Usability Engineering for Evil

CS352
Usability Engineering for..
CS352
Usability Engineering for
EVIL
How to be Evil
How to be Evil
• Lesson 1: Use design principles to make it easy
for people to do what you want
Steal Visual Attention
Stealing Central Attention
• Pop-ups
interrupt your
task and train
of thought
(Immediate
rather than
negotiated
interrupt)
Evil Information Foraging
• Why are these out of order?
http://www.stefanwobben.com/persuasion/persuasion-or-deception/
Misuse of “consistency”
http://www.benedelman.org/rightmedia-deception/
Mimic
• The orange
sidebars
are actually
an ad!
• Hijacks
another
task
(clicking to
bring focus
to window)
Mimic #2: (find the download link…)
Deceit!
•
•
•
•
•
Login to Facebook
Get your email address
Try to get your email contacts
Try to get your LinkedIn contacts
“Review text will be available after you like us
on Facebook.”
• The Result:
– No reviews!
– Mua-ha-ha-ha-ha
What principles is this misusing?
How to be Evil
• Lesson 1: Use design principles to make it easy
for people to do what you want
• Lesson 2: Violate design principles to make it
hard for people to do what they want
Farmville
• 8,196,232 daily
active users
– (8/8/2011)
http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/content/cultivated-play-farmville
Farmville
• Why do people play? Very click-intensive
“harvesting”
http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/content/cultivated-play-farmville
Farmville
• Reduce clicks by
paying $$ or by
recruiting
“neighbors”
– Creates a social
obligation
– Spend money to
reduce time spent
playing!
http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/content/cultivated-play-farmville
Farmville
• Lead Gen Scams
– Says it’s free, but
bills $9.99 to your
cell phone
http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/scamville-the-social-gaming-ecosystem-of-hell/
“Zuckering”
• Can you find this?
EFF said in 2010: “sharing your data requires
radically less work than protecting it.”
Facebook has changed their privacy interface
since then
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebooks-evil-interfaces
Lock-in
• Facebook actively blocks tools for exporting
contacts
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20078435-264/facebook-blocks-a-second-contact-exporttool
How to be Evil
• Lesson 1: Use design principles to make it easy
for people to do what you want
• Lesson 2: Violate design principles to make it
hard for people to do what they want
• Lesson 3: Empower users to do evil things
Cheating with CoScripter
• Good intentions, but empowered evil:
– cheating at games
– cheating at contests (“Bachelor of the year”)
– circumventing security measures
How to be Evil
• Lesson 1: Use design principles to make it easy
for people to do what you want
• Lesson 2: Violate design principles to make it
hard for people to do what they want
• Lesson 3: Empower users to do evil things
• Lesson 4: Profit!!!
For more information:
• Dark Patterns:
http://wiki.darkpatterns.org/Home
• Evil by Design:
http://usability4evil.wordpress.com
• Misusability
– Stanley Dicks, “Misusability: On the uses and
misuses of usability testing” SIGDOC 2002 p. 26
http://wiki.darkpatterns.org/Home
The PRECIPICE process