Week 8

Week 8 (23/25 March): Ethics of UI Design

Lead: Team 1

Required Readings and Viewings (for everyone):

Additional optional readings:

Response prompts:
Post a response to the readings that does at least one of these options by 10:59pm on Sunday, 21 March (Team 2 and Team 4) or 5:59pm on Monday, 22 March (Team 3 and Team 5):

  1. In her talk at Google, Girma mentions that accessible design drives innovation and benefits those who are non-disabled. Do you agree with her assertion? Can you identify other examples where this is the case, or counter-examples where designing for accessibility harms some users?
  2. Do you believe Nextdoor’s design solution of creating “friction” solves the issue of racial profiling by its users? Can anticipatory design, by itself, prevent racist users from misusing a technology?
  3. Respond to something in one of the readings that you found interesting or surprising.
  4. Identify something in one of the readings that you disagree with, and explain why.
  5. Respond constructively to something someone else posted.

Class Meetings

Lead by Team 1

Slides for Week 8 [PDF]

Blog Summary

Team 4

Tuesday 23 March

We began our Tuesday class by reviewing the assigned reading and going right into discussion questions. We reviewed The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Ethics in UX Design article and then discussed if those who influence the design are also considered the designers. Most of the discussion groups agreed that anyone who influences the design becomes the designer, including the developers, PMs, and even corporate legal. Most saw design as a profitable system, and whoever was a part of that system and profited from the product, was included as a designer. To further discuss the benevolent intent of design, groups debated whether or not a struggling tech company was allowed to disregard some UI ethics in order to save resources. Most of the groups surprisingly went with “yes” but included some caveats such as acknowledging the fact that they don’t have the resources yet, but will make it a future goal to include these designs. Some groups also came up with the idea that it is the government’s responsibility to fiscally support these smaller companies so that they would be able to include these UI ethics in their designs. This idea branched from the already-established design that governments provide tax breaks for small businesses compared to big businesses.

After this lively debate, the class dove into the hot topic of Nextdoor amplifying the racial profiling of certain people in their neighborhoods and how Nextdoor is addressing the problem. We reviewed how Nextdoor introduced the idea of “friction,” or the utility of interruptions, that warns or reminds the users that their actions affect people beyond who we immediately can see. The introduction of friction to technology can be seen as a warning or a pop-up box to slow the user down and pull themselves back into reality. Our class wanted to know whether or not the introduction of friction into their technology was enough fixing for Nextdoor to now be unbiased or if they were still an example of racist tech. Unsurprisingly, most groups still felt that Nextdoor is an example of racist tech because although it might not have racist intentions, it perpetuates negative social biases. Nextdoor’s inclusion of small quick fixes does not actually change the product as a whole; Nextdoor still amplifies existing negative social biases and the app’s main purpose of involving neighborhoods and zip codes reveals these negative social biases at the local level.

Our next discussion was on Haben Girma and her talk at Google. Girma was the first deafblind graduate from Harvard Law. Girma gave a speech at Google to bring up the idea that there is incredible potential in technology and developers must not stop finding new ways to present information and reach new people. She gave some suggestions to the employees of Google, including ideas such as ensuring apps are compatible with accessibility technologies by including hooks like closed captioning and screen readers, expanding the functionality of Google Maps to be more compatible with a screen reader, and incorporating accessibility from the beginning and then testing along the way. The suggestions she provided were to ensure that the developers at Google were continuously coming up with solutions that rethink the norm and help people in more ways than one.

Technology has served as a great bridge to fill the gaps of communication for people with disabilities, but developers should continue creating new designs that not only serve the disabled community, but the rest of the world as well. We broke out into discussion groups to discuss Girma’s idea of reimagining design to ensure greater accessibility. She never wants to get stuck in old patterns, but rather, to continue moving forward with new designs. Most to all the groups supported this idea - that providing greater accessibility is only a positive for humanity as a whole and that designers must challenge the norm in order to create new innovation and design opportunities. However, there can be some instances where the wheel should not be reinvented— instances that are working perfectly fine and efficiently for humanity as of now. Going forward should only include fixing the ideas that were not perfect to begin with and making them better; however, if an idea was originally perfect, then there is no need to spend time fixing what does not need to be fixed.

A more current example is how changes brought on by the COVID pandemic have (in some ways) improved accessibility and created more accessible options such as asynchronous classes, curbside groceries, and remote work. In small groups we then debated whether or not these options will continue on once they are no longer needed or convenient for the majority. The decision was unanimous with the supporting idea that the door has now been opened to improve accessibility in ways that no one thought was possible. People now have an option that they know works and corporations and employees cannot hide the fact that it does not work. This opens the door to so many more possibilities, for both those with disabilities and those with none.

The disabled can no longer be discriminated against in the hiring process for needing accommodations to get to and from work because the pandemic has revealed that in many cases, working from home is a completely viable option. With this established precedent, businesses can no longer go back to the ways things were before. Improved accessibility is here to stay, and if not for the entire population, at least for people with disabilities. Furthermore, groups discussed the scenario of working at a company in which accessibility was excluded from the design process/ budget and what they thought should be done. Some groups suggested getting product managers and designers on board to request budget increases from higher ups in order to fund the creation of more accessibility in the design. In addition, some students suggested that there should be laws to guide people and create a baseline for disability accommodations.

