Rude UX — The Gall of Pokémon Go

Pokemon Go is a stunningly successful example of user engagement. As the top grossing app in the US, currently earning $1.6 million per day through in-app purchases, its user experience (UX) has delivered wild commercial success.

It’s popular. It’s profitable. It’s powerful as an object lesson in the unintended consequences of design, the moral obligations and ethical challenges we face as designers.

Gotta catch ’em all! Games are fun! Augmented Reality (AR) can get people out and exploring, meeting their neighbors. This is a pleasantly pro-social side effect of engagement through augmented reality, but what about the darker side of engagement? What does it mean when you’ve designed something so engrossing that it hurts your users, or even other people?

Games are fun! Exploring is fun! Finding a dead body down by the river? Maybe not so fun. Maybe a bit traumatic. That’s the thing about augmented reality though… actual reality is still there, always lurking in the background. It doesn’t go away. Actual reality can be unpredictable and dangerous.

What does it mean when what you’ve designed is so enthralling that people are risking personal injury, and even being robbed? Shouldn’t design decrease danger? Knowing the limitations of humans, don’t we as designers bear some obligation to protect people from themselves? Are we responsible when our designs are deadly?

Where does your responsibility as a designer begin and end?

Pokemon Go’s engrossing enthrallment at a massive scale has created a weird, frighteningly insensitive reality. As designers, are we responsible for turning our users into jerks? Overlaying AR maps on top of the real world sounds simple, but the real world includes many different types of places with different social rules for how we behave there. Being in a public park requires different behavior than being in a library. Being in a restaurant requires different behavior than being in a church, synagogue or mosque. Being at Arlington National Cemetery, the Holocaust Museum or the site of a genocide like Auschwitz should inspire respectful behavior to allow other people to reflect and grieve, in solitude if they choose.

Designers should consider the implications of AR game play in the context of different spaces, then respect and protect spaces that require different behavior. By respecting and protecting these spaces, we’re also protecting our users from inappropriate behavior and negative consequences. Turning up at a stranger’s house uninvited is one thing, but crashing a wedding or interrupting a funeral would be quite another.

Respect the constraints of reality. Be sensitive to the implications of your users violating social and cultural norms in different places.

Protect your users from themselves.

Design a reality that’s human centered.

Design a reality that is considerate of other humans too, not just your users.

UX must prioritize what’s most important: people first, then tasks, then tech.