[00:00:00] Hey guys, welcome to the all new season of Onething’s podcast, which is now a Thoughtcast. I have with me, Manik Arora and Venky Hariharan from the team. Manik is my co-founder and Venky is one of the founding members at Onething and also a UX lead. Today in this room, we are going to discuss something around UX, which is slightly controversial, slightly on the edge, but it is very important and gets missed often. We are going to talk about ethical UX and I believe that as designers, it's our responsibility to take ethical UX into consideration and, experience in a very ethical manner when once we are delivering it or once we researching it and during the entire process. What, what we have realized is as designers or knowingly or unknowingly, we end up, conducting practices, which can result into manipulative, very persuasive UX that might not be in the users interests.
And how in this discussion, we want to bring out those touch points with users and how as designers, we can design responsibility and take care of such things in the, UX process. Manik and Venky. I mean, we've designed hundreds of products together. What do you guys think? You know, when it comes to trying to balance UX objectives and business objectives or compliance objectives?Where do you see that line kind of diverging towards?
I think the first thing is as you started, it's very critical for designers to now think about ethics. We design what people do when they spend their time. We design it for them. What people should do. We don't know it maybe, but it's a huge responsibility, which is why it's critical.
[00:02:03] [00:02:00] Not to forget the fact that there's psychology mapping, that behavior and having them sort of on the product. The maps that you've created for their behavior. So it's very easy to sort of, you know, be manipulative about your practices and manipulative about the way the products transform the user. This is something that's very critical at this juncture.
[00:02:34] I think that's the point. It's not being dark at all. In fact, as a designer, everyone talks about how to design ethically, sustainably in a way that benefits both the business and the user more people absorbing. Digital media is growing, especially post pandemic and more and more people are coming onto this digital platform, accessing information, doing transactions. And everything previously in a digital world is now getting replicated to digital.
I think, I would say these are the ones that use most is probably my mother, probably my parents, you know, people that, you know, I think it becomes a social responsibility that we have as designers when we guide them in a way which does not make them do things that they would not want to. You know, and so how do you, how do you, how do you take care of that? How do you bring that equation, into the design process?I mean, how do you do that?
Very, very thin line between manipulation, which is done for something good and something which has done only for business objectives.
[00:04:08] If you see for an example, WhatsApp, you gave the example. They believe everything that they read in it, anything and everything.
[00:04:24] So even though WhatsApp has kind of a small ‘forwarded’ thing, but it's too small, it goes unnoticed. And I would say that I think it means more.
[00:04:45] Yeah, and I think, bringing it back to the design aspect of things, we are behind those practices in place now, kind of having the right guy know what you're getting into. [00:05:00] It's just a matter of telling them how to get out of it as well. And I think that's where a lot of businesses feel.
[00:05:07] Consciously or unconsciously, I think we were discussing subscription services. Like it's very easy to get into the subscription model, but it's very difficult to get out of it. But if you want to make sure that that loop is easy. I don't think we would be here discussing how to be ethical because that's one of the key concerns.
[00:05:32] How to understand the business needs to, to get capabilities and design it, starting the process to think of the implications of this 10 years down the line. What if it goes like huge.
[00:05:52] A hundred thousand users, bringing users back in [00:06:00] six figures, a million users. That's the size of a small country. It's about, they want to go about with them as well. And then that's how that goes. So either you can grow it as an ethical, sustainable model and a product, or you can make it into a virus. And there are many
[00:06:26] that have followed that model when you've been on the other side of that equation, completely disrupted. Well, you know, the worst possible way
[00:06:37] people talking about these different types of manipulations, anything which is not done on the face on things, do go under the table. Imagine GoDaddy for example. Right. Even though not a lot of people use it, but there is, it's a huge audience. A very clear example. I see there is they [00:07:00] add things to your cart without letting you know. You don't choose what is in your cart!
[00:07:05] Absolutely. I mean, why would you do that?
[00:07:12] I mean, as, as you said to me again, business objectives dictate, a lot of design decisions, and that's where I think this discussion is being led towards and how much does the design part get influenced by the business. So I'm going to do it with the human experience and not a business objective because ultimately what matters is longevity of a brand and not goals.
[00:07:36] And I think that's where. Businesses also need to understand that, you know, designers don't just bring in screens and visual delight, but they bring in brand loyalty. So that's where we miss out on, being bought. So many of these sorts of projects are about processes.
I design the product in that manner. I think one of the key drawbacks that we've done in the past, which you know now, is when I followed favorite buttons to talk about.
