Review of Johannes Ippen’s Humans, not Users: Why UX is a Problem
In Johannes Ippens’s TEDxYoungstown talk, “Humans, not Users: Why UX is a Problem”, Ippen discusses User Experience (UX) design and how to the general public it can be thought of as visual design. He opens up with a scenario that I too have found myself in, where a friend asks, “Why do you want to be a designer? What is so cool about making things “pretty?” In this review, I will be discussing Ippen’s opinions on how UX is awesome, but also how it can be a problem.
Habit-forming experiences
He starts by explaining that everything around him is designed: the chairs the audience is sitting on, the slides behind him as well as the way he is experiencing the TED talk.
Ippens dives more deeply into this discussing how the “red symbol” and red dot has revolutionized design and how this attraction is a primary instinct. In short, our notifications act more as just letting us know we have something to open. In regards to the latter, Ippens says that specific symbols on applications can actually trigger human senses. He uses this image to explain the process of designing for these types of triggers.
In doing this, he builds credibility for himself as he mentions saying “through this, I know how to take these triggers and mix them into flexible rewards and turn them into products that you love to come back to every day.”
The Problem
Design can manipulate people
Taking a turn, he discusses how the real world impact of these applications is quite negative. For example, a study mentioned that ⅓ of 800,000 divorces blamed Facebook for the split.The transparency discussed here being the culprit behind the divorce.
I agree with Ippen’s here with his comments on how all of the controversies surrounding usage of applications not only such as Facebook but general social media usage and Uber are all because of design decisions. All of these articles such as “This is How Social Media Engagement Can Impact Your Work Culture,” come out because of the way that companies are deciding to put out their products. Despite the negativity behind these, people must remember that changes in applications would not happen if the user did not ask.
Manipulations at practice
It is not unknown that a lot of design decisions are made in order to encourage longer usage, but Ippens reiterates this with examples of Snapchat streaks. He includes images of people messaging each other saying “Oh my god Sean this is so important the streaks about to end,” relaying that this one app has revolutionized this idea of “labor” in connections with friends as silly as a streak.
While I do agree with Ippens on his concerns for relationships and health, the user still always has the choice to participate in these decisions on applications or not. Snapchat does not make users text their friends to save their streak, users make that decision.
Humans, not Users
Ippen’s next point is that all of these applications (i.e social media, Messages) would not continuously be designed for if nobody were to use them. Transitioning into this idea of users, he brings us to his main theme of thinking of people as human beings and not just users. A big point of his is that applications need to be designed not for when they are being used but for when they are not being used.
“The future of our global society relies on the design decisions we make today.”
- Johannes Ippens, TEDxYoungstown
Ippens discusses a refuge app that helps with PTSD by eradicating notifications and instead including a large Emergency button on the app. For example, a stress attack could come on and the user would open the app and click the button to immediately get help. He shifts the focus to Human Experience Design and not just User Experience design; how designers must work to focus on this type of design.
A new approach to Ippen’s lack of faith in UX Designers
Since my website is a design portfolio, I would like to critique/review his idea of Human Experience Design from the perspective of someone who has gone through their entire collegiate career learning about User Experience design.
I agree with Ippen’s idea that the design community sometimes lacks broader thinking. His example of Snapchat streaks highlights this idea completely as streaks essentially have no value other than to foster daily connections virtually. The idea of this fostering anxiety to the point of changing actions is also true. In an IGNITE presentation that I conducted which is very similar to TED, I spoke about this exact feature involved in “addictive tech”, however my one critique is that this is not the only thing that caters to user-centered design.
There are a host of other things that Ippen could have mentioned besides the red dot/symbol which could have added depth to his talk. In specific, Ippens proposes his solution of a messaging app where they “replaced the red circles with green ones,” does not change the actual idea of the notification anxiety. The color is not what brings about this trigger, it’s the shape and placement of that circle.
Perhaps he had a time limit for his presentation, but I was unconvinced by these two examples. The one thing that won me over was his mention of anxiety which made me think, “Oh, yes, maybe this really is affecting people way too much.” Aside from this, I still believe that UXD is important.
Additionally, Ippen neglects to bring up an important aspect of UXD; the actual humans in human experience design. UX researchers usually have their own department at many companies. These researchers spend 40 hours per week researching and interviewing individuals who are able to give true insight into design solutions. The researchers are not just trying to obtain answers on how to make a product better. In other words, they don’t spend 60–90 minutes nodding and taking notes for that reason only. A connection is made between interviewer and interviewee. In that singular interaction, there is emotion, there is insight, and there are revelations about each person. The leg work done by the researchers translates into more than addiction.
Bringing it back to the refugee app mentioned, his point was that this application doesn’t need to have notifications for people to use the app. This led me to ask the following questions:
- How often will I encounter a refugee who would need to seek emergency help using an application?
- Do they have access to smartphones?
- Was this the best example to use?
- What does the application do if you never find yourself in the situation?
- What is the monetary value of this application?
His idea is important and useful, but as someone who understands the business side of technology, Ippen could have expanded on the latter. Mentioning other popular applications which follow this “Only use when need” mentality would have been more convincing.
The counterexamples of addiction he presented such as Instagram taking away likes and Bumble creating a Snooze feature should have been highlighted more. I agree with showcasing how UXD is taking HXD into consideration through these apps. This exemplifies how we are staying on track with UXD, but being more humane. It is important to note how we are progressing by moving away from the addictive features of apps, especially features such as likes.
Lastly, Ippen’s statement, “Attention is not the key, eyeballs is not the metric, usage is not sustainable,” has both pros and cons. I would like to ask him, Then what is the key, the metric, and how do we measure it if it’s sustainable? I understand that we must save users from too much addiction, but how do we revolutionize the way we communicate and go about life if we don’t focus even a little bit on how many people are using our app and how long those people are using the app?
I will conclude this piece with this argument: if all our applications were human experience designed (to only be an aide of use) such as the refugee application, the calculator, and the weather app, then life would not change. We are an evolving species who in this day and age need other platforms to communicate and to sustain relationships.
Due to coronavirus, friends and family members haven’t seen each other for more than a year. This has resulted in the exponential increase in the use of Facetime and a large uptick in the usage of apps such as Facebook and Instagram. There are plus sides to these notifications, such as the “[@username just posted in a while]” because it keeps you in contact with people. Notice how this notification does not give an action to actively click, it only gives a suggestion.
We are now moving toward designing applications to only provide suggestions and leaving it up to the human to act upon it. This gives them an option, not a demand. Real design is good design for the user, but also ethical design for the human. There is enough room for these to coexist together.
