UX and product designers are making us dumber
“Our life is the sum total of all the decisions we make every day, and those decisions are determined by our priorities.”
— Myles Munroe
At every moment, every choice we make, there is a tango that happens in our mind. A drama played out between two characters, competing for the attention of its audience.
These two characters are the impulsive, automatic and emotive System 1, and the thoughtful, deliberate and calculating System 2. As they play out this spectacle — dancing and weaving through our mind, their interactions determine how we think, make decisions, and act.
System 1 is the part of our brain that operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of control. It is a legacy of our evolutionary past — our reptilian brains which are responsible for ‘fight or flight’ responses to situations.
Most humans operate in this system every day. Examples of these automatic activities include:
· Answer to 2 +2?
· Drive a car on an empty road
· Take out the trash
System 2, on the other hand is the part of the brain which is used for decision making and critical thinking. It deals with conscious activities of the mind such as self-control and requires more deliberate focus of attention. It’s where our ‘rational’ decision making processes often occur.
Example of System 2 include:
· What’s the answer to 24 X 93?
· Park your car in a narrow space
Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman explores these systems of thinking in his book “Thinking Fast and Slow”. Kahneman’s fundamental proposition is that we identify with System 2, the conscious, reasoning self that has beliefs, makes choices and decides what to think about and what to do.
In actuality, the one that is really in charge is System 1.
As scary as it sounds, you are often not in conscious control of your decisions.
The lazy controller
Don’t believe me? Let’s put it to the test by solving this famous bat and ball problem:
A bat and ball cost $1.10. The bat costs one dollar more than the ball.
How much does the ball cost?
The price that mostly likely came to your mind is $0.10 is a result of the automatic System 1 brain thinking.
This answer is wrong.
Take second to do the math again…
The correct answer is $.05.
What happened was that your impulsive System 1 took control and automatically answered by relying on intuition. But it answered too fast, and incorrectly. When faced with a situation it can’t comprehend, System 1 calls on System 2 to work out the problem. However, this question was loaded to trick System 1 into thinking it was an easy problem to solve. Our quick judgement failed us.
The bat and ball problem exposes our mental laziness. When we use our brain, we tend to exert the least amount of energy possible. Because it takes more effort to engage System 2, our brain will only divert to use it if required. This laziness is unfortunate, because using System 2 is an important aspect of our intelligence. Practising System 2 tasks like focus and self-control lead to better decisions, and intelligence. The bat and ball exercise is a classic example of this.
System 2 consumes energy
Our minds use varying amounts of energy, depending on the task or decision that is at hand. When there’s no need to engage our attention and little energy is needed, we are in a state of cognitive ease. Yet, when our minds must mobilise attention, they require a lot more energy and enter a state of cognitive strain.
As we repeatedly do a same task, it becomes familiar to us and enters our System 1 thinking. An example is when you were learning to drive. Your first experiences driving would have been a system 2 activity. Learning to use the clutch, indicator and navigating requires mental coordination.
Fast forward to now, the activity seems almost automatic.
This repetition can help us reserve our energy for critical thinking. It’s the reason why high performing executives like Mark Zuckerberg wear the same t-shirt and jeans everyday — to preserve cognitive energy for decisions that actually matter.
As of late, I’ve been practising awareness of System 1 and System 2 thinking, and applying it to everyday situations.
Practising the repetition of good habits, like meditation and working out without the constant deliberation of whether I should go or not. Just doing it. Trying to build these habits into System 1 automation.
On the contrary, I’ve also been engaging System 2 thinking in mundane rituals, that were previously automatic. Why? To simply exercise this muscle of critical thinking, and perhaps shine light on something that was previously unnoticed.
It’s harder than I thought.
Enter Youtube spiral
My most recent example was everyone’s favourite app, Youtube.
I’ve had a sudden fascination with Cryptocurrency. I’ve been trying to educate myself on WTF it actually is. Like every lazy researcher, I start with videos.
One Thursday night, armed with a pot of coffee, I entered the Youtube.
Three hours later, I emerged from the all too familiar Youtube death spiral — like a child suddenly awoken from a dream.
Eyes still in a soft gaze, I take note of my surroundings as the next video playing is a dog that just fails at eating food.
Oh, where did I go wrong?
Well, it appears my System 1 brain had the drivers seat. It’s co-driver was Youtube!
Tech is working against us
Mega consumer facing tech companies like Google, Netflix, Amazon and Facebook employ teams of behavioural psychologists, UX and product design experts to keep our eyes fixated on their app. To increase their KPI of ‘active users’.
In the war for eyeballs in the “attention economy”, these products exploit our Lizard brains, our System 1 thinking. They deceive our minds, leading us down a path where we lose control of our awareness, and therefore ability to make rational decisions.
