Chris Nodder - Evil by design : interaction design to lead us into temptation

Evil by Design: Interaction design to lead us into temptation

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Copyright 2013 by Chris Nodder

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To my wife, Mel, for putting up with me during the crunch times; and my dog, Sheila, for giving me the best excuse for taking breaks during those same crunch times.

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Chris Nodder is the founder of Chris Nodder Consulting LLC, an agile user experience consultancy that helps companies build products that their users will love.

Chris also runs the QuestionableMethods.com website, which gives lean and agile teams the tools they need to run their own user research; and he is a Lynda.com video author. He presents on user experience topics at international conferences.

Before starting his own consulting business, Chris gained invaluable experience working with some of the best companies in the industry. He was a director with Nielsen Norman Group, a premiere international user research company, for 5 years. He also worked for 7 years as a senior user researcher at Microsoft Corp.

He has a background in psychology and human-computer interaction.

Dan Lockton specializes in design for behavior changeunderstanding and influencing the use of products and services for social and environmental benefit. For his Ph.D. Dan developed the Design with Intent Toolkit , a pattern library for designers working in this emerging field. He is a senior research associate at the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, Royal College of Art, London, and does consultancy through his company, Requisite Variety.

The User Experience Dream Team: Jakob Nielsen for giving me the opportunity to test out some of the ideas in this book as a Nielsen Norman Group conference keynote; Don Norman for suggesting the title of the book and writing a wonderful introduction; and the benign trickster Bruce Tog Tognazzini for his inspirational story-telling.

The people at Wiley: especially Mary James, who first suggested I turn these ideas into a book; Adaobi Obi Tulton for keeping me (somewhat) on track; and San Dee Phillips for making my tenses agree, my punctuation perfect, and my English American.

The indispensables: Dan Lockton not just for setting me straight with technical edits but also for providing some great examples and new directions; Scott Berkun for giving me insights into the craziness of ever deciding to write a book; all the anonymous online reviewers; and finally all the companies and individuals who unintentionally provided the examples used in this book.

Sloth, Pride, Envy, Greed, Lust, Anger, Gluttony . What? Im supposed to design for these traits? As a human-centered designer, I should be repelled by the thought of designing for such a list. What was Chris Nodder thinking? What was his publisher thinking? This is evil, amplified.

Although, come to think of it, those seven deadly sins are human traits. Want to know how people really behave? Just read the law books. Start with one of the most famous set of laws of all, the Ten Commandments . Every one of those commandments is about something that people actually did, and then prohibiting it. All laws are intended to stop or otherwise control human behavior. So, if you want to understand real human behavior, just see what the laws try to stop. The list of seven deadly sins provides a nice, tidy statement of fundamental human behavior, fundamental in the sense that from each of the deadly sins, one can derive a large list of less deadly ones.