How strong is your faith in UX lately?
On his Creative Good blog, Mark Hurst recently wrote an article titled “Why I’m losing faith in UX.” He asserts that as UX entered its third decade a few years ago, the prevalence of dark patterns and purposely deceptive design practices, it should be renamed “user exploitation.”
Customer deception has probably been around since humans began trading. Business throughout history have purposely deceived users into buying their products or investing in their company. But with the advancements in persuasive design these practices feel somehow more deceitful, because in many cases, there is nothing illegal about what they are doing. Rather, its the ethical and moral issues that have yet to have formal regulatory bodies for oversight.
I don’t necessarily agree with all of this article, but there are some great points and his argument is well stated. It's a conversation worth having, but I am optimistic about our field’s ability to hold each other accountable. For some more views on the ethics of design, check out the documentary The Social Dilemma on Netflix or anything featuring Tristan Harris (he does some deep dive into his views on his podcast and as a guest on many others).
A marketing newsletter that is actually interesting
Reading about marketing can be tough. Just like with design, content that is too broad feels meaningless, and too specific is useless for the majority. That’s why I like Marketing Examples, the website but especially the newsletter. Harry Dry writes brief, interesting case studies that might get you thinking about your next growth-hacking problem differently. A few I’ve liked recently:
The 1903 Tour de France L'Auto Side Project
The marketing genius of Lil Nas X
Is Substack the media future we want?
This New Yorker article is a fascinating dive into why and how Substack (the platform where this newsletter lives) got its start and how it's part of a bigger media revolution. The subscription-based news industry, the founders speculated, could someday “be much larger than the newspaper business ever was, much like the ride-hailing industry in San Francisco is bigger than the taxi industry was before Lyft and Uber.”
Unlike other newsletter platforms, Substack provides incentives to writers and journalists to publish newsletters. The founders consider Substack an alternative to social media that gives understands the value of quality journalistic content and lets writers get paid for that content (or give it away for free, as I do).
Are newsletters the media future? Can they provide quality information without the negativity of social media? This article dives into these fascinating questions.
Thanks for reading! I’m a UX designer and writer, and design-adjacent content writer. If you’d like to be featured in the next issue of UX Adjacent, send me a short bio and links to your website or profiles.