Anti-design. Part 3 (last). Non-obvious techniques
Design is not only the design, but also the construction of a solution to a specific task. A good designer can predict the behavior of consumers of their product. It will make it not only beautiful, but also convenient for use. In the necessary places, he will arrange hints, prevent misuse. Therefore, the design is associated with psychology and behavior, and the designer actually programs the possible paths of thought for the consumer.
But can a designer worry only about the consumer? After all, he has customers who pursue their own goals, and the designer himself is also a man. He has needs, he wants money, peace of mind. A good designer is a good psychologist who can manipulate human behavior. It costs him nothing to stand on the dark side of power, and to apply his skills not to solve real problems, but to extract self-interest, enrichment at the expense of the environment, our wallet and health.
In previous articles ( 1 , 2 ), I showed how anti-design — applying design laws to profit unfairly — can lead to creating lies, manipulating public opinion, creating whole “bloodsucking industries” feeding on the complexity of our lives.
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In this article I will talk about non-obvious anti-design techniques. They take roots from the obvious techniques described earlier, and in my examples will seem more psychological than design. But then they are not obvious in order to mimic and emerge in the most unexpected situations and products.
When a person reads a book and sees on one page a chart with a description, he does not need to use his memory. If, however, transfer the schedule to another page, the person will have to flip the book back and forth to check it for compliance with the description. This way you can hide small inaccuracies in one or the other.
In business, often artificial obstacles are raised when it is necessary to strangle a product. Suppose a company bought a rival DBMS, and in order to stifle its popularity, it hides technical documentation away on its website, covering with a heap of assurances of continued support and the value of its users. Only the most persistent fans of such a DBMS will overcome all difficulties in order to continue using their favorite product.
At one time, the price lists of mobile operators were similar to agreements on the slaughter of the soul. The number of footnotes and footnotes to footnotes rolls over. Of course, in order to read the note, it was necessary to turn the sheet over, and then also to discern the meager letters with which it was typed.
If this technique is bad to hide, then it still seems obvious. Let's move on to more cunning things. They are under the cut
Most people lead a measured habitual way of life that has evolved over the years. Road, work, road, TV - daily repetition of identical operations creates inertia of thinking. It is very difficult to keep the mind alive and willingness to perceive the new when you do the same things every day and the mind is bombarded with the same communication messages.
Inertia of thinking is a terrible thing. Here is an illustration. The Norwegian embassy once introduced a visa portal. Directly on their website you can, without haste in a few receptions, fill out a form for a Schengen visa, pay a fee by credit card, set a time for admission, and come straight into it, bypassing the queues.
All the walls of the visa department are plastered with calls to use the portal, but a whole crowd of people continue to storm the doors and ask each other how to fill out the questionnaire, well, simply because it is unusual and scary to do this through the website.
But it is not a question of following inertia — this is obvious — but of countering it. Like a tennis player, catching the masses of people in pursuit of one thing, the anti-designer sends the ball to the other side. The unhappy opponent is unable to extinguish his own move and is defenseless stretching on the court.
We are accustomed to companies trying to push out their brand. Promotional offers are painted in corporate colors at the top. But this ad Akad beats in another corner. Throwing a stack of books on branding into the fireplace, their marketers pretended to be ... nobody. Advertising works in opposition to the loud and colorful offers of other companies. The use of phrases like “in our home” spurs an even more trusting attitude to the message. After all, it is clear that this is someone from the neighbors wrote an ad, and they certainly have more confidence than these incomprehensible offices with a suspicious reputation.
On the page, the look is first of all riveted to the most prominent object. This technique is often used to highlight the important.
But do not forget that this is the importance imposed on you by the author of the product. Nothing prevents him from creating false important things - to hide the really necessary information in the shadow of the bright captivating eyes of the deception
The anti-designer will do the opposite. How many people will notice a highlighted statement when browsing this article, but don’t read these very lines? So much will be deceived in this way.
No other thought will seem more correct to a person than the one he reached himself.
