After reflecting on my time in CS247B, I realized that a lot of the key lessons we learned reshaped my thinking and approach to design, particularly regarding rewards, nudging, and privacy.
Initially, the idea of using rewards and nudges seemed straightforward. However, I learned that the ethical considerations are far from simple, especially with questions about autonomy and manipulation. It’s one thing to design a system encouraging people to take healthier actions or make more sustainable choices. But where do we draw the line between encouragement and coercion? Am I respecting the user’s autonomy? Is this genuinely for their benefit, or am I veering into manipulation?
For my team’s app, I was excited about the potential to gamify news consumption, thinking it could be a straightforward way to engage users. However, we had to carefully consider how these mechanisms might influence users’ autonomy and potentially skew their consumption habits. For instance, could rewarding users for reading certain types of articles create echo chambers or bias in their understanding of the world? Therefore, it is important to design a reward system that encourages informed and balanced perspectives rather than unintentionally nudging users toward a homogenized view.
This class also taught me that privacy is foundational to trust and respect in any user interaction. We should be asking not just “Can we?” but “Should we?” when it comes to collecting and using data. This became particularly relevant when designing the social interaction elements of the app. We had to ensure that users could control what information they shared about their reading habits and discussions.
One of the most challenging lessons in this class has been coming to terms with the unintended consequences of design decisions. I’ve learned that good intentions don’t protect our projects against negative outcomes. I am still grappling with the ethical responsibility we as designers have to anticipate and address potential negative impacts of their creations. For example, for our app, while the goal was to encourage informed discussions, there is always a risk of facilitating conflict or spreading misinformation through shared articles. How do we mitigate this? Does this look like prompts for users to consider the credibility of the information before sharing or reacting to it?
In terms of behavior change myths, the idea that our app could change users’ behavior by simply making news consumption more engaging and social was quickly complicated by the reality of diverse user motivations and contexts. The myths of behavior change I had unpacked in class were directly relevant here. I realized that engaging users requires more than just gamification or social features; it really requires a deeper understanding of their needs, habits, and the barriers they face in staying informed. I came in thinking about behavior change as a linear process, easily directed with the right triggers and rewards. However, behavior is tangled up in a web of social, environmental, and personal factors that no app can simply untangle. Recognizing this complexity continues to push me to think more systemically about design solutions and to be wary of silver-bullet solutions to complex behavioral challenges.
