Deception for Good: Is it okay to be a little scam-y to get more donations?
A discussion on how I helped a fundraiser platform get more donations, by leveraging on behavioural economics to redesign its interface.
Recently, I have been interested in how deception happens as a phenomenon, and wondered if we can leverage those behavioural influences in our design for good. By turning deception (as a phenomenon we experience) into a mechanism and technique (we can use), I wanted to then uncover whether the use of such deception in our interfaces can be socially acceptable or effective.
This article is a summary of how I used my design framework inspired by deceptive schemes, to help an e-commerce website raise more donations without additional costs. I lay out the process I took, the outcome and discuss about what we can learn from this experiment as a whole.
Deception, Behavioural Economics, and Human Biases
To understand deception, we first need to understand an experience commonly encountered, a scam. Typically, a scam is known as a deceptive scheme used to get an unfair advantage over a situation, usually used to get things from people.
It is likely that each of us has been through one. Think back to a situation when we felt cheated or hurt by someone who took advantage of our trust. Misleading advertisements, online scams, and inaccurate product listings are all common examples.
A good example is the “Evertale” advertisement that used fake gameplays to over-promise and generate discussions through controversy. By producing more than 200 of these advertisements that contained fake gameplay, they were successful in garnering a lot of conversations.
Somehow, in a deceptive scheme (or scams), our behaviour is influenced and we tend to decide on an action that benefits the deceiver. There are plenty of resources that break such deceptive schemes down, but at it’s core, deceptive schemes exploit psychological biases makes us act irrationally.
To make sense of this behaviour shift, a behavioural economist, Dan Ariely, proposes that this irrational behaviour happens because we lack the ability to determine how much things are worth until given a point of comparison.
In deceptive schemes, I believe that this simple psychology is exploited and point of comparisons are created to make choices that benefit the deceiver more appealing than others.
Deception can also be described as a method of altering information, by creating hidden points of comparison, to make people favour a decision that benefits the deceiver.
If this strategy works well for scams, I wonder if it might work well for altruistic intentions too?
I discuss a lot more in depth about how we can turn deception as a phenomenon and distill it into UX strategies in my framework at https://interface.tools/.
The Re-design Process
While looking for places to test this strategy out, I stumbled upon an e-commerce site that partners artists and non-profit organisations (NPO) to raise funds with merchandise. Using some strategies I found in my study, I decided to try re-designing it with a deceiver’s mindset.
Strategy 1: Donations framed as a Chance to Win
A quick discussion with their founders made me realise that they were really genuinely trying to raise funds (even at the expense of losing revenue).
As a deceiver, their passion didn’t necessarily translate into their interface. As a deceiver, I would want to make sure people donate even more than my established amount. Knowing that people generally want control over the donation amount they give, I can start to formulate a plan for my interface.
What if I could make people think that they have a choice in how much they want to donate, but the extra donation (them doing good) could also benefit themselves?
To test this strategy out, I added another variant of the product that costs 10% more, but also gives the purchaser a chance to win another shirt.
Strategy 2: Adding Material Value to Additional Donations.
Looking into their catalogue of products in the campaign, I noticed how they were used to placing just 1 product. As a deceiver, how can I get more out of this simple choice? Just like what Dan Ariely proposes, choices can create points of comparison and I know that people tend to not want to be seen as helping “with the least amount of effort” in society. Can we create other options to make one option look like people will help more?
At that moment, we noticed that Guub also wanted to give away some pouches and tote bags. So we decided to bundle them together with a higher donation percentage. Instead of only comparing the price, now people could probably consider how much they want to donate and the value they get out of the extra donate.
The Conclusion
Dark patterns… not so dark?
In the end, the founders, organisation, artists and even buyers were all happy with the result. Everyone got more than they asked for. Tracking the success and limitations for these interfaces were relatively simple, and I could go through all of them in detail in another article.
In summary, we actually managed to get about $500 more donations in this campaign, for every 1000 page sessions as compared to the previous campaigns. A summary of the sales can be seen here. Most importantly, the customers didn’t feel like they were paying extra money.
But the interesting conclusion was, to answer whether using these techniques were acceptable as a UX designer. A lot of these deceptive strategies might fall into the conventional “dark patterns” category. However, does it make it fine since I am doing it for donations?
On a boarder scale, there are scenarios where deception (or dark patterns) are not entirely malicious, see the Thigh Gap Jewelry for an excellent example, where a designer used a fake online shop to create discussion about body image.
Back to UX design, I believe that deception exists in a spectrum that we can measure, and one of the spectrum we can measure is social acceptance in our interfaces. Ultimately, when we measure our interfaces that we design, we can learn to be more aware of the influences that our interfaces has and even reconsider the viability of using such patterns in our designs.
Let me know what you guys think!
About me
Quick disclaimer that these opinions are just of a young designer finding different perspectives into design and figuring things out.
Also, I am Yuan Jie, a designer and researcher finishing my final year in university. Happy to answer anyquestions!
References
Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational
Thigh Gap Jewelry, Soo Kyung Bae and Cosmopolitan
Evertale Controversy, Superjump
More than 200 fake “Evertale” advertisements, YouTube