In the method of fishing, bait is one or several packages, from which only one step remains until the required manipulator output is made. The example with a poster of Google (they were thus looking for talented workers in the picture) is positive. But he is just an illustration of how people will be motivated to stay with what they have reached with their own mind, even if they understand that the conclusion has been specially programmed by the authors.
An important technique in interface design is a powerful method of welding a person to a specific behavior model.
To give a person a steer with a simple layout or a toy means to form his view of a certain process. But the model is not the real world. All laws in it are set by the author. Having formed the joyful delusion of the user about his ability to control the process, having sealed him with his client and sending him to be torn apart in the real world, manipulative companies act unworthy.
Of course, modeling and prototyping is an important tool with many advantages. Without models it is impossible to do anything worthwhile.
But all participants of the work with the model should clearly understand that this is a model, a layout, an assumption about how everything will look in reality, and not the actual thing itself. The customer can only be shown the jeep of the future site and it is not explained how it will work. At the same time it can be concealed that some functionality will be completely different from what it appears in the picture.
Unfortunately, I could not remember the exact description of one experiment, but its essence is as follows: a chain of brainless caterpillars crawls behind each other, with each caterpillar going the same way as the previous one. The experimenters lured the chain to the rim of the flowerpot and made the leader take the last caterpillar as their leader. As a result, they all walked in a circle one after another until they died of starvation.
Thoughts of people can be made to dance around logical problems, controversial situations and intractable questions, as if the same caterpillars.
It is enough to show them some spectacular controversial concept, and everyone will discuss it until blue in the face, not seeing that they are simply distracted from something else. That which should not be made public and discussed.
Christmas trees are a very common method of manipulating public opinion and disguising information masking noise.
Man can not live without emotions.
Having watered his hack talk with a relish-smelling sauce of emotions, the company can get anything from hot readers. It just can not work.
However, such candid calls as in the picture a little higher, are quickly recognized and stuck. But a more subtle play on the strings of passions can achieve the desired train of thought.
Placing a ridiculous photo, the author of the post in the picture aroused in readers a feeling of disregard for Medvedev. And right then, under this feeling, he inserted his thought about bad phones in the Kremlin, making everyone at least emotionally agree with him.
Emotions cause many words that a person sees in the text, and which are endowed for him with a special meaning.
Seeing the mention of Apple, Microsoft, Stream or TogoTechNameNaHabreNe Can not speak, a person starts up with a half-turn. He is ready to write passionate comments, ply, minus, steal, rape and kill.
Since we are humans, not robots, the crybaby will always exist. Our emotions will always be used so that we do what we do not want.
One of the components of the persuasiveness of speech is the identity of the author. When the author has not yet made himself a person, he can always use someone else.
It is one thing when a famous and respected person is cited to illustrate his own thoughts. Quite another, when his statements begin to mix with theirs.
However, the truth of the statement can always be checked. But often the very presence of a famous person places a product on another level of trust.
It seemed that this is where Linus Torvalds came from and why? Yes, in general, absolutely nowhere and why. But once he is called into the post, he automatically approves him. This technique is megachasto used in advertising. Popular actors, sportsmen and other personalities are called to the side of the leaflets, posters, and televisions that are not related to the advertised goods in their everyday life.
Everyone wants to cling to someone else's success. Poyuzat piece of glory, it's so nice. But this is a manipulation. It makes people confuse real things and the images they know of a completely different subject. Such a manipulation is almost guaranteed to bring extra points, and therefore will always remain popular.
So, I outlined some obvious and non-obvious methods of anti-design. With their help, unscrupulous companies and people manipulate your mind. They make you do things you don’t want to do. They can make you thoughtlessly part with money and neglect objective values, including the health of you and your loved ones.
The job of a designer is to control consumer behavior, but only the designer’s conscience decides it will be used for the benefit or for personal gain.
I think that forewarned is forearmed. Knowing the existence of anti-design methods, we can recognize them in time. Do not give in to puppets and provocations. Think for themselves. To be smart, competent and strong people.
