The document discusses a talk given by a senior UX consultant at Amaze, a full-service digital consultancy. He discusses how UX involves user-centered design and usability testing. He then contrasts "bad UX" which can result from laziness or lack of understanding, with "evil UX" which deliberately uses psychology and tricks to mislead users, providing examples of dark patterns. Throughout he emphasizes the importance of designing experiences that are helpful, honest and transparent for users.

1. #speaktheweb
Designing
for Evil
@quiffboy @speaktheweb sheffield
#speaktheweb
Tuesday, 16 July 2013

2. #speaktheweb
Senior UX Consultant at amaze
Left Sheffield Hallam Uni in 1998
Started career as a front-end dev
Drifted into UX in 2005
Joined amaze in April 2012

3. #speaktheweb
Amaze founded in 1995
Lots and lots of people (about 220!)
Offices in Manchester, Liverpool & London - this is the Manchester office opposite the old Hacienda
Full service consultancy for B2C and B2B: Strategy & creative, Design & build, Digital commerce and
technology, Integrated comms, Global implementation support
We’re quite good…

4. #speaktheweb
• In 2013, Amaze ranked at number 22
in UK’s top 100 agencies
• Ranked #1 in the North West
• Ranked #4 in Design & Build
Don’t just take my word for it…

5. #speakthewebASICS – International websites / Global E-commerce
Take ASICS from non-transactional to transactional
Requires whole sales, warehouse and distribution network, and customer services establishing
America live, Japan in dev, Europe ready for dev, next up is Australiathen on to China, South America
and rest of world

6. #speakthewebLexus V10 – Building award-winning pan-European luxury
European rollout completed couple of months ago
FWA and Mobile FWA in same day - first site ever to do that
Best use of brand @ Big chip 2013

7. #speaktheweb
The Saucy Fish Co – Increasing brand worth to £60m in 2 years
using digital, social and PR as springboards

8. #speaktheweb
Unilever - Strategic co-ordination and implementation support
across Unilever’s global digital operation
Responsible for strategic co-ordination & implementation support across Unilever’s global digital operation.
This involves building a consistent global digital presence for the corporation, including the support of 68
websites across 104 countries.

9. #speaktheweb
Toyota - Strategic brand, creative, technological and feature-rich functional
development for multi-lingual websites across 28 European markets

10. #speaktheweb
UX
• User Experience
• Usability
• User-centred Design
• InformationArchitecture
• Wireframing
• Whatever
My bit in all that magic is UX – lots of different names for what we do
User-centric – what do your users or customers want?
User, stakeholder & competitor research, Content audits, Sitemaps,
Wireframes & prototypes, Usability testing.
Best practise & design patterns & a bit of wheel reinventing

11. #speaktheweb
“Making stuff work well
”Me

12. #speaktheweb
Evil UX
Boo hiss!

13. #speaktheweb
Bad UX != Evil UX
Bad UX can be down to poor attention to detail, laziness, lack of understanding of the web
Evil UX is completely the opposite…

14. #speaktheweb
…its done by people who sit in chairs like this

15. #speaktheweb
…is deliberate and carefully crafted

16. #speaktheweb
…utilises an understanding of human nature and psychology

17. #speaktheweb
…and is designed to trick, fool & exploit

18. #speaktheweb
So, who’s bad?

19. #speaktheweb
Real link
Ad disguised
as a link
Ad disguised
as a link
Ad
Ad disguised
as a link
Ad disguised
as a link
Ad
Lots more ads

20. #speaktheweb
…if either of these
things happened…
OMG!! That would
be a disaster…
…if either of these
things happened…
…and the standard
password reminder
didn’t work…
Click here …anyway

21. #speaktheweb
Pre-selected
Main CTAsMain CTAs
More pre-selected

22. #speaktheweb
Looks like a
basket review
Thanks to
@timharbour

23. #speaktheweb
4 items £92
3 items
Thanks to
@timharbour

24. #speaktheweb
Box around this
content: Uniform
Connectedness
Optional extras with compulsory
passenger information: Proximity
OPT OUT
instructions, located
AFTER the option
Travel
insurance
Label separate
from dropdown

25. #speaktheweb
Select no insurance -
between LATVIA and
LITHUANIA

26. #speaktheweb
But wait! What’s this?
They've changed it…

27. #speaktheweb
Travel
insurance

28. #speaktheweb
Countries

29. #speaktheweb
Opt out

30. #speaktheweb
Image credit:
nytimes.com
FB: 5830
words
USA: 4543
words

31. #speaktheweb
Image credit:
nytimes.com
UPDATE:
Facebook’s Privacy Policy now called Data Use Policy
& split into several pages & sections
http://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/
Digital Trends’ breakdown of the Data Use Policy:
http://tiny.cc/datause

32. #speaktheweb
Offering a feedback form but no other contact details
Means the user has no record of contacting you, giving you plausible deniability
They cannot chase you up any other way
There’s no context to subsequent correspondence
Every follow-up must be done through the feedback form & feels like yet another first approach

33. #speaktheweb
More opt-in hi-jinx from
DarkPatterns.org…

34. #speaktheweb
Link to opt out hidden
behind this link
Image credit:
Darkpatterns.org

35. #speaktheweb
Opt out
Opt in
Compulsory
Image credit:
Darkpatterns.org

36. #speaktheweb
Image credit:
Darkpatterns.org
Opt out
Opt in
Obfuscating
terminology

37. #speaktheweb
“Play nice
”Me again

38. #speaktheweb
Thank you J
e: b.briggs@amaze.com
t: @quiffboy
w: www.amaze.com