It takes effort to balance values and ethics, with business objectives and goals.

The last decade has brought us hundreds of analytics products which allows us to gather data at a massive scale, and render it in “beautiful to look at” visuals. Companies will then present these metrics to stakeholders and the media to show their progress and success which would lead to higher stock prices, the ability to raise more money, or just having a positive public image.

Yet, these numbers can be selective and far from telling the truth. When you instrument any flow, feature, or design, there’s always a way to game it. Have you ever signed up for something online when you never meant to? Or perhaps you tried deleting your Facebook account, only to find it ludicrously hard to do so.

These little design tricks are commonly known as “dark patterns’. They are subtle ploys many digital companies use to nudge the user to do a certain action which they might not have done otherwise.

The term “rat effect” is a cultural artifact left from the time when the French had colonized Hanoi. As part of a strategy to get rid of a rat infestation problem, the government instituted a policy in which the citizens are paid to kill the rats. In order to prove that you killed a rat, the people are required to present their tails when claiming the reward.

This solution ended up backfiring. People were cutting off the rat’s tail and releasing them back to sewers to breed — in doing so, the rat killers ha more opportunities to profit from the large rat population. Yet at the same time, the government was reporting positive progress in the rat extermination due to the high numbers of “rats killed”.

This shows how metrics don’t always tell the full story. All metrics are merely a proxy of the user’s behavior and not their intent — which could be entirely different from the original objective.

Twisting the truth

In modern times, digital companies are able to purposefully orchestrate the same rat effect through the means of dark patterns or manipulative designs. This is because all proxies are leaky and susceptible to gaming. When I say gaming, I mean influencing the metric in a way that might not represent the original intent of the user.

Harry Brignull has created a website listing 11 different dark pattern types that are used to game metrics. One such example is Microsoft which recommended users of older versions of Windows to upgrade to Windows 10. When users clicked the “x” button on the dialogue box, it actually downloaded the software — a classic “bait-and-switch” type. This allowed Microsoft to artificially inflate the number of Windows 10 users — regardless of the users’ original intent.

“Every object we make exists in the future. We are making a statement when we design: which futures are desirable or undesirable,” — Cennydd Bowles

It takes effort to balance values and ethics, with business objectives and goals. Companies have to reflect on the choices they make and the impact of those choices — rather than solely focus on financial gains. If you want to create meaningful growth, rather than artificial fluctuation, it best to focus your efforts on improving the user experience and creating value for them.

As designers, we have to make a stand and persuade management and stakeholders that it is possible to meet business objectives while still infusing ethics into our work. Having empathy and engaging in self-reflection are all characteristics of being a good designer, and a good human.

The best way to improve your user’s experience and create meaningful growth is by removing any form of friction that might hinder them from their objective. Friction can come in many forms;

• Discovery — The user has no idea where to navigate
• Clarity —The user is unsure of what will happen
• Complexity — The user is unable to complete the current step