But can a designer worry only about the consumer? After all, he has customers who pursue their own goals, and the designer himself is also a man. He has needs, he wants money, peace of mind. A good designer is a good psychologist who can manipulate human behavior. It costs him nothing to stand on the dark side of power, and to apply his skills not to solve real problems, but to extract self-interest, enrichment at the expense of the environment, our wallet and health.
In previous articles ( 1 , 2 ), I showed how anti-design — applying design laws to profit unfairly — can lead to creating lies, manipulating public opinion, creating whole “bloodsucking industries” feeding on the complexity of our lives.
')
In this article I will talk about non-obvious anti-design techniques. They take roots from the obvious techniques described earlier, and in my examples will seem more psychological than design. But then they are not obvious in order to mimic and emerge in the most unexpected situations and products.
1. Mechanical obstacles
When a person reads a book and sees on one page a chart with a description, he does not need to use his memory. If, however, transfer the schedule to another page, the person will have to flip the book back and forth to check it for compliance with the description. This way you can hide small inaccuracies in one or the other.
In business, often artificial obstacles are raised when it is necessary to strangle a product. Suppose a company bought a rival DBMS, and in order to stifle its popularity, it hides technical documentation away on its website, covering with a heap of assurances of continued support and the value of its users. Only the most persistent fans of such a DBMS will overcome all difficulties in order to continue using their favorite product.
At one time, the price lists of mobile operators were similar to agreements on the slaughter of the soul. The number of footnotes and footnotes to footnotes rolls over. Of course, in order to read the note, it was necessary to turn the sheet over, and then also to discern the meager letters with which it was typed.
If this technique is bad to hide, then it still seems obvious. Let's move on to more cunning things. They are under the cut
2. Inertia of thinking
Most people lead a measured habitual way of life that has evolved over the years. Road, work, road, TV - daily repetition of identical operations creates inertia of thinking. It is very difficult to keep the mind alive and willingness to perceive the new when you do the same things every day and the mind is bombarded with the same communication messages.
Inertia of thinking is a terrible thing. Here is an illustration. The Norwegian embassy once introduced a visa portal. Directly on their website you can, without haste in a few receptions, fill out a form for a Schengen visa, pay a fee by credit card, set a time for admission, and come straight into it, bypassing the queues.
All the walls of the visa department are plastered with calls to use the portal, but a whole crowd of people continue to storm the doors and ask each other how to fill out the questionnaire, well, simply because it is unusual and scary to do this through the website.
But it is not a question of following inertia — this is obvious — but of countering it. Like a tennis player, catching the masses of people in pursuit of one thing, the anti-designer sends the ball to the other side. The unhappy opponent is unable to extinguish his own move and is defenseless stretching on the court.
We are accustomed to companies trying to push out their brand. Promotional offers are painted in corporate colors at the top. But this ad Akad beats in another corner. Throwing a stack of books on branding into the fireplace, their marketers pretended to be ... nobody. Advertising works in opposition to the loud and colorful offers of other companies. The use of phrases like “in our home” spurs an even more trusting attitude to the message. After all, it is clear that this is someone from the neighbors wrote an ad, and they certainly have more confidence than these incomprehensible offices with a suspicious reputation.
3. False important
On the page, the look is first of all riveted to the most prominent object. This technique is often used to highlight the important.
But do not forget that this is the importance imposed on you by the author of the product. Nothing prevents him from creating false important things - to hide the really necessary information in the shadow of the bright captivating eyes of the deception
The most necessary information is always necessary to allocate large and bold.
The anti-designer will do the opposite. How many people will notice a highlighted statement when browsing this article, but don’t read these very lines? So much will be deceived in this way.
4. fishing
No other thought will seem more correct to a person than the one he reached himself.
In the method of fishing, bait is one or several packages, from which only one step remains until the required manipulator output is made. The example with a poster of Google (they were thus looking for talented workers in the picture) is positive. But he is just an illustration of how people will be motivated to stay with what they have reached with their own mind, even if they understand that the conclusion has been specially programmed by the authors.
5. Direct manipulation
An important technique in interface design is a powerful method of welding a person to a specific behavior model.
