TIME TO NUDGE BACK
Dear designer. I would like to recommend you to reconsider your choices. Not the big ones. The small tiny ones. The ones we make every day when we don’t object to manipulative techniques in design that trick people into doing what they don’t want. It is part of your professionalism to say no to certain things that are unethical.
When the big tech will have used more and more manipulative cognitive techniques to seduce people from normal physical life into screen addiction, what will your contribution have been to fight this attack on humanity?
Yes, I might be radical and relentless here, I will stop now to share a personal story, a user story if you want. And maybe it will give you more backbone. We will need it. The backbone to stop curating this feeling of something is not right but it is not that bad ah let’s just leave it and not say anything.
Swallowing that feeling and staying silent is not going to help you find an answer to the above question.
A subtle technique to influence people is nudging.
The Gabler Encyclopedia of Economy defines:
““nudging”, “pushing” or “prodding” as moving someone in a more or less subtle way to do or not to do something specific once or permanently. Preferences and standards (defaults) can be used just as much as product information and product presentations.”
The term was coined by economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein with their book Nudge: How to Instigate Smart Decisions.
In their book, Thaler and Sunstein describe how to encourage behaviors that are good for people. For example, healthy food is stocked in supermarkets in the entrance area. Lidl, Aldi, Kaufland, Edeka, Rewe — in all the supermarkets I know, the first thing I come to when I enter is the fruit and vegetable section. That alone makes the supermarket visitor more likely to grab something than if he had to search specifically. The organization of goods in department stores is the biggest stimulus for influencing the buying behavior that we cannot escape. When we shop at Ikea, for example, we are forced to go through the whole maze of displayed furniture, even if we only want to buy a washing-up brush. This kind of nudging is also one of the guiding principles in the design of websites, forums, apps, and programs or shops. All of us have ordered or subscribed to a service on the internet, only to find that canceling it is much harder than subscribing.
Staying is easier — leaving becomes a mission impossible
When I once wanted to cancel my Amazon Audible subscription, I had to click through several specially designed pages. This is because the cancellation process is multi-step. The build-up of information and also emotional stimuli makes the cancellation process a gauntlet for my willpower. At every step on the termination website, arguments come my way not to do it. The trick of asking why I want to quit is not for the sake of a personal relationship. I’m just choosing here how the company, might catch me trying to break out after all. I clicked on the reason that the subscription was too expensive, not because it was true, but because I was too lazy to read them all. Good for me, because that way the 3 options offered thereupon didn’t appeal to me. It looks like I now have a choice between a 50% discount on the subscription for 3 months, a subscription break, or extra credit for an audiobook. Normally you can buy one audiobook per month in the subscription, which cost about 10 euros a month back then. Besides the discount and the break, I have the choice of getting one audiobook as a gift. The choice of alternatives should make me forget that I really wanted to leave altogether. It’s as if Amazon itself didn’t realize at the point that it had previously offered me a button, or at least an ugly link, that said “cancel subscription” on it.
Framing at its best
Just as if someone had lured me into his shop with a promise. Except that as soon as I enter the shop, they then act as if there had never been any mention of it. We are all communicatively adaptable. When someone claims something, we like to believe it if it goes towards what we want. But if we are then cognitively too overwhelmed to process that where we got is quite different from what we expected, we can’t stand it for long. It is a strategy to draw us into a dialogue that we already logically discarded by deciding to quit. But because it is illogical that these options now arise, after all, this also sets in motion a cognitive process in us that keeps us busy. We ask ourselves whether we’re wrong here. Apparently not entirely, because these options also have to do with our desire to quit. The only way to resolve the logical contradiction in our mind is to read the options and match them with what we still have in mind. No wonder many don’t find it so easy to cancel such a subscription for good.
It seems absurd to me now, as if I were to cancel a hotel reservation on the phone and the receptionist asked me when I wanted to check-in. If someone did to in-person me what Amazon and similar subscription services do, I would immediately run away and not get involved with that person at all. That would be acting according to free will. But there is no question of that on such sites because my free will has been paralyzed by too much information that I had to process. Clicking on the most visible button feels as if I had managed to quit. Except that I didn’t. Also, I didn’t get to listen anymore and I didn’t buy any more books. If you don’t redeem your monthly credits, they accumulate. If you cancel, you lose them all. That’s another pain I was happy to avoid. I now had not only the unused credits but also the ones I had already been given once after I tried to cancel. Of course, I bought all the potentially interesting audiobooks, heard as much as I could, and still had credits left. This too is a clever trick, an attack on my psyche that I know from casinos.
I succumb here to the fallacy that investors or gamblers also succumb to admitting:
We suffer from a loss aversion
The acceptance of this loss requires so much mental strength that I can’t let go and lose even more money in the running subscription. It is not what I want but it looks like it because it is less frustrating than letting go of what they made be believe to be so desirable. My mind is ready to come up with all kinds of arguments to justify and find emotional balance back:
After all, it’s not impossible for me to become a chain audiobook listener and get back in full. That’s what I hold onto so that my actions make sense to me. That’s where the line to free will gets blurred and my rational thinking ability is also only as strong as my mental and emotional strength.
Eventually, I made it
I let 5 credits lapse at the time and I’m convinced that’s still a good number. (Let me know if you had more. We will found a self-help club for UX traumatized, ripped-off victims.)
Several audiobook corpses lie in my Audible app, which I did not use again after that cancellation experience.
I ended up buying audiobooks that I never got to after years. I didn’t find the mental strength for so long, or when I tried to cancel, I was still given an audiobook as a gift.
It should never be necessary to give reasons for wanting to cancel a subscription in order to continue. This is just a sneaky pattern. I am convinced that with an easier cancellation process, I might have returned to the subscription as a satisfied customer. But that freedom has been nudged away. The last chance for sympathy with that brand is gone for good.
Today, I attended a UX designer book club. We discussed Ruined by Design by Mike Monteiro. My experience is nothing compared to what is described there. The final hour has come for the manipulators, nudgers, and seducers. We are now nudging back. Wait for it.