The class also covered an article written by Sheri Byre-Haber, a subject matter expert in the fields of disability and accessibility in the business and educational settings. In her article on Ethical design and accessibility, she argues that developers view disability considerations as a legal requirement to fulfill, instead of considering disabled individuals as members of a product’s user base. She compares this to “teaching to the test”, in other words, individuals only look at the items they are being measured to. Then, examples of compliance versus good user experience were provided. The first was closed captioning. As a compliant experience, closed captioning is required; however, it is not on by default which would create a better user experience. The second example is motion. As a compliant experience, motion must be limited, but there is not a way to shut off all motion associated with a login profile which would create a better experience.

Moreover, the author argues that designing for accessibility can run into a problem of prioritizing one marginalized group over another. For example, spending an entire design budget on closed captioning while ignoring described audio. Additionally, she states that dark patterns can disproportionately affect people with disabilities and continues this idea by exploring ways in which dark patterns break WCAG 2.1 (Web Content Disability Guidelines). The class was then presented with some discussion questions which uncovered the idea that guidelines quantify how well different companies and websites are doing with regards to accessibility. In other words, guidelines provide a baseline for accessibility because it is different across the spectrum for different companies and products; similar to how a minimum wage provides a baseline for paying workers.

Thursday 25 March

For homework, the lead group assigned two activities that tasked students with using a web disability simulator and a cookie consent game — preparing students to start thinking about the main topics covered in the next discussion on dark patterns and gamification. The presenting group opened the class with a discussion on the web disability simulator and the cookie consent.

Discussion on the disability simulator focused around being surprised how inaccessible the web is, and that there is little importance placed on making the web accessible. Students thought that the cookie consent game was interesting as it showed how preferences can use distracting language to get users to agree to things that they might not want. In other words, the use of distracting language enables users to agree to terms they were unaware of in order to have access to the website.

Next, the lead group introduced dark patterns a term coined by Harry Brignull, an independent user experience consultant. Dark patterns are defined as patterns created in the user interface that trick users into doing things such as buying overpriced insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills. There are many different types of dark patterns such as trick questions, sneak-into-basket, and roach motel to name a few. The lead group then reviewed the reading Dark Patterns at Scale: Findings from a Crawl of 11K Shopping Websites. The study in the article focused on an automated approach to identifying dark patterns on shopping websites through the use of a web crawler and text clustering. In addition, the author’s created their own taxonomy of identifying dark patterns. The author’s findings revealed that 11 percent of the websites used dark patterns and that more popular websites were likely to feature dark patterns. The majority of dark patterns found were “covert, deceptive, and information hiding in nature.”

The class moved into a discussion on who was responsible for the negative effects of dark patterns. Students felt that although dark patterns are often a form of marketing and advertising which leaves users responsible for themselves, responsibility also falls on designers for manipulating and taking advantage of people’s vulnerability and lack of technological literacy. In addition, one group provided an interesting comparison of dark patterns to the sales tax in the United States vs. in other countries. The sales tax in the U.S is hidden in the initial price but charged at the end of the transaction. This conditions people in the US to expect the final price to be different from the advertised price, so opens the door to lots of other additional charges.

Next, the lead group reviewed How to Spot–and Avoid–Dark Patterns by Eric Ravenscraft. The article describes a variety of dark patterns and gives real world examples of them. The reading argues that education is the most powerful tool for prevention and that public vocal complaints are also impactful. The class then moved on to playing a “Can you spot the dark pattern(s)?” game. Students worked in groups to identify and determine dark patterns in example scenarios— considering solutions and legal issues to any dark patterns that were found.

The lead group then provided an overview of gamification, “a technique which designers use to insert gameplay elements in non-game settings, so they enhance user engagement with a product or service”. Examples of gamification include challenges, points, badges, leaderboards, journeys, and constraints. The role of gamification in UX design is that it leverages the motivating factors of games to incentivize users to achieve goals and overcome negative associations with the system or required tasks. The lead group discussed “White Hat” vs. “Black Hat” Gamification. White Hat gamification often makes users feel powerful, fulfilled, and satisfied by providing a sense of meaning, accomplishment, and empowerment. Black Hat gamification often makes users feel obsessed, anxious, and addicted by providing pressures of scarcity, unpredictability, and avoidance. Next, the lead group discussed positive examples of gamification in UX design such as Pain Squad and the Nike+ FuelBand.

The class then discussed the article A critique of Robinhood’s gamified interface. The article provided an overview of Robinhood, a popular fintech investing app among young adults which allows users to conveniently trade/invest in securities directly from their smartphone app. The stated mission of Robinhood is to “democratize finance” and simplicity of the app’s design has been a source of praise and criticism.

The authors of the reading argue that gamified design desensitizes users from the gravity of securities trading: “Users interact with it more like a social media rather than stock trading app,” checking their accounts 10x a day on average and “in the first 3 months of 2020, Robinhood users trade 40x more shares than traditional brokerage firm Charles Schwab’s users”. Gamified elements of the app’s design include free shares of stock for joining/recruiting friends, flashing green and red colors, bursts of virtual confetti, badges based on your portfolio mix, “swipe up to submit” gestures to execute trades. The class concluded with a discussion on the ethics behind Robinhood’s use of gamification and the instances of user harm from the app’s interface, such as the 20-year-old college student who took his own life because of an error in the application.