The manipulative power of design

Hello, Thank you so much for quoting me in this important video! I agree with absolutely everything said here. Designers: Take what you do very serious!

Hey Cynthia Zhou! I'm a video game developer, and it's getting really dark. The predatory design in some games is insanely high, especially when aimed at children. Parents and consumers in general should be well-educated; videos like yours and the comments other designers left are incredibly valuable.

As a UX professional myself, I often think about this a lot. It's becoming a double edge sword when we have the power to shape people's life, especially with social media and stuff. Thank you for putting words on things that I can't describe! Definitely deserve a lot more views & subs with this level of writing and production quality!

As a UX design student at Georgia Tech, there're a lot of classes that teach ethical design, which I appreciate. Designers at a corporate company can form groups that start conversations about ethics or join activities for example reading about ethical design papers once in a while. Those groups can help product designers have a voice.

Being a designer for 4+ years now, I am realizing the balance between business profit & user experience on the ethics front will always be a constant struggle (more on the early career side of things). Obv, you need tremendous leadership support here, and this is where your design leadership makes or breaks your experience working on projects. Few things I have tried - 1. When being forced to add a dark pattern for eventual business profit, sharing past/academic research on the negative outcomes & potential effects on society, reputation & even long-term business impact helps (some numbers). 2. Having alternative solutions that don't follow the dark pattern but still help move some business metrics. 3. Saying "NO" to building something for the business & having your manager/director/design VP to back you along with it. (This one felt hard) 4. And when leadership support fails, looked for a new job where leadership does care about it! (obv easier said than done, but gaining experience & going to a place where ethics is valued from the top-down & seen as a business strength/goal is always worth it)

I'm a gen z studying software engineering, but for quite a while I've thought that social media and the companies behind them are quite unethical. To make it worse, the issue is relatively unknown. Many of my gen z friends don't even think about the way they use social media and why they use it. Sometimes leading them into spending unhealthy amounts of time on the app, or subconsciously consuming unhealthy beliefs/expectations. However, to hear a similar perspective from a UX designer themself was quite nice. It makes me glad to know that UX designers are atleast thinking about it, and even more glad to know some are actively going against it by raising awareness and refusing to work with corporate companies.

It was this exact darkside of design that caused me to choose architecture over graphic design when I applied for college. Fast-forward 25 years, and now I do UX/UI, but I steer toward technical projects for the same reason. One resource I found very helpful on this subject was the book "A Unified Theory of Information Design" (Amare, Manning, 2013), in which they define "unethical design" as the misalignment of communication expectations. The book is a bit technical and academic, but profound! For anyone wanting a deeper dive of the technical content (and better graphics, LOL), pair it with "FireSigns" (Steven Skaggs, 2017)

I’ve always been a firm believer that making the correct decision for the benefit of your users/customers is ultimately the correct decision for your business too. At least, in the long term. A lot of the companies that were named in the video have definitely come under fire in recent years for their questionable practices. Rightfully so. Hopefully these companies continue to pay steeper and steeper prices for their abuses. 🙏 It’s good to find a kindred spirit that seemingly works according to a set of principles. It’s the right way to go about being a professional. Keep it up!

I'm a Graphic Designer and a Frontend Developer, and this year I delved for a couple of months into UX, thinking it was a nice mix of both.. and yeah! there's a lot of cool aspects to it, but sadly I ran into dark patterns, and read a bunch of anecdotes about companies encouraging them over what would be best for the users and I think it's quite sad how these aspects are so present in marketing adjacent careers, I've honestly grown disenchanted by this with graphic design.. always making stuff for people to profit off of, I'd like to feel like I'm doing something good for others, not just manipulate them into buying a product over another. Anyone reading this who thinks similar, I recommend the book "Design after Capitalism" by Matthew Wizinsky, it's really interesting.

This is the second of your you tube videos I have seen. Both brilliant! But I believe this one is one of the most important I have ever seen, on you tube, for so many reasons. One, you are helping so many people, including designers, understand how they can be manipulated and also be used to manipulate other people and how that activity can have bad effects on their own health. I hope this video reaches millions.

the idea, editing, production quality; everything is top tier in this video. great content

This is a incredibly structured video of well curated information. Very engaging. Good work!

I love the fact that you strip App design agenda bare naked and spread awareness to design with good intentions for users. I feel inspired watching this. Thank you!

I'm 30 seconds in, and I can definitely tell your channel gonna go big! Keep at it!

Love the topic! That's why I switched to the service design as a Product Designer. Now I'm not thinking from marketing perspective but just solving user's problems.

Great video, subscribed halfway through haha. Just the other day I thought about exactly what you mentioned about Twitch. Can't wait for more! :)

This is amazing thank you for taking the time to share this. I am in strategic partnerships in a tech company and I work with the UX UI team all the time. it's amazing the insights they have about customers, down to where their eyes fall on the screen, for how long, what is the best place to put a certain button (trigger) etc. We tend to be mad at this OTHER team or people that make the world confusing and chaotic but most often we all play a role in it.

Great video Cynthia, couldn't agree more! Very salient topic right now as media consumption continues the shift towards social consumer apps.

Well done! This is the one topic that I've been wanting to cover and you've done it with the flourish needed to entertain and educate. I'm very critical about design ethics in UX when discussing the field with peers and my mentees.

Love it I just started learning UI/UX Design and this video was so beneficial for me !💙