Designing Addictive User Interfaces

Have you ever felt like an app you were using was incredibly engaging & hard to put away? Maybe you felt like it made you keep coming back for more and had you hooked for hours and hours? The science behind designing addictive user interfaces is exactly that: it’s a science, with multiple methods, rules, and practices that designers & corporations have perfected over the years. With technology booming in the digital age, businesses face more competition than ever when it comes to getting users to interact with their products meaningfully and in a long-term way.

With that in mind, it is incredibly important for designers to be aware of some of the most commonly known and used methodologies that businesses employ when aiming to create desirable & addictive user interfaces. I’m bringing you a quick overview of some of the design trends that will continue to define how addictive products are built and shipped to consumers.

Trend #1: Gamification

Video games are amazing, aren’t they? Who doesn’t enjoy the feeling of kicking their boots off after a long day at work and continuing their Legend of Zelda adventure?

The idea of video game practices and elements being involved in UI/UX design is pretty much the best crossover I could expect. For those of you looking to understand what gamification is, that’s your answer! It is the incorporation of many standard video game elements and experiences (observed commonly in all sorts of video games) into the design of an app or web-based product. Gamification works on the principle of incentives, whereby users are presented obstacles & challenges, and completing them gives them a sense of achievement & a dopamine release too.

For a quick example, consider Duolingo’s in-app gamification experience, where they’ve expertly incorporated gamification, such as levelled progression, stages, and in-app rewards, all of which are elements of standard gaming experiences. The app allows you to compete with your friends and stay engaged with the experience. Also, you have to progress through the app challenges to unlock new challenges, which gives users incentives and motivates to keep using the app.

Another great example of this is Fitbit, which turns the experience of health & fitness tracking into a fun progress game, involving badges, a community leaderboard, multiple challenges, and rewards for tasks that users complete. To put it simply, because users can now visualise goals and steps that signal “incomplete” to them, their cognition gets them attracted to the idea of progressing and step-by-step achievement, which makes the interface addictive and keeps them coming back.

Trend #2: Habit Formation

User actions don’t exist in a vacuum. Every form of content that users are exposed to leave impressions on them, and train them on what to expect from the digital interfaces they use. For instance, hamburger menus, which are commonly observed in the vast majority of mobile apps today weren’t very common a decade ago, but their introduction as a common UI element across millions of apps and design systems has now cemented them as a common, recognisable element that most first-world users now understand and use.

The way habits are formed in the brain is actually pretty simple if we break it down. A process known as “habituation,” which entails the brain learning to correlate an action with a particular signal or trigger, is how habits are created from a UX standpoint. This is referred to as the habit loop, which has three phases:

1. Trigger: The circumstance or event that starts the habit loop. Let’s say your phone rings and you see a push notification from an app on your phone. This acts as a trigger for habit formation.
2. Routine: This is the actual action or behaviour that is performed after the cue. If you tap the notification and open it up, you’re engaging the “routine” part of the process.
3. Reward: This is the satisfying result that urges the brain to repeat the activity in the future and reinforces the behaviour. Seeing an intriguing message or notice, as an example, or getting rewarded for an in-app action.

Most product companies now understand the importance of getting users in a “habit” of using their apps & services. The way this works is simple: you create in-app triggers that associate certain feelings with user actions. For instance, when Facebook introduced their “feed” or “wall” feature, the main mechanism by which they kept users coming back was because the vertical scroll, allowing for the user to continuously be exposed to new posts, along with the euphoria associated with getting a notification or liking a post, was an exciting feature that utilised cognitive psychology to incite emotion and invoke action.

Trend #3: Reward Systems

One of the best ways to motivate users to keep using a product is by establishing a balanced, credible reward system in the functionality. Reward systems look like in-app points, badges, in-app awards, prizes, and much more. The primary reason why reward systems are so effective when it comes to generating long-term user interest is because most users subconsciously view digital interfaces in from an “opportunity-cost” standpoint. This means that they are subconsciously evaluating the value your platform provides them against the time and effort they expend as they use it. Moreover, rewards signal credibility and value, which motivates users to keep using the app.

Examples include the usage of badges, which are virtual symbols you get by successfully completing missions or hitting milestones. For instance, if users meet their daily target of 10,000 steps, a fitness app may award them with a “10,000 steps” badge. These badges are frequently prominently displayed on a user’s profile, evidencing their accomplishments and elevating them in the app’s community.

The usage of points is also a well-liked reward mechanism. Points can be acquired through playing a game or using an app in a variety of ways, such as finishing levels, sharing content, or inviting friends. These points may then be exchanged for virtual products like premium content or exclusive features.

All in all, reward systems can offer a great deal of credibility and addictiveness to a digital platform.

Trend #4: Social Proof

Most digital platforms, when looking to establish credibility, turn to some measure of “social proof”, whereby they utilise phenomena where users can be influenced and motivated by the desires, actions, and behaviour of other people. For example, social media likes are a very important metric of social proof that are common across most popular social media platforms, with giants like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Quora utilising similar mechanisms to tangibly display user engagement and interest in content.

Another example of social proof is reviews. Gamespot has tons of credibility associated with its game reviews. Online stores use customer reviews as social proof that signals brand credibility & trust.

The takeaway here is that social proof can be incredibly addictive. Tons of users post on social media platforms with the sole intention of garnering social proof and generating engagement on their content. The psychological validation people get because of the number of likes, comments, and shares on their posts is a pertinent case study on how social media platforms have perfected a formula for generating and maintaining user interest in their products. Platforms looking to create addictive user interfaces may want to leverage the power of human motivation and make smart design choices that make users want to keep scrolling.

Trend #5: Animation

One of the hottest trends in UI design right now is animation, and when used correctly, it can make your app irresistible. Think of how YouTube’s “like” button plays a funky animation every time you like a video, which excites the average user and piques their interest. Lots of companies utilise animation in their onboarding processes, to signal and point the user towards new features, to differentiate a unique section of their app, and just to generally get the user interested in the app’s interface because of the movement and fluidity that animations bring to the table.

An example of an app that uses amazing, context-specific animation to get users hooked is Headspace, which is a meditation app that uses calming and relaxing animations to help users de-stress and improve their mental health. If you’re looking to create a seamless, engaging, and fluid experience, animations are the way to go!

Disclaimer: The Dark Side of Addictive User Interfaces

While it is true that many trends and UI practices can significantly improve business demand for a product, bring more users in, engage a larger audience, and keep users hooked for hours and hours, there are a bunch of ethical considerations that we, as designers, must take into account when attempting to create addictive user interfaces.

If we design interfaces that are unnecessarily addictive, hard to break out of, and involve a lot of dark patterns, we may end up damaging users’ mental and physical health, which is an incredibly unethical way to design an interface. Facebook and Instagram are two companies that have been criticized for using addictive techniques. For example, Facebook has been accused of using variable rewards, such as notifications and likes, to keep users engaged and addicted. Instagram has also been accused of using techniques such as infinite scrolling and autoplay to keep users engaged for longer periods of time.

With that in mind, we must make responsible, ethical choices when creating addictive, usable interfaces. No matter what the business goal may be, the safety, health, and well-being of our users comes first!