How Technology Hijacks People's Minds
If you control the Menu, you control the choices
How often do we actually consider choices not listed on a Menu??
Preference given to Favorites & Popular menu items
Put a Slot machine in a billion pockets (Intermittent Variable Rewards)
Linking a user's action with a variable reward
Slot machines make more money in US than baseball, movies & theme parks combined!
Compare Slot Machines with App Notifications
Certain important notifications like for filing Income Tax returns should be more frequent than notifications for games
Fear of missing something important (FOMSI)
Being hooked to Newsletters, Dating Apps, having FB friends we dont usually talk to.
Social Approval
The need to belong, to be appreciated by our peers is among the highest human motivations.
FB suggestions for tagging people in photos.
Social Reciprocity (Tit-for-Tat)
Tech companies manipulate how many times we experience Social Reciprocity.
LinkedIn (accepting a connection, responding to messages, endorsing someone for a skill, Pending Invitations tagged with People You May Know section)
Forecasting Errors, "Foot in the Door" Strategies
Tech companies exploit people's inability to estimate the true consequences of a click (cost per click)
Good practice will be to inform the user about the estimated time/effort to complete a task like reading an Article or submitting a survey.
Inconvenient Choices
Tech companies always make it harder for you to do the things they don't want you to do.
Unsubscribing from a subscription, closing out an online account. Features like these are hidden and difficult to find.
Bundling your reasons (business) with their reasons (personal)
User's own personal reason for using the App VS Apps business reasons.
User having to go to FB news feed to access FB Events or going through Twitter feeds to post a new Tweet.
Instant Interruption VS Respectful Delivery
Interrupting people immediately VS sending them asynchronous messages like mails.
FB, Whatsapp letting other people know when you have responded or read their messages.
Bottomless bowls, Infinite feeds, Autoplay
Keep people engaged/consuming things even when they aren't hungry anymore.
Autoplay feature in sites like Netflix, Youtube & FB that auto plays the next video in the list without user's consent.