So, when you put it in the research phase, and I think that's exactly what I think needs to begin the research phase. Lokal as a product built for local language, news and classified users, and as soon as we thought about the three cities, we just, you know, we went on the assumption that, you know, how much they'd be tech savvy, like, you know, how much do they know about?
[00:08:55] And we jumped in with that notion, right? But in the process, thank God for an [00:09:00] ethical process of user research that informed us that these people know us more than I initially thought, and they are actually actively using their devices to do that. Pretty much everything that we do, maybe even more sometimes.
[00:09:16] So, and I think that is where it comes into play as well as in terms of your user personas, that also plays a major part in being ethical. And I think that Lokal really broke that notion for us. Right. That's right. Lokall, especially that close to an even bigger responsibility. That'd be hard because these people we're building for are more susceptible to dark patterns.
[00:09:40] We can still identify, we can still kind of sway away from them and in turn, then they may go through it. I think it ties back to what he was saying about, you know, affecting change within like a hundred thousand people. These are the next billion users exactly. To the point where it's a big, big game.
[00:10:01] Bill and Melinda gates foundation, Google Facebook, all of these guys are coming together to sort of help them get into tech in a sustainable fashion. And I think that is, you know, what we are discussing is that they are also doing their part in trying to bring in that ethics into the new set of users, because , it's a little difficult to sort of, you know, break down that chain that has afterward. Yeah, let's talk about a couple of more examples.
[00:10:29] These are very interesting. I think that'll be fun. Yeah. So by then we started with Netflix. We were talking about it. Binging Netflix is the bane of my weekends. So there's a reason that you spend so much time on that. But as we're talking about, you know, making things sustainable, I think now Netflix has gone the other direction and died in that regard.
[00:10:56] Right? Netflix first let's talk about the way that they [00:11:00] label all of their content. Movies, TV shows, Secondly, you have a guide. You have none of that shows up on Netflix, at least not in the first five chances. You have things like binge of dramas as as a job. You don't know, you don't know these things. We got it. So that you can just keep scrolling map you there the entire time, just scrolling and increasing their time on the product.
[00:11:30] There is a reason they say that the biggest competitor to sleep, but I think what I've realized that, we've been using Netflix for so many years and I think last year, especially because of the fact that maybe it was what I realized that I spend more time on Netflix, finding more to watch, then watch it.
[00:11:49] So exactly I'm being delivered work. Immense amount of decision-making that I ended up watching the same show with them. I've actually watched it before, because I don't know why. Exactly, you know, there's [00:12:00] a reason for that. There is. So firstly, they play on their decision fatigue. They wanted to be part of the decision making process.
[00:12:06] Then they show you these big trailers that cover if you're watching on TV, it's half your screen. So you're just watching these moving images, the things that we do. That's exactly what we're doing to ourselves and we're treating ourselves like that.
[00:12:25] And then we were discussing how they don't give you the time to choose between episodes, right? Like how long?
[00:12:47] And then if they don't give you enough time to make a decision that actually directly ties into, this is what we were talking about in psychology. That directly ties you to your Doherty threshold, which says that there is a, [00:13:00] if the system and the user have less than 400 milliseconds between interactions, it makes it a functional interaction.
[00:13:06] We are like Netflix. Online. Right. At least I'm not tooling this please you the next episode. And then suddenly you're just, you know, gotten a loop of not having to make a decision. I mean, you know, if you actually see, all digital products, you know, I mean, they are valued at billions of dollars today, they all have those patterns.
[00:13:27] Right. I mean, there is no way a product reaches that scale without patterns. Right. Okay. Lately not patents have been kind of categorized into a few of, you know, elements of buckets one is nagging where you would keep pushing somebody to, you know, take a decision. Yeah. And you don't leave that person to that, instruction.
[00:13:52] We talked about our concept sliding from anything, I mean talk about or any product, I mean, it sort of moves to, I look at iPhones. I mean, if you have subscribed, everybody's watching smart TVs. Right instruction. Is that sneaky? I mean, come on Facebook. I mean, just go under the carpet and pull out everything that you want and you don't even let the user know that, Hey, I'm reading into your information and all that interference where you, where the user is made to do what he's not willing to do or not wanting to donate or decide
[00:14:38] Okay. Netflix. I mean, if you even combine these two, are being sneaky, I think that's one of the key things that, as I say, was so much in terms of growth for the business, he has more cost because what you've essentially done is sold off, but I bought [00:15:00] someone's life and then sold it back to them in a fancier package. And then now thats what you're basically doing.
