The Social Dilemma: Designer’s Point of View

I just watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix, which opened my eyes to much of this. I think many of us are addicted to social media platforms (not just Facebook), without even realizing it.

For those who haven’t watched this documentary, its contention is, social media is controlling us, negatively affecting us. Real-world consequences include the rise in mental illnesses in teenagers, hate-crimes and dismantling of democracies all over the world. Some of the records are as follows

1.Watched the Documentary! Now What ? What step should we take after watching this ?

At some point, we’ve all had our doubts whether or not we’re addicted to social media. Personally, I am pretty sure I lost a few brain cells every time I opened the explore section of Instagram.

But, it isn’t too late to undo that damage, right?

But here are some tips at the end, how I can do better to reclaim the attention:

As a User I can :

1. Turn your Notifications Off! …
2. Stop looking at my phone first thing in the morning
3. Try to get a hobby that’s not on my phone
4. Stop with the scrolling! Your fingers need help.
5. Spend time building my critical thinking.
6. Directly reach out to friends when feel lonely.

And as a Designer :

After watching this I as a Designer understood the importance of ETHICS in design. So as a Designer I can :

1. Educate myself in design ethics
2. Critically think about blind spots.
3. Approach people they are behind the screen.

2.How do ethics and morality play a role in the “designer’s” design process?

The first ethical dimension of design is the Character and Personal Morality of the designer.

Out of responsibility yourself, we should keep in mind these ethical design principles when moving forward with your future projects.

No matter how you practice ethical design, if you hold on to your beliefs and moral principles, it will guide you to the best possible outcome. Your future users will be thankful!

“Ethical design is design made with the intent to do good. It concerns moral behavior and responsible choices in the practice of design”. — Trine Falbe, UX Researcher

As a Designers I realized that we have the power to control user’s mind through our products. We focus on making products to make our user’s life easy and simple but we also make sure they want to use our product more and more which can make user addictive. We try to create a habit in them to use our product again and again. But in this process we should also see that how mentally it may affect our users.

The features like “Auto play next “ & “Skip Intro” and some other features introduced are very correct according to our Heuristic Principles but this makes our user addictive.

After watching The Social Dilemma most of us might have Uninstalled some of the apps, even I deleted Snapchat from my phone. But Can we get rid off such things ? No . We need to find a way to control it to have a balance in our life.

As a Designer we don’t want our users to run away from our product, instead we have to work on making our product easier and trustable. For example PUBG and YouTube has these “Break” features which let user knows their used time and break the user flow by popping up saying “Time to take a Break”.

So somebody from these companies must have noticed that “long watching hours” as a problem that people are watching for too long which may impact their eyes and must have also got the feedback in their Primary Research as a Pain Point . So introducing a feature like this shows they care for their Users.

As I mentioned above Designers should also follow the Moral Principles and should also be equally responsible for what they are Designing.

So a Designer should not only solve the problem but also maintain a balance and fill a gap between the Users and Business by making the Product better.

Thankyou so much for your Time🤩