Settings are not a design failure

Good Luck Opting Out: Manipulative Design Patterns in Opt-Out Processes

EPIC’s report Good Luck Opting Out: Manipulative Design Patterns in Opt-Out Processes by Justin Sherman, EPIC Scholar in Residence, and Caroline Kraczon, EPIC Counsel, investigates whether the consumer opt-out processes provided by major online platforms use manipulative design patterns to make it more difficult for consumers to exercise their opt-out rights.

Frame of preference

A story of early Mac settings told by 10 emulators.

Design: A powerful but neglected marketing tool

Design is a potent marketing tool that can be used to gain competitive distinctiveness and provide consumer satisfaction. But with few exceptions, most companies neglect or mismanage design as a marketing tool. The authors describe what constitutes good design; how companies can employ design to enhance their products, environments, communications, and corporate identity; and how companies can improve the working relationship between designers and marketing people. The article includes two audit instruments which companies can use for measuring company design sensitivity and design management effectiveness. Design (Entwurf und Gestaltung von Produkten) ist ein wirksames Marketinginstrument im Rahmen der Konkurrenzstrategie und zur Erhöhung der Konsumentenzufriedenheit. Mit einigen Ausnahmen jedoch vernachlässigen die meisten Unternehmungen das Design als Marketinginstrument oder setzen es schlecht ein. Die Autoren beschreiben, wodurch sich ein gutes Design auszeichnet, wie Unternehmungen das Design zur Aufwertung und Verbesserung ihrer Produkte, zur Abgrenzung in ihrer Umwelt und in ihrer Kommunikationspolitik und im Bereiche der Corporate Identity einsetzen können. Ferner zeigen die Autoren, wie die Unternehmungen die Zusammenarbeit zwischen den Produktgestaltern (designers) und den Marketingspezialisten verbessern können. Der Beitrag zeigt zwei Kontrollinstrumente für die Unternehmung zur Abschätzung der Design-Empfindlichkeit von Unternehmungen und zur Messung der Effizienz des DesignManagements (Handhabung der Produktgestaltung).

EV Stupidity Checklist

Automobiles have been around for well over a century. During that time, we’ve gotten pretty good at designing and building their basic components and controls: seats, doors, pedals, steering wheels, mirrors, etc. But when today’s automakers decide to make an electric vehicle (EV), they seemingly forget much of what they once knew, creating new versions of features that are objectively, obviously worse than the time-tested designs they replace.

Data Brokers’ and AI Firms’ Opt-Out Forms Are Built to Fail, Report Finds

A new study finds AI companies, defense firms, and dating apps are among 38 data collectors allegedly using manipulative design to confuse users while collecting their data.

Controlling when CSS custom property values are computed

The default might not be what you expect, and it has a big impact on your styles.

People Reject Algorithms in Uncertain Decision Domains Because They Have Diminishing Sensitivity to Forecasting Error

Will people use self-driving cars, virtual doctors, and other algorithmic decision-makers if they outperform humans? The answer depends on the uncertainty inherent in the decision domain. We propose that people have diminishing sensitivity to forecasting error and that this preference results in people favoring riskier (and often worse-performing) decision-making methods, such as human judgment, in inherently uncertain domains. In nine studies ( N = 4,820), we found that (a) people have diminishing sensitivity to each marginal unit of error that a forecast produces, (b) people are less likely to use the best possible algorithm in decision domains that are more unpredictable, (c) people choose between decision-making methods on the basis of the perceived likelihood of those methods producing a near-perfect answer, and (d) people prefer methods that exhibit higher variance in performance (all else being equal). To the extent that investing, medical decision-making, and other domains are inherently uncertain, people may be unwilling to use even the best possible algorithm in those domains.

Read the Principles — Design Justice Network

Design mediates so much of our realities and has tremendous impact on our lives, yet very few of us participate in design processes. In particular, the people who are most adversely affected by design decisions — about visual culture, new technologies, the planning of our communities, or the structure of our political and economic systems — tend to have the least influence on those decisions and how they are made.

Physicality: the new age of UI

There’s a lot of rumors of a big impending UI redesign from Apple. Let’s imagine what’s (or what could be) next for the design of iPhones, Macs and iPads.

About Browser Choice Allliance

The issue Microsoft’s deceptive tacticsimpede consumer choiceFor years, Microsoft has manipulated desktop browser choice, using deceptive tactics to push Edge onto users. Instead of competing on quality, it relies on forced resets, misleading prompts, and hidden settings to trap people into using its browser. Every time Microsoft forces, pushes or…

THE BRAND GAP — MARTY NEUMEIER

How to bridge the distance between business strategy and design

Choosing Less‐Preferred Experiences For the Sake of Variety

Abstract. Data from several experiments show that, contrary to traditional models of variety seeking, individuals choose to switch to less-preferred option

Can browser choice screens be effective?

Innovative new research from Mozilla shows that design is critical Browser choice screens are back on the menu. Most notably, the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) will require them from ...

Design From the Margins

In an age of virtual connectivity and increased reliance on the internet for daily functions, including by marginalized groups, can companies and technologists reframe their features or standards to support the most marginalized users’ needs? Can the modes of resilience within digital spaces from some of the most marginalized groups be listened to, learned from, and centered when creating technology? Design from the Margins (DFM), a design process that centers the most impacted and marginalized users from ideation to production, pushes the notion that not only is this something that can and must be done, but also that it is highly beneficial for all users and companies. For this to happen, consumer interest conversations need to be framed outside the “biggest use case” scenarios and United States and European Union-centrisms and refocused on the cases often left in the margins: the decentered cases. This report outlines how the DFM method can be used to build our most well-known and relied-upon technologies for decentered cases (often deemed “edge cases” which is atypical or less common use case for a product) from the beginning of the design process, rather than retrofitting them post-deployment to cater to communities with what are perceived to be extra needs.

Designing for Uncertainty - AT Protocol

Ethan Marcotte, who first coined the phrase Responsive Design, joins to discuss how to operate in a world defined by uncertainty.