[00:15:06] You know, building a product that is nothing but data mining. And I think something that auto is impacting is the vulnerable set of new users forced actions. You are forcing somebody to take that action, which favors the business, you know, your business objectives or any organizational objectives, right?
[00:15:28] What are your objectives regarding the act? We can only design ethical products at the cost of business objectives. Right. Is that so? I don't think so. I don't think so because all these businesses function without giving up ethics, right? Let’s say, we have slow growth then if you acquire. Instead of a hundred thousand users, you should decide to acquire a thousand users in the first month.
[00:15:53] But I, but if you've done it, that will be damn sure that this is going to spread quicker.
[00:16:02] [00:16:00] More people coming in because you've built it right. The Ethical building. It doesn't mean you don't grow you're building it for slower growth, slower approach you're building and still using the same processes. We'll say
[00:16:19] you're just informing the user ethically. It doesn't have to be so far out as you go and check that everyone is on the right track and all of that. It just has to be something as small as, Hey, check this box to let us know whether you want to receive emails from us. Check this box to let us know if we can track you all your data for better, you know, look at the way Airbnb does it. It tells you.
[00:16:46] which has so many of these, you know, credentials that aggregation platforms don't do. I mean are you okay? I mean, I think I love it. It'd be me as a product and the way it informs me of my decision making. I'm sure there [00:17:00] will be things that are. It'd be, and we wouldn't have, which I have not noticed, which could be manipulative, but good.
[00:17:04] We put a lot of things, for all their faults. It has made sure that privacy is there with US government dollars.
[00:17:23] Like, if you can see that out loud, that alone is enough. We'll accept your messages. I didn't do any encryption. And again, going to war with Mark people, governments over, you know, giving them a backdoor to these messages, all of that. I mean, they made, of course they would be a lot of Dr. Dylan's in the house, but with screen time coming up,
[00:17:51] And, you know, that is exactly what ethical UX is about, it's not about, you know, do the right thing. Always it's about helping your users [00:18:00] pick the right decisions, you know, just don't be an early informed decision and that's it. That's all that we have enabled them for exactly. But let's talk about how we do that?
[00:18:10] Like designers, how do we kind of. When we put our foot down, how do we convince these, business, people of business objectives? How do we convince people not to grow fast and grow slow? I think, I mean, I think because, you know, I think it comes back into something that can always be achieved with several other things.
[00:18:34] Ethics one breaks a growth pattern. There can be more than one way to kind of grow. But I think that, so there's something on us, ethical mediation that we should bring on the table once. We're building a product where we get the compliance, the business team and the design side of things.
[00:18:53] You know, it's all about just putting it down. It's about laying out why it is important to do a good design way, which is ethical. It's not about overriding anybody, but it's about being collaborative, because I think the business side of things also doesn't realize the importance of being ethical.
[00:19:12] How have you informed them? Our dark patterns? Maybe if we perform ethical UX, right. If we do UX in an ethical way, they would, of course be. And that would have an effect on business objectives. but they will be slow.
[00:19:42] Convincing people to do that and go back, waiting is going to be difficult. But of course, I mean, I'm not saying we shouldn't go there, but it's, it's going to be difficult. So how do we do that? Like, I mean, of course. And understanding our own [00:20:00] impact for our own solutions sense, but ultimately business people are going to decide what is good for them.
[00:20:06] And what's not , there's the user's target at all. Are they fine with not keeping it in mind? Which is why they go for any takeaways? I would say getting more users, getting revenue. Exactly. It's become the norm. That's the problem. Right. So as designers, it's up to us to actually point to. It's, you know, if you don't call it out, it will always be normal.
[00:20:32] That's the problem. If you can put your foot down and say, here you are asking someone in confusion, don't give out their data over here in this section, when they're signing up and you're onboarding them, right. Don't do that here. Use this line. But we, as designers, have to put it out there that when something is wrong, you call it out and you let them know what's wrong.
[00:21:00] [00:20:59] If the business student persists, you want a case in the clear that, you know, you know what? I tried a design that I tried as you win our heart because this is not something that I would want my loved ones to be using. Right. And which is why I am trying to do right by myself as a designer. And those as human beings would, where does it fit in, in our design process?
[00:21:22] Or does it fit in the whole of the design process exactly as it is through and through, right? During the research phase, if your client is coming up with some biased opinion about the certain personas that use their products, it's up to you to do that research and ensure that the biases are moved and you let them know this is not how you use this function research on the impact of our solutions.
