I got an email from La Quinta other week. The subject line read, “July Account Balance”. I immediately panicked. OMG, how much do I owe?! I stayed at a La Quinta hotel a few weeks ago when I had an over night layover in Chicago. It was a horrible experience and I vowed to never set food in a La Quinta hotel ever again. What did that dumb night manager charge me for? This is going to be such a headache to figure out. I few seconds of panic, frustration, and concern until I open the email and …
…are you kidding me? I don’t owe money. My account is full of stupid “La Quinta points”, not unpaid hotel bills. Relieved and slightly annoyed, I went on with my morning.
If you can’t relate to this experience then you don’t have an email address or you’re not thinking hard enough. Everyday we are harassed by immoral design tactics and they are slowly eating away out our souls.
Facebook Safety Checks
Facebook’s safety check feature rolled out in 2014. The feature’s goal was to allow users who are near a catastrophe to inform friends and family that they are safe. In March of 2017, Facebook designers iterated a small change to the safety check feature. Facebook now sends you a notification that your friend/family member might be in danger. Then, you are prompted to click a “ask if safe” button. If you click this button, your friend/family member will receive a notification. This notification inform them that you want to know if they’re okay.
This small design decision completely changes the emotional interaction. Before, the user that was in potential danger would chose to tell him family and friends that he was okay. Now, Facebook prematurely frightens family and friends. The notification emotionally manipulates them into using Facebook’s feature. This is a gross manipulation of what safety checks were originally designed to do.
The Empathetic Unicorn
Many companies design their products and features this way. Have you ever been on the phone for an hour trying to cancel a subscription? Design that focuses on business goals and ignores user needs is commonplace. When a company adopts an empathetic approach to design, it feels like a glorious breath of fresh air. When companies make design decisions that are healthy for users, we like it.
Earlier this month, Instagram released a new feature. This feature notifies users that they have seen all new posts from the past 48 hours.
This new feature encourages users to get off Instagram! What?! Instagram makes money when you consume ads and sponsored content. It seems wrong for them to encourage you to stop scrolling. Instagram’s decision to execute this new feature was motivated by empathy.
Understanding how time online impacts people is important, and it's the responsibility of all companies to be honest about this. We want to be part of the solution. I take that responsibility seriously.
— Kevin S. (@kevin) May 16, 2018
This feature is good for user experience because endless scrolling is unhealthy. Research overwhelming proves that more time on social media leads to depression and other mental health problems. Yet many companies use human psychology to entice users to keep scrolling for hours. Instagram took a stand for user’s health and well-being by implementing this feature. Now that’s refreshing, empathetic design.
Why is Empathy a Unicorn?
Empathy is so hard to find, but when you finally see it, it’s magical. Developers don’t have empathy as part of their process. Product managers don’t focus on being empathetic. Empathy is what makes design more human than other tech fields. When empathy is implemented in a product, it is beautiful. Empathy is the first step in the Design Thinking Process so we can’t ignore it. It should be the start of every product design process and it should be at the heart of every product.
Designers empathize through two powerful tools: research and a psychology. We use user research to gain insights about how people act. We us human psychology to understand what motivates people to act. Through these tools we can become empathetic to our users. We can learn what motivates users to do healthy things. We can learn what motivates users to do unhealthy things. When designers motivate users to do unhealthy things, it’s manipulative and wrong. When designers create something that motivates users to do healthy things, a great product is born. It’s a tough task, but that’s why design is such a rewarding and special career. We have the power to shape people’s lives.
I hope we start a shift towards designing what’s best for our users instead of what’s best for our businesses. It’s counterintuitive at first, but ethical and empathetic and it changes your user’s life for the better.
