In recent years, ethics in usability research has increasingly become a concern among users. Large corporations track, monitor, and manipulate interfaces to evoke an intended reaction from a user. An example of this would be with A/B testing, which is a standard UX research method that can often yield some ethical issues. A/B testing is …
The Ethical Issues of A/B testing in the Tech World Read More »
Shadowing, monitoring, and recording of users has become increasingly sophisticated. As these services become more robust, providing increasingly granular and specific information, they can raise the risk level for users. They tout many advantages for researchers but their activities are often non-consensual with respect to users. The user is unaware of their depth or just …
Users interest are relentlessly changing all the time and their attention span are as short as they have ever been. Given this companies are constantly thinking of new ways to maintain engagement with their users. Sometimes that comes in the form of change with their product and how the user interacts with them. It’s understood …
User experience professionals are currently positioned as the greatest potential perpetrators of, as well as the first line of defense against abusive design. We must understand the nuanced modus operandi behind dark design practices and examine our own and others’ context, intent,, and execution. This discussion on dark patterns seeks to encourage our …
Ethics in Usability Research: Exposing Dark Patterns Read More »
Introduction During usability research, there could be many cognitive biases happened that finally violate the accuracy of the data. Both researchers and users can have biases, such as framing effect, confirmation bias, social desirability bias, etc (Subramanian, 2018). Here I would like to introduce one of the cognitive bias, called the Hawthorne effect. What is …
As a part of my Spring 2019 Independent Study I interviewed an experienced UX Designer to better understand what that position entails over time and on a day-to-day basis. This interview is paraphrased and does not include any identifying information as requested by the interviewee.
Introduction A/B testing has long been a tactic for companies evaluating “two versions of a landing page, web page or mobile app feature” (Rawat). The most common A/B scenario involves changing aesthetic details like button size or graphics adjustments and deploying those changes among active users to test their effect. However, the ethical impropriety …
Internal Review: Ethical Concerns of C/D Testing by Private Companies Read More »
Computers are an essential part of our lives and are now being treated as social actors in a way similar to how we perceive other humans. The feeling of trust is not limited to humans anymore. It can be said that the core of human-computer interaction is the feeling of trust. The primary question here …
All designers should aim for an experience that removes as much friction as possible and creates a usable digital experience. However, it is rare to simply want to create something that just exists. It should be interactive, people should be motivated to use the product. To create such a product that aims to engage the …
If you checked the design principles of making good designs, you’ll easily find out that good design always has a high correlation with psychology. For most of the time, human beings need to “understand” the design through all our sensations. We see objects to read the signifier that would help us to make the first …
The Need for Control – What We Can Learn from Placebo Button Read More »