[00:21:45] Like long-term solutions. I mean, ideally. Yeah. But the fact of the matter is, again, it comes back to the business decision, whether or not it's going to be feasible for us as service designers to do it because why did they just don't want to continue with us after that? But [00:22:00] they, we, they have their solution and they've gone away.
[00:22:04] Right? How do we ensure that we, you know, either in some way during our discussion. Let them know what the impact is or boot it out in any way and give them the embark and just hope to God that they use it. Right. But then, so this design company, I was also, I mean, at least we can do what we can do is that we have a ticket value, right.
[00:22:25] At least how we perform business. And are we, at least on the us? We didn't know in a way, I would say a couple of years down the line. We didn't know that ethical UX is the way to go. But today that we knew about it, it's an incident and values as well. Even if a client goes, we should be fine with it.
[00:22:47] No, of course, this is bad and we shouldn't be, we are not. Who designed this impact, obviously, if they still want to do it, I think we should kind of say [00:23:00] thank you so much. Exactly know that that's what I'm taking with that as part of the business decision. But thankfully our business matter along with our design matter is ethical.
[00:23:09] If you align those two together, you'd always find that there is a very clear area. There's only so much greed that you can bring it. There is no one in this whole product design life cycle or development life cycle for that matter, who could raise this topic and who could make them aware before they would decide on time it's on us.
[00:23:30] Absolutely because we are the ones that were doing that initial research. We are the ones talking to the actual users of the other day. As designers, you are looking at the bulletins. Exactly. And now we have, like I said, our whole industry is based on some psychological facts, human behavioral facts that have existed way before, like even computers or mobile phones for that matter.
[00:23:52] So obviously, these are some hard truths of our humanity that we know, and it's up to us to actually convert them into a product [00:24:00] that serves the people rather than the business. Balances, both activities. Yeah, but I mean, for example, in terms of balancing back in their day for, let's do the, I'm just going to be discussing games.
[00:24:13] For example, like back in the day, did the concept of a loot box. What games did you have to go through a loot box to get models? no, you bought the brick and you got and more so in like mobile games, anything
[00:24:43] That's exactly. So that is where we have to think about these things. You would have heard a lot of news about, children spending
[00:24:57] doesn't know that it's major, major [00:25:00] issue audiences are dealing with. There's no way. And yet they don't keep those checks in place where they go like, Hey, you know, you, the player card holder is that, you know, like there, there, there is two factor authentication for your bloody Netflix. For, for buying a full time scheme.
[00:25:20] And that's, that's how you end up with kids. Like you said, another kid says, spending an hour and a half on something useless like what you would like them spending real money on. Okay. So I think it comes to that factor of we know that that's when you can be back to my produce and that's when you can be ethical about the, I mean, I think the way the deck is advancing and if we're missing out on these things that we only do in a load of that, Hey, there's a suspicious biomass that could happen on your card or your account.
[00:25:55] Definitely [00:26:00] certainly should be they're going to come while building something. The idea is to just highlight the point that as designers, it's our responsibility to, uh, you know, be more aware of how our works, our design could impact the society in general, especially a set of users.
[00:26:18] Probably I haven't thought of. Right. So, you know, I think with that, uh, we should kind of that I bought this discussion and a basket audience, you know, if they have any viewpoint on ethics, if the face certain, such instances where they have to override their decision with other, uh, businesses, uh, objectives, all compliance objectives and, how they dealt with it, you know, please leave that in comments and we love to hear your feedback.
[00:26:44] This is a format of Onething’s podcast and we keep bringing you more exciting stuff and just in conversations and yeah, I mean, yeah, maybe you were to take away from this podcast. [00:27:00] Oh, just, just keep things in mind. Like you make your app usable, make your privacy more than a sustainability makeup process, overall ethical and just, all this, keep your user in mind, finding all the problems they might be facing.
[00:27:17] And all of these look out for your user before you take off for your business needs. I think those would be the key things. It's just one thing. If you have this ethic. More integrated to your design process. Now that's the Onething to start with, I would say, yeah. Cool. Thank you guys. And I think it's been fun, everyone. And to leave your comments, as I said, and we'll keep bringing you more content, more people and great conversations.
[00:27:50] I mean, I'd love to know, uh, if you have, as Manik said, any more topics for us to discuss or bring in people to discuss it. [00:28:00]