Helping Users Make Better Decisions With Anticipatory Design
Graeme Fulton’s article - “How to Build Honest UIs and Help Users Make Better Decisions” - covers the concepts of anticipatory design and dark patterns. The author demonstrates how these concepts can be used in interface design to help people make decisions. This article explores these concepts and aims to add further value from a human-centered perspective.
What is Anticipatory Design?
People have to make a significant number of decisions in daily life. Making decisions consumes valuable time and can lead to a feeling of paralysis called decision fatigue. Eliminating the number of extraneous choices enables people to focus on the ones that matter. The term, "anticipatory design" was first coined by Aaron Shapiro to describe a method of alleviating decision fatigue in user interface design. In his article Fulton explains the aim of anticipatory design is to reduce the number of decisions users have to make by automating decision-making. Anticipatory design utilises data collected about user behaviour to determine what appropriate information should be delivered next, thus removing the decision from the user.
Making it Human-Centered
Anticipatory design aims to solve the problem of decision fatigue by simplifying the decision-making process. In human-centered design, an empathetic understanding of human wants and needs is used to solve problems. Anticipatory design could, therefore, be considered human-centered. However, if anticipatory design is to continue solving human problems, human-centered design must dictate the implementation strategy.
The Ramifications
Fulton brings to light that many businesses are using anticipatory design in unethical ways. He explains a dark pattern whereby collected data about user preferences and behaviour is then used to anticipate and push “disguised” relevant advertising to the user. Fulton explains these advertisements are disguised to look like real website content tricking users to click-through.
This practice also raises the issue of privacy. Anticipatory design collects big data on personal behaviour without the user's knowledge or consent. Users won’t be aware where their information is going or if their privacy if being breached.
Another concern of anticipatory design is the extent that information will be moderated and controlled. People will be living in an information bubble. The generative nature of anticipatory design removes any element of chance or surprise. Remove this from an application, and it becomes generic; we lose the magic of discovering new, unanticipated knowledge.
Looking to the Future
Many large companies are using anticipatory design in their services. If these services are going to solve people's problems, a human-centered design approach must be employed. User interfaces need to be open and transparent. If data is collected, then users need to be informed of this. People must also be able to participate in the curation of content they receive. They must be able to control, personalise or opt-out of the anticipatory experience.
Original article at brettvansleve.com