Ethical Redesign Recommendations for Tech Companies

For my senior project as a Computer Science major at Cal Poly, SLO I set out to explore the less documented topic related to tech addiction which is the specific UX design elements responsible for keeping people hooked to smartphone apps. From my survey results I learned that college students and recent grads are addicted to their smartphones, they are not aware of specific UX design elements that keep them hooked, and they are strongly in support of tech companies being more ethical and more mindful of them when designing their products. Tech companies do have an ethical obligation to do good and because their products are so influential and widely used, they must rethink and redesign features that make tech companies ultimately in control of how and how much time users interact with their product. 

I recommend five specific and actionable recommendations that tech companies should consider:

1. Eliminate autoplay. Although I believe there is a distinction between Netflix playing the next episode of a series you are currently watching and YouTube’s algorithm picking the next video for you to watch and autoplaying it, the autoplay feature in any situation should be removed. This would give the power back to the user. And although we would sacrifice the convenience of the next title or content being played for us, ultimately we as users of the technology would be making our own decisions instead of the ones these businesses want us to make. I also think it is unethical for companies to make leaving harder than staying engaged with the app, which is what autoplay accomplishes. By removing autoplay, our time will be better spent. It is important for us to make decisions for ourselves, and be completely in control of our technology usage.

2. Eliminate dark patterns. Dark patterns are ways of misleading the user not to perform an action they want to, such as unsubscribing from a company’s marketing emails. Instead of presenting equally easy choices for the user to make, companies direct users to making choices they want them to, while making choices that would cost them money harder to make. Companies make it hard to stop scrolling, hard to log off, hard to stay away, and hard to delete an account such as Amazon as I have previously discussed. Tech companies should change their design to allow users to freely choose the action they want to take. Whether that is adding a post, purchasing an item, unsubscribing, or even deleting their account. This recommendation upholds basic human dignity.

3. Make it easy for users to customize their notifications and other default settings to suit their needs. This way, individuals can be in charge of how often they get interrupted and how often they check the app.

4. Provide an estimate for how long different actions will take. An easy example of this is putting the estimated reading time of an article at the top, or how many questions are in a survey when a company asks you to rate them or if you would recommend them to a friend. Instead virtually all engagement products use the “foot in the door” strategy to entice users and keep them hooked. This is disrespectful to users’ time and tech companies should instead be more honest and transparent with their users.

5. The topic of endless scroll has been challenging for me. Initially I posed eliminating the endless scroll feature. However with more consideration, I think that eliminating endless scroll and only showing recent content up to a certain cut off point would fuel people’s fear of missing out and make them actually check social media apps even more so as not to miss anything that would be removed from their page. This exactly counters my intent with these ethical recommendations, therefore my approach to resolving the issue of users endlessly scrolling would be to place healthy reminders for users to take a break or let them know that they are caught up on new content or ask them if they are still watching. As I have previously written, Instagram and TikTok have done just this, as well as Netflix, and I think it is a big step in the right direction and more companies should adopt this thoughtful feature.

Additionally, I propose three more complex ethical redesign recommendations:

The first recommendation is for technology companies to have a responsibility to minimize social reciprocity. Instead of constantly recommending actions for us to take, such as adding more connections on LinkedIn, endorsing a connection for skill, suggesting congratulating people on work anniversaries, and more, what if LinkedIn minimized these suggestions and therefore the bombardment of interruptions? This way tech companies wouldn’t manipulate our feelings of social approval when a person takes a LinkedIn or Facebook suggested action instead of thinking of it on their own. And less of our time will be wasted feeling obligated to reciprocate actions such as endorse them back for a skill, add more people, tag suggested users, etc. It’s also in tech companies’ interest to heighten the feeling of urgency and social reciprocity [1]. For example, Snapchat and Facebook automatically tell the sender that the receiver “saw” or “opened” the message instead of letting the users decide whether they want to disclose that they have read it or not. This is because when the default, or only option is to have it be visible to the sender if the receiver has read the message, the receiver knows this and feels even more obligated to respond. By contrast, Apple more respectfully lets users decide if they want to have their “Read Receipts” turned on or off [1].

Another ethical redesign recommendation is to separate what the user wants to do with what the company wants them to do, to avoid influencing people to do things without them even realizing it. For example, to write a Tweet, a Twitter user first has to view their news feed. Similarly, to find a group on Facebook that a user is a part of, they first need to access their news feed. To be more ethical and allow users to follow through with their intention instead of getting sidetracked or pulled to view content the company knows will suck them in and cause them to spend longer on the app, tech companies should separate tasks and allow users to truly make independent decisions to be in their best interests. They shouldn’t bundle everything together, which forces the user to spend time on another part of the app before following through with their intention.

Finally, tech companies should remove features that make our phones more like slot machines. According to Design Ethicist Tristan Harris, when we reach for our phone, we’re playing a slot machine to see which notifications we received, when we pull to refresh our emails, we’re playing a slot machine to see what we got, when we scroll down on our Instagram feeds, we’re playing a slot machine to see what photo comes next, and when we tap the red notification, we’re playing a slot machine to see what’s underneath [1]. Although some of what makes our phones slot machines is unintentional, such as messaging and emailing as I have discussed previously, it is the responsibility of tech companies to mitigate the addictive effects that intermittent variable rewards provide. The way companies can do this is by converting variable rewards into less addictive, more predictable ones with better design [1]. For example, users could be in control of when they have time to go on their phone and not be interrupted during other times. By empowering people to set predictable times to check their apps, people will spend less wasted time on their phones. Additionally, companies should be more transparent and mindful of users' time and attention span by being as upfront as they can. For example, many companies use teasers to get people’s foot in the door and then capture their attention and take up their time. These teasers are common across social media platforms. Instead of giving you the actual specific information, they tell you something along the lines of “There is a new entry about XYZ” for you. Of course by doing this companies are trying to get your attention and get you to open the app and therefore see content they want to show me or even ads. However, people are interested in the actual information, therefore it is more respectful just to disclose it in the first place. Additionally, a tactic that magazines and blog publishers specifically use to get the user to click is to include article headings as subject lines. This makes the user interested in the article heading however when the user opens up the body of a message, they need to spend their time reading it or at least scanning it to find the heading they were interested in. Companies should be more transparent instead of tricking people into reading something different or more than what they were interested in [3].

Tristan Harris, founder of the Center for Humane Technology, says it best: “We envision a world where technology supports our shared well-being, sense-making, democracy, and ability to tackle complex global challenges.” [2].

References

[1] Harris, Tristan. “How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind - From a Magician and Google 

Design Ethicist.” Thrive Global, Medium.com, May 18, 2016. https://medium.com/thrive-global/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-fr...

[2] Center for Humane Technology. https://humanetech.com

[3] Dr. Franz Kurfess, Computer Science Department Faculty at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

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