How to Provide an Honest and Ethical User Experience

What is an ethical user experience?

An ethical user experience (UX) involves integrating moral and social considerations into the creation of user interfaces and interactions. In addition to having excellent functionality and consumer appeal, this also involves transparency and prioritizing values like data protection and nondiscrimination. 

The push toward ethical UX design has been influenced by the availability of data today, along with advancements in AI and greater societal awareness of data protection and ethical issues. Today’s UX designers use ethical guidelines, checklists and participatory design methods to weave these principles into the design process, resulting in user experiences that are both effective and ethically responsible.

How to provide an ethical user experience

UX design can be a positive force when it is created to genuinely benefit the user and their needs. Follow these best practices to ensure you’re creating an ethical user experience.

1. Don’t exploit your users’ fear of missing out.

User experience design can be manipulative as long as it truly benefits the user. A gamified weight loss app, for instance, could encourage users to live a healthier lifestyle. That’s a good form of manipulation.

On the other hand, many apps aim to exploit users’ fear of missing out. This is a tried-and-true marketing tactic, but it’s not necessarily ethical when you’re in a user’s pocket and able to leverage friends and family as collateral. The design choices made at these companies contribute to the isolation users feel on certain social platforms.

Instead of using negative consequences to motivate users, such as making them feel bad when they don’t perform a task or join a group, design teams should focus on positive reinforcement. This can be done with simple messaging or small animations and celebrations that encourage users to complete desired behaviors. Fear is a powerful motivator, but using it as a design tool makes you more of a dictator than a benevolent leader. You will build a stronger, more ethical company if you focus on empowerment instead.

2. Keep your prices transparent.

Customers may find it disheartening and downright annoying when they purchase something online and suddenly face extra charges for things such as taxes or shipping. An ethical strategy to apply to your website’s user interface is to ensure that the price customers see is what they pay.

When you’re pricing items on your website, be sure to include taxes and fees in the listed price, as opposed to having them appear as the customer is checking out. Many companies list and advertise one price for a product, but when customers go to check out, it’s much more expensive after the addition of taxes, fees and shipping.

3. Don’t design products that are harmful to users’ health.

Apps and sites, especially social ones, often exploit people’s inherent desire to belong and guilt them into posting. Businesses that deploy apps shouldn’t just track success metrics showing how much engagement they are getting. Looking at only these numbers encourages you to design products that can lead to addictive and harmful user behavior.

Don’t forget the qualitative data as well. Find out how you are bringing joy and value to people’s lives and making them feel better about themselves. Too much focus on the quantitative instead of the qualitative leads to exploitative behavior. Talking to your users is an incredibly important part of the early stages of product design because it allows you to build empathy. [Learn how to build a strong brand community.]

4. Make subscriptions easy to cancel.

In many companies’ user interfaces, customers may find it easier to opt into a subscription or an order than to opt out of one. By making the cancellation process difficult, consumers are unlikely to take the necessary steps to cancel, which could make them unhappy over the long run and may prevent future referrals. Just because one product doesn’t work for someone doesn’t mean it won’t work for their friend or family member. 

Make it easy for customers to cancel an order or subscription. As a result, your customers will feel heard and confident that your company isn’t trying to trick them into buying something they don’t need. [Learn how to utilize customer service as a marketing strategy.]

5. Don’t allow your biases to affect your designs.

Designers are trained to build things that make people feel comfortable, but they should equally consider when ethics demand a closer look. [Read related: Does Your Business Need a Code of Ethics or Conduct?]

Have you ever stopped to wonder why most of our voice assistants appear to be female, for instance, and speak in a flirtatious manner? According to a UNESCO report, part of the problem is that the industry’s lack of diversity can result in the perpetuation of gender stereotypes like women being seen as compliant assistants instead of in a variety of roles.

When software takes on a human representation (such as Siri, whose very name means “beautiful woman who leads you to victory”), think about whether the design is reinforcing such biases or fighting against them. By educating yourself about common biases, you might uncover some stereotypes you have been perpetuating unknowingly. This small bit of education will allow your team members to evaluate the design choices they are making.

That doesn’t mean you have to change every instance of human representation to a gender-neutral robot. Rather, by informing yourself — and, by extension, your design — you can elevate the ethics of the product you are building. Encourage your team, no matter how small, to take time to understand the biases they might carry.

6. Make your privacy policy transparent.

Privacy policies are often difficult to understand and filled with legal jargon that the average consumer may not understand at a glance. Often, customers don’t even read it, even though it contains pertinent information about the use of their private data.

Therefore, it is best not to hide behind privacy policies when you’re obtaining information from your customers, who would prefer you ask for minimal personal data. Provide them with simple statements about the information you’ll be collecting, and ask for their consent. You can elaborate on the details in a privacy policy, but make sure the customer will be able to understand the gist of any personal data you’ll be collecting before they sign over their information. 

7. Don’t trick people to increase profits.

In design, pop-ups asking for consent or an agreement of some kind almost universally use dark patterns that are contrasted with brightly colored “agree and continue” buttons. When faced with reading the fine print, humans naturally look for the quickest way out. Designers make it easy for them to agree without reading by illuminating the button they want users to click. We’ve all fallen for this tactic at some point.

In an analysis of retail brands, user experience (UX) service Sigma Software found that companies employ several shady methods to increase revenue, such as using bright colors on the answers the seller wants you to click but leaving the “no thanks” buttons unshaded.

Plus, companies simply have an incentive to keep users glued to their screens. Endlessly scrolling feeds show more ads to users, which means companies earn more while leeching users’ time.

Trickery and deceit have become common in UX design. In his book “Evil by Design” (Wiley, 2013), Chris Nodder organizes design examples that exploit each of the seven deadly sins. While sketching out workflows and creating interfaces, designers need to be honest with consumers by not intentionally confusing them and instead using their design training to make the appropriate choices clear.

Businesses’ design teams need to stop focusing solely on profit and engagement metrics, as it could require crossing ethical lines that could harm your users and your business’s long-term reputation. Not only could it result in bad publicity, but it’s also unethical. There are many other ways to build loyal customers. Designs should enrich users’ lives instead of detracting from them.

The harm that comes from unethical user experiences

Ethics play a large role in creating a harmonious user experience. Unethical user experiences can lead to privacy violations, reinforce biases and cause harm by manipulating or exploiting users, ultimately violating trust and causing negative societal impacts.

Here’s more about the negative consequences of an unethical user experience.

• Loss of user trust. Persuading users to make decisions they wouldn’t have made if fully informed is a form of unethical UX. Trust can be lost by patterns such as deceptive language, concealed fees/costs and coerced progression or subscriptions, among other tactics.
• Emotional manipulation. Some UX design tactics can create a sense of urgency, leading users to feel pressured into making a decision quickly. Applying advertising tactics that have limited availability — countdown timers or wording that can instill pressure, for example — is not recommended when considering the user experience.
• Lack of diversity and accessibility. When designing, it’s important to ensure the user experience appeals to a diverse audience and is accessible to as many people as possible. Prioritizing accessibility creates a safe environment for the user and showcases inclusivity. 

Ethical UX design leads to better customer relations and makes customers feel valued. When you hire a UX or user interface designer, be sure to have an ethical strategy for designing your business’s user interface, and you’ll have the support you need to move forward. The longevity of your business depends on a positive user experience and optimal customer service.

Tony Sherba contributed to this article.