Most of the time we’re not even aware this is happening. Our minds are busy being entertained, led and persuaded by notifications and click bait — like a sheep lured into its next paddock for grazing. Or slaughter.
Some may argue this behaviour is harmless — I mean, it’s just a dog video, right? When we examine this, however, it might be creating more harm than you think.
Let’s take Ecommerce.
ASX listed Fintech app Afterpay has been growing in popularity amongst millennial shoppers and big-name retailers. Described as a “modern day lay-by”, Afterpay provides instant credit to consumers, allowing them to pay off their purchase over 4 instalments.
Getting access to Afterpay’s $1,000 of credit is amazingly simple. The product is integrated in the ‘pay now’ section of Ecommerce websites. With a few clicks you can get instant approval — perfect for those who already maxed out their credit card. This automatic process is riding the System 1 part of our brain. We don’t think twice about buying that shirt.
Affordability is an afterthought…
With 73 per cent of its customer base ‘millennials’, it is the epitome of stereotypical ‘millennial buying behaviour’ — instant gratification. The company even has a consumer cult following, with moderated Facebook pages where fans share their latest purchase and talk about their next one.
Categorically, Afterpay is in the the same bucket as pay day loans.
But it’s not. It’s slick, sexy marketing defies rhetoric, allowing consumers to have their cake, and eat it too. It’s dangerously simple to use.
The peril is that Afterpay preys on unassuming, financially illiterate millennial consumers — forced to pay heavy interest and fees when they eventually default on payments.
It’s an example of Fintech working against us.
How to stop being a sheep
Design Ethicist and ex-Googler Tristian Harris is leading a movement to fight the tirade of technology overriding our minds. He has a great blog which can be found here.
Harris offers a number of practical tactics to prevent tech from stealing our attention and awareness. I’ve summarised these, plus a few other tactics I’ve been testing myself.
Spending habits
1) Automate Purchases
To avoid temptation of unnecessary purchases, particularly via online shopping, try automating purchases. For example, I am a heavy user of Audible. Rather than continuously buying the books I want to consume, I’ve subscribed to the monthly subscription where I get 1 book credit per month. I know that on the 4th day of every I’ll have a credit available to use.
Automating decisions removes the temptation to purchase adhoc ‘luxuries’ or Sale items.
2) Set goals
Many of us know the satisfaction retail therapy can provide if you feel like you’re “missing something”. From my experience, this feeling of discontentment is generally correlated to lack of direction, and boredom.
Goals give us direction. Direction gives us focus. Focus requires discipline.
Discipline is freedom. — Jock Willink
Set goals. Write them down and put them in a place where you are reminded of them. They could be pinned to your bathroom mirror or your bedroom wall. Reminding ourselves of our goals can direct our attention to what’s important.
Phone addiction
I was shocked to learn that the average person checks their phone ~150 times a day. To test this I downloaded an app called “Checky”, which measures the amount of times my phone is unlocked. I thought I would be better than most.
I was wrong . Up until last month I was averaging 140.
It’s no wonder why us millennials are epitomised to lack focus. How are we supposed to get any work done if we check our phone every 6.4 minutes!?
Here are some tactics I’ve recently adopted to combat my phone addiction.
1) Turn off notifications
Notifications are the enemy. They can lure us into apps that are not important and distract us from our work. I’ve turned off all notifications on my phone, with the exception of Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp which I use to communicate with my family.
It’s been amazing.
2) Greyscale
Emotions and attention are tied to colour perception. Addictive games like Candy Crush and Tetris intentionally use funky colours and visual affects to stimulate our brains. This, coupled with notifications in the form of “likes” and “hearts”, send sweet shots of dopamine to our pre-frontal cortex, heightening our ‘self-worth’ and social status. It’s this lethal combination which makes software so addictive.
I previously spent long periods of time, aimlessly trawling Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Since having my phone on greyscale, this exercise was suffused with an air of bleakness. The digital world literally had the colour sucked right out of it. It’s now, somewhat dull.
Now, more of my time is spent reading or doing work that engages my creativity and imagination.
Who would have thought?
Conclusion
We are less in control of our decisions than we realise - and this frightens me. Yes, the human race has gotten this far, working with this foible. However, as technology continues to be apart of our lives, our decisions are becoming less of our own.
To combat this, we should be aware of our cognitive flaws and practice the use of our System 2 thinking. We should not fall into the trap of being a sheep and allowing software and social media to control our decisions. We must practice independent thought and build principles around our own decision making process.
In short, we must exercise our muscle of critical thinking.
So next time, before you automatically make a decision, stop, and ask yourself, why?
Who knows, you might discover something new.
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