Design Ethics and Mixed Reality
Freedom of choice and the pitfalls of immersive worlds
Addictive by Design
You are probably familiar with the situation: You are working on something and a Facebook message or a push notification pops up on your phone. But before you know it, you’ve spent 30 minutes scrolling through news feeds or checking your email. According to research by UCI professor Gloria Mark it takes us an average of 23 minutes to refocus our attention after that. But you can be sure that an hour later you are at it again, checking for updates. How is that possible? The reason for this is the way these platforms and apps are designed: By offering you something new each time you check for updates. Sometimes you find a relevant email, a Like on Facebook, a message from a friend. But most of the times it is something highly irrelevant to you and the situation you are in. As Google Design Ethicist Tristan Harris points out, this is very similar to how slot machines work. Both digital platforms and slot machines rely heavily on the findings of behavioral research pioneer B. F. Skinner. His studies show, that by varying the intervals between the rewards and the quality of the rewards itself you would be able to reinforce highly repetitive behavior — a form of addiction. Tech companies use these principles to maximize the time users spend on their services in order to generate more ad revenue. That means that these design choices are deliberate. It also means that the value of enabling the users to choose their actions freely and consciously is not considered very high, when compared to economic arguments. Let’s look at the implications this might have a bit further down the road.
Messing with Mixed Reality
When we are so bad at controlling our impulses when it comes to 2D screens, you have to ask yourself: How would we hold up when it comes to immersive worlds like Virtual Reality or Mixed Reality? Furthermore, what keeps tech giants from also applying these ways of manipulation to 3D mediums? The intention to put economic reasons before the user’s free choice over his actions is demonstrated quite clearly at the moment. But right now, we are aware of the ways these patterns reinforce repetitive behaviors and mess with our perception of things. But in 3D worlds — when executed correctly — the user would not be able to distinguish between an abusive pattern and one that doesn’t manipulate. Even worse: The user would not be able to distinguish a ‘vanilla’ reality from a manipulated reality. The implications would certainly be huge. To understand that better, let’s look at Mixed Reality in detail. Let’s say we have a head mounted display that is able to scan the user’s surroundings and project 3D objects on a transparent glass in front of the user’s eyes, creating a convincing hybrid of virtual objects and real objects — basically a technically mature Holo Lens or Meta Headset. In this scenario, the digital content and your reality would be a mixture with very little discrepancy. That is what makes this technical concept so promising, because it has the potential to not only replace smartphones or computers, but open up a whole new world. But this also means, that the user looses the distance required to reflect on the digital content he/she is consuming and on the actions they are performing. Which leaves the people designing applications and content for this medium with a huge responsibility: They alone are shaping the reality that millions of users perceive. When we continue along our current path, this responsibility will likely not be taken seriously. How can we change that? By thinking about what exactly makes design ethical.
The Ethics of Good Design
In classic moral philosophy we find a very clear formulation for what makes an action ethical: Any action is good, as long as it doesn’t restrict someone else’s freedom. But when we apply the methods of descriptive ethics to the current situation, we can observe: When designing and building digital applications, the users freedom to consciously choose his or her actions is valued lower than economical arguments. This is a perversion of how the priorities should optimally look like. Here’s how the different tiers of values look like, according to classic moral philosophy:
Basic Ethic Values
- freedom (of the individual, of speech, of the press, etc.)
- equality (between genders, races, religions, etc.)
- justice
Moral Values
- individual values (freedom of choice, health, life quality, etc.)
- social values (solidarity, tolerance, collective responsibility, etc.)
- ecological values (dignity of creatures, sustainability, etc.)
Economic Values
- basic economic values (ability to work, free trade, ability to own goods, etc.)
Optimally, we would structure these values like a pyramid. Basic ethic values would be at the bottom, moral values in the middle and economic values on top. They also rely on each other: Only when basic moral values are guaranteed, moral values are possible and only when moral values are intact, economical values can be practiced. But our current western value system turns this order upside down. We regard economic success so highly that other moral values become more of a luxurious byproduct, if justified at all. As mentioned earlier, this of course also transfers over to design. But how can we change that? We have to start a conversation to redefine what makes design good. Until now, the most popular definition of good design was formulated by Dieter Rams in his ‘ten principles for good design’. But it has some blind spots. It does not fully address the problem of design being manipulative. His sixth principle comes close, as it states, that design should be honest and should not make false promises. But this refers to tricking and misleading the user only once, but it’s far from addressing the scale of repetitive manipulation and exploitation of users’ weaknesses found in many applications and services today. I was struck by Aaron Weyenberg’s proposal to add a first amendment:
11. Good design is ethical
The product places the user’s interest at the center of its purpose. Any effort to influence the user’s agency or behavior is in the spirit of their own positive wellbeing, and the wellbeing of those around them.
I think this serves as a very good primer for starting a discussion around the topic. But the ultimate goal must be making these values widely regarded and accepted in the design community. In order to get there, we have to highlight positive and negative examples. Call out platforms and services for abusive or manipulative design patterns. Honor good examples that value the user’s time or focus on creating a net value in society. Because only when we have a strong idea of what makes design ethical or unethical, we can ensure that the technology of the future really serves the individual users and respects their freedom — especially when it comes to creating a new reality.
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