When you stop to think about it, the job of interaction designers is about persuading people to do something. We design juicy-looking buttons and place them “just so” on the page to entice people to click them. We remove distractions and streamline processes so that customers glide effortlessly from browsing to buying. We create whole applications aimed at getting people to check in more frequently, diet more effectively, work out more consistently, or do more, more, more of whatever it is that meets our persuasive goal.
What Is Evil Design?
Sometimes our aim is charitable: we are persuading people to do something that benefits society more than it benefits them. Sometimes our aim is motivational: we are persuading people to do something that will benefit them even if they wouldn’t choose to do it unaided. Often our aim is commercial: we are persuading people to trade something that will provide equitable benefit to our company and to them. Sometimes however, it seems aims are less virtuous, and companies seek to get customers emotionally involved in doing something inequitable—something that benefits the company more than it benefits the individual.
And that, perhaps, is the definition of evil design: to get customers emotionally involved in doing something that benefits you more than it does them. Now, your first reaction may be to deny that this would ever happen in your company, much less that you’d be complicit in it. But somewhere, someone in the interaction design profession is building these interfaces, because they aren’t accidental. They are the result of applying psychological principles or design patterns to arrive at an emotionally engaging experience.
Example Evil Design Patterns
Let Users Advertise Their Status
It’s hard to define which interfaces are truly evil because different people will derive different levels of intangible value from their interaction with a site or application. Take for example the ubiquitous email signature “Sent from my iPhone” (see Figure 1). I hope that the person who created that default signature setting got well rewarded for their work. It is the perfect embodiment of effortlessly viral aspirational content. Taken at face value, it is little more than an advertisement for a product—something that benefits the company more than the customer. Yet users seem strangely reluctant to change it. This inertia stems at least in part from what that small phrase says about them as individuals. Even more than half a decade after the device’s release, the phrase is still prevalent at the bottom of people’s emails, and it can’t be because no one knows how to change the setting.
The iPhone default signature remains partly because it’s boastful in a socially acceptable way. The designers found a way to let users advertise their status as owners of a shiny, desirable gadget. This design pattern, encouraging users to build and advertise their status within a community, lets people feel more important. It affects customers at an emotional level but serves a very financial goal for the company. Who benefits more? Financially, it’s quite clear. Emotionally, it’s hard to say.