To give a person a steer with a simple layout or a toy means to form his view of a certain process. But the model is not the real world. All laws in it are set by the author. Having formed the joyful delusion of the user about his ability to control the process, having sealed him with his client and sending him to be torn apart in the real world, manipulative companies act unworthy.
Of course, modeling and prototyping is an important tool with many advantages. Without models it is impossible to do anything worthwhile.
But all participants of the work with the model should clearly understand that this is a model, a layout, an assumption about how everything will look in reality, and not the actual thing itself. The customer can only be shown the jeep of the future site and it is not explained how it will work. At the same time it can be concealed that some functionality will be completely different from what it appears in the picture.
6. Round dance
Unfortunately, I could not remember the exact description of one experiment, but its essence is as follows: a chain of brainless caterpillars crawls behind each other, with each caterpillar going the same way as the previous one. The experimenters lured the chain to the rim of the flowerpot and made the leader take the last caterpillar as their leader. As a result, they all walked in a circle one after another until they died of starvation.
Thoughts of people can be made to dance around logical problems, controversial situations and intractable questions, as if the same caterpillars.
It is enough to show them some spectacular controversial concept, and everyone will discuss it until blue in the face, not seeing that they are simply distracted from something else. That which should not be made public and discussed.
Christmas tree - (here) a controversial subject, around which people will dance to the point of exhaustion, not noticing that Santa Claus is long gone.
Christmas trees are a very common method of manipulating public opinion and disguising information masking noise.
7. Emotional attack
Man can not live without emotions.
Having watered his hack talk with a relish-smelling sauce of emotions, the company can get anything from hot readers. It just can not work.
However, such candid calls as in the picture a little higher, are quickly recognized and stuck. But a more subtle play on the strings of passions can achieve the desired train of thought.
Placing a ridiculous photo, the author of the post in the picture aroused in readers a feeling of disregard for Medvedev. And right then, under this feeling, he inserted his thought about bad phones in the Kremlin, making everyone at least emotionally agree with him.
Emotions cause many words that a person sees in the text, and which are endowed for him with a special meaning.
Seeing the mention of Apple, Microsoft, Stream or TogoTechNameNaHabreNe Can not speak, a person starts up with a half-turn. He is ready to write passionate comments, ply, minus, steal, rape and kill.
Crying - (here) the author of the text or advertising message, which conducts an attack on the feelings of people to achieve the goal, profitable only to him.
Since we are humans, not robots, the crybaby will always exist. Our emotions will always be used so that we do what we do not want.
8. Appeal to the person
One of the components of the persuasiveness of speech is the identity of the author. When the author has not yet made himself a person, he can always use someone else.
It is one thing when a famous and respected person is cited to illustrate his own thoughts. Quite another, when his statements begin to mix with theirs.
However, the truth of the statement can always be checked. But often the very presence of a famous person places a product on another level of trust.
It seemed that this is where Linus Torvalds came from and why? Yes, in general, absolutely nowhere and why. But once he is called into the post, he automatically approves him. This technique is megachasto used in advertising. Popular actors, sportsmen and other personalities are called to the side of the leaflets, posters, and televisions that are not related to the advertised goods in their everyday life.
Everyone wants to cling to someone else's success. Poyuzat piece of glory, it's so nice. But this is a manipulation. It makes people confuse real things and the images they know of a completely different subject. Such a manipulation is almost guaranteed to bring extra points, and therefore will always remain popular.
Conclusion
So, I outlined some obvious and non-obvious methods of anti-design. With their help, unscrupulous companies and people manipulate your mind. They make you do things you don’t want to do. They can make you thoughtlessly part with money and neglect objective values, including the health of you and your loved ones.
The job of a designer is to control consumer behavior, but only the designer’s conscience decides it will be used for the benefit or for personal gain.
I think that forewarned is forearmed. Knowing the existence of anti-design methods, we can recognize them in time. Do not give in to puppets and provocations. Think for themselves. To be smart, competent and strong people.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/58537/
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