Welcome to the dark side of UX design
A good UX has a direct impact on the user’s emotion, and as such, it also impacts the view of the company as a whole. If I had a dollar for everytime I heard someone say “The product is great, but the customer support is so bad it’s not worth it”, well, you know the rest. It sometimes happens that a company focusing on the business aspect will create inconsistencies in the product. In the best (or rather, more ethical case), these inconsistencies are mistakes. In the worst cases, they can actually be introduced on purpose, to push the user toward a choice he would not have taken. This is a typical short/long investment scenario: in the short term, they will make higher margins (people paying more than they would), however, if the word spreads, it can have an important impact on the reputation of the company. This is a typical situation faced as a UX designer, and especially so in the insurtech, which I will now discuss.
UX design in insurtech
I used to be a UX designer in an insurtech company specializing in anti-fraud and claim automation, where my main role was designing the claim automation process. The goal of a claim automation system is above all to improve the claim handlers’ jobs by automating part of the repetitive work, offering them more time to focus on complex cases; secondly, to improve the experience of the users by offering them a faster & better experience, as well as provide information customised for the client.
So, we had two types of users:
- Claim handlers, specialized in insurance, work with unadapted software which sometimes decreases their productivity.
- Policyholders, who are beginners about insurance and simply want to declare a claim.
A couple of months after I joined the insurance world, I started wondering:
What is the main goal of insurance companies? Improve the experience of the user by improving the claim declaration system or try to lead the user to choose the solution that the insurance company prefers?
This is how I discovered the world of dark UX.
Entering the real world of dark UX
According to Brownlee (Fast Co. Design), dark patterns are deceptive or manipulative UX/UI designs that try to exploit human psychology to get users to do things they don’t really want to do. This term was coined in 2010, after the explosion of the e-commerce industry on the web to generate more sales, more subscribers, transactions, etc…It was from this moment that designers and business people began to create interfaces meant not to be simpler, as you would expect, but to manipulate users. At that time, Harry Brignull (Phd Cognitive Science, 2010) more specifically defined it as a user interface that was carefully designed to entice users to do things, such as buying insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills. I think that we all fell into a trap of this kind one day; if not, I advise you to visit a well-known site reporting examples of dark patterns. As you may be starting to realise, dark patterns and UX principles are quite contrasting: on one side, we want to make the experience smooth and transparent for the users, and on the other, we’re trying to make them do things they wouldn’t normally do.
A dark UX case in insurtech
I once took part in a meeting with a client, which I still remember today. At that time, I had just arrived at the company, and I was discovering the different projects slowly. At this meeting, the client asked us to modify part of the online claim declaration. We had already done several design iterations, and my UX colleague, therefore, had prepared the designs presenting the various solutions that the insured could choose after declaring his claim. The problem we faced was that the client wanted to show the solution that gave the most profit to the company while hiding the other solutions behind a small link at the bottom left of the page. The reaction of my colleague was to protest by explaining the lack of transparency they will create by doing that. They did not care and, as my colleague said after the meeting, “the client has the final word and we can’t go against him”. At that time, I accepted this answer.
A couple of months later, the insurance company decided to make some user tests with external people who faced water damage recently. They first told us the story about their water damage, their concerns, decisions they took, how they declared it. We then asked them to test our claim declaration system. On four users, one stopped at the solution page and started to notice that the other solutions were hidden and did not appreciate the lack of transparency he was facing. He felt manipulated, and it increased the negative concerns he had in front of insurance companies and this one in particular. The user had retained the lack of transparency of the solution and the company behind its existence as well. This is a typical example of an existing dark pattern generating frustration in a user.
The question we can ask today as professionals behind the product is: how to avoid these dark patterns?
Avoid mixing insurtech and dark UX
As a product specialist, we are responsible for expressing our dissatisfaction with clients’ decisions when they are contrary to the ethics of our work or the company. It is up to us to support our comments with facts and data showing the wrong choice of certain clients — we are responsible for the transparency of the products put into production. To do this, we must propose different solutions that also take into account the expectations of our users as well as our clients.
Innovation starts by listening to our users, building for them, and most importantly, with them. Never forget that avoiding the dark pattern is creating more transparency, bringing more confidence, and providing a better experience.
As explained above, user experience is connected to business purposes, and business purposes can lead to dark patterns. In my previous company, through our claim automation products, we aimed to improve claims reporting by providing a better experience for our users. This means more automation, fast claim declaration, and a visually pleasing interface. However, better UX also requires product transparency. It is our duty to create experiences that are transparent and unambiguous and which enable the users to follow the action plan they have set for themselves. As UX designers, product managers, it is our responsibility to represent the company and the product we aim to build; a long-term sustainable product, instead of finding short-term improvements through dark design patterns.
