obsessively taking photos to put on social media instead of enjoying the actual view.
Knowing that we have a whole world of information, entertainment and distraction at our fingertips detracts from the physical world we’re in. Instead of appreciating the present and the company we are in, we can instead look to our phones to connect with our social network. Constant notifications from apps and messages from friends make it increasingly difficult to switch off. Social media is particularly addictive and a major contributor to depression and anxiety amongst teenagers. It creates a world where we can present ourselves in the way we want, making peoples lives look all the more glamorised and divergent from reality. Instagram celebrities are a clear example of this, and the app has recently been ranked as the worst social media site for poor impact on teenagers (Wallop, 2017).
Facilitating Addiction
In the previous section I mentioned social media addiction and it’s harmful effects. Design plays a crucial role in making social media websites and apps addictive. Turel and Bechara (2016) compare the Facebook newsfeed to a slot machine for the brain — with each refresh comes new, exciting information tailored specifically to us. I’ve recently noticed that Facebook has begun sending me notifications about changes that are not even relevant to me, in a bid to hook me back in to more frequent use.
A classic case of UX facilitating addiction is the gambling industry. The Gambling Commission has estimated that the number of gamblers has grown by a third in the past three years (Davies, 2017). This is influenced hugely by digital platforms bringing ease of use and accessibility. There’s an interesting juxtaposition whereby UX teams now have to include warnings and information about gambling addiction, whilst working to improve ease of use. Gaming is another dangerously addictive industry being improved by UX. In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association included Internet Gaming Disorder in the appendix of the updated version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (Kuss and Fernandez, 2016).
Perhaps a less talked about but hugely harmful addiction is pornography, particularly amongst the younger generation, and this can take a profound effect on peoples sex lives and relationships in the physical world. This addiction is fuelled by easy accessibility to porn via websites and apps. We tend not to think of UX when it comes to porn, but actually it’s incredibly relevant and UX Design teams are working hard behind the scenes. Let’s take a look at PornHub (not literally, of course). In an interview with Vice President of Product Corey Price, he states that he views YouTube and Vimeo as competitors, and says that PornHub want to provide the best User Experience possible. In his words:
‘PornHub hasn’t had a new site in six years, but each week something will change. It’s a slow evolution. We went from having a logo with a tagline to a flag logo to flat navigation.’
Evidently, UX is key and carefully considered in the porn world to maintain ease of use and to increase engagement . They’ve even created a gif generator to keep up with modern trends and encourage sharing— but how harmful are these ‘improvements’ in light of porn addiction?
Causing Addiction
User Experience is fuelled by a society focused on consumerism that demands instant gratification and conflates pleasure & efficiency with happiness. We want everything quicker and easier. UX Design makes use of this to fix problems people aren’t even aware they have in order to create a product that will make some money.
Take Uber for example — arguably one of the most disruptive digital products around. Before Uber, everybody was fine getting by using Black Cabs or public transport. Uber saw an opportunity to improve and revolutionise the current system to make it quicker, cheaper, more efficient and accessible through the phones we all constantly have in our hands.
It’s unlikely anyone thought, before Siri, that what was really lacking from their lives was the ability to talk to their phone. Or that they really REALLY needed to be able to send pictures of their face with weird filters to their friends. UX Designers research carefully. From the insight they gain, they identify opportunity to improve and begin a design process. This process is constantly iterative. UX Design teams are constantly finding new ways to increase engagement with their digital products. It goes something like this:
Improved usability = elimination of pain points = increased engagement and time spent.
We’re always finding new possibilities. But, do we really need improvement? When does endless possibility become too much? Kaminska (2017) questions:
‘Have the peddlers of high-tech systems, in their obsession to quench our short-term desires for their own profit, inadvertently become part of the problem rather than the solution?’
This culture of constant improvement and ease of use contributes to a society addicted to the digital world and further removed from the physical. Designers are constantly solving problems, removing pain points and hooking people in for profit.
‘Improved Experiences’
I was recently speaking to a friend of mine who works as a UX Design Consultant, and always manages to make me view things in a totally different way (it’s like he’s magic — really). He mentioned that constantly building improvements can actually detract from efficiency. By increasing our cognitive load through an overload of options, we decrease usability (Whitenton, 2013). Said friend has recently started focusing on deoptimization — making a conscious effort to strip back unneccessary products and features. He’s started using an older and more simple phone model that he can use for the bare functionalities that he actually needs (messaging, calling, photos).
He also mentioned the ways in which increased ease of use can actually remove meaning from our experiences. Are we actually lessening experiences by making them too easy? He raised two really interesting examples of this;
- He has a digital camera and a polaroid camera. He used the example of a recent trip to New York to explain how he uses the two in different ways. Using his digital camera, he will mindlessly take photos of mundane things such as his friend eating a huge burger or a funny scene with the view of sending it on WhatsApp. Using his polaroid camera, however, aware that he only has a certain number of photos to take, he took photos of more poignant and meaningful scenes with a view to keeping them long term.
- Spotify. The whole of the 80s can supposedly be shrunk into one Spotify playlist and that’s an acceptable feature to us. Using his record player, the physical action forces him to consciously listen to and appreciate the music. He will buy records that are meaningful to him that he can keep and appreciate long term.
Which experiences do you think are more of an experience?
The Center for Humane Technology is making an effort to ‘reverse the digital attention crisis and realign technology with humanity’s best interests’. Have a look at their website below:
The Future
All this boils down to the bigger question of how technology is revolutionising our world as we know it. So far, UX Design is responsible for incredible improvements to our lives. But could this become a problem in the future? How much can technology remove us from our human world and replace our needs with digital solutions, and how easy will we, as UX Designers, make that?
We are already talking to products. Behind Amazon Alexa and Google Home is a team of designers ideating on how to remove even more user pain points. The movie ‘Her’ solves the problem of loneliness in a digital way through the use of AI to create a computer that replicates an actual human mind. The pain of love is removed in a relationship with a robot. This technology already exists and is being utilised more and more frequently. How far will this be taken in the future? Might this ‘addiction’ to digital become an undeniable reality? Are we being blinded by good UX?
Imagine a world where UX Designers have removed every possible pain point of a physical world through user centred design.
Disclaimer: I think UX Design is a beautiful, necessary and fascinating industry. If I wrote an article on the positive side of UX…well, I wouldn’t be able to fit it into an article. However, I think that as UX designers we need to carefully consider how we can produce an environment where the physical and digital exist harmoniously in the future.
