Designing Persuasive UX
From a certain perspective, it can be argued that interaction design is all about persuading people to attain a certain goal. Persuading them to follow a certain path. Providing them with cues to direct and influence their decisions and habits. We create applications aimed at making people do certain things more frequently and consistently. We remove distractions and streamline the process to make decision making easy. Those who understand their users better are better able to persuade.
Persuasive Techniques → Effective Design→ Goals Reached
Although the application of Persuasive Design is highly debatable and tricky because of its wide scope of application. . It can be used for both good and evil. So it has to be ensured that the ethics that apply need to be upheld.
For example Questions like
1.Is it okay to employ techniques to change people's decisions?
2. Does persuading involve deceiving?
3. What are the scenarios for implementing persuasive designs
4. How far is too far in persuasive design?
Such questions create a very fine wall in between right and wrong. But if it is implemented in an ethical way so as to benefit both the users and the persuaders, there is a lot to gain from it.
Although the term “Persuasive UX in a fairly new term, the techniques have been in use for long, especially in marketing, Advertisements, branding, and propaganda. People were made to believe certain things in a certain way. One of the best examples of persuasion would be the advertisement on cigarette packets. Way back, cigarette packets used to have vivifying designs with cheerful taglines so as to persuade the buyer to believe that cigarette smoking is fun and “not dangerous”. Another interesting example would be the persuasive political propaganda that was used on people during the world wars. But gradually, as we started to understand human behavior, more details were uncovered and persuasive science became a subject of its own.
The balance between Logic and Emotion
While we may adhere to ideal scenarios where logic and emotions are equally balanced, there is but one winner between the two in any given situation. We as humans are emotional beings. Depending on the triggers, our brain often reacts irrationally and illogically allowing our emotions to take control.
The knowledge of how our brain functions and why we behave the way we behave helps us to craft different channels of persuasion for different scenarios.
Designing to persuade is like creating the right emotional state at the expense of logic. The more honest we are to the fact that in the long run, rational and logical arguments can never win again emotional ones, the more we can understand and create suitable emotional states for the consumers where they behave the way it is intended.
Emotional Channels of Persuasion
The hacks for persuasion begins with psychology. Understanding how users see, act, and respond helps us build the right channels of persuasion for them. For instance, Creating a desire, Bringing in Authority, Creating a Sense of Scarcity or a feeling of Reciprocity, etc are age-old proven practices of persuasion. Making the users believe that by adding something to their lives they can improve it tremendously does the trick.
People like to follow influential people, their idols, and people with authority. They are more likely to adhere to ideas if they come from someone they admire. Scarcity is creating an urgency about a situation. Like an opportunity might pass if they don't act instantly. Sometimes we make the users feel obligated to do something, more like returning a favor.
All these channels can be used in a certain way to create the right balance. They aim to approach people at a level where they are governed by their feelings and not their thoughts. The key element of persuasive design is to limit the logical aspect of decision making and make the emotional aspect more prominent.
Why it is always a challenge to implement it in Product design?
Naturally, persuasion works the best with person to person or face to face interactions. Because the persuader is essentially in control of the whole process. If things don't work out as intended, they can adjust and bring different elements of persuasion into the scene almost instantly. Since time is also a very important factor in this process. Being able to know the reaction early helps to adapt and improvise before things go sideways.
In product design, however, we are targeting a large number of people of countless diversities in thoughts and emotions through a medium where our persuasive techniques are limited to certain digital forms of communication and of course, at any point of time, it is very difficult to be sure about the type of users we are dealing with and their reactions to the triggers.
One of the best and proven way to persuade people in product design is by personalizing the design experience for the users
Personalization creates an instant sense of attachment. It helps to make positive inroads into the emotional realm of the users. Addressing by their names or calling them in a way they feel special we can make them do things rather easily. Suggesting them options based on their preferences makes them feel comfortable and even flattered sometimes. We should understand that persuasion is almost impossible without attachment.
The beauty of the persuasive design is that users get persuaded even after they are aware of the techniques (or at least they think they are).
Implementing persuasive design isn't easy and there is no guarantee that every user will be affected the same way. But it will definitely empower organizations to get more users to do what we intend them to do.
Types of Persuasive Design
Evil Design: It persuades the users to do something that benefits the designer more than the users
Commercial Design: It Persuades the users to do things that benefit the designer and the user equally
Motivational Design: It Persuades the users to do things that benefit them even though they would not choose to do it unaided
Charitable design: It Persuades the users to do things that benefit society more than themselves or the designer
Although the choice of implementing a design method depends on the product and the users, one should avoid using Evil Design. It has more adverse effects than one can possibly imagine. Commercial Design is a more acceptable form of design. Again, it all depends on what needs to be achieved. As product designers, we must ensure that we evaluate our processes and techniques before implementing them so that they don't fall into dark patterns.
The boundaries between evil, commercial, motivational and charitable design keep on fluctuating depending on the product, the users, and the situation. One should be careful enough before making any major change.
Persuasion is a powerful force and the process of persuasion is an art. It is more like providing a suitable perspective to the users to hang on to. Establishing trust and attachment through our products and services, making the users feel important by paying attention to each and every detail, and letting them feel that they are in control of the process with a clear picture of the reward they get for their actions lays the foundation of persuasive design.
