Brian,
that's an interesting example, but even tho it's organ donation, i
wouldn't consider it a matter of ethics (ironically, or not, the
person's dead). we need to be careful with words here. the form that
defaults to opt in hasnt really "influenced the user" but has
influenced the outcome. perhaps bias would be a better term. if i were
looking at submitted forms i wouldnt be looking for ethical violations
but i'd be taking the form's bias into account. bias insofar as user
who dont pay attention to the form unwittingly select "yes".
I dont consider the fact that the checkbox is already checked "yes" to
influence the user. surely a user is capable of unchecking a checkbox
w/o being influenced by its state. or am i making an assumption? ;-)
a
On Jul 27, 2009, at 1:49 PM, Brian Mila wrote:
I didn't mean to speak specifically to advertising, just to the
notion that you definitely can influence a person's behavior, to the
point of them taking an action they might not have done otherwise.
Take the example of default opt-out for organ donation. I'm sure
you've all heard of it where the organ donation rate went way up
simply because the person was defaulted to opt-in on the form.
Organ donation is a pretty big decision for some people, and yet they
were "coerced", "manipulated", or whatever you want to call it
because of the design of the form.
Adrian, in this case, the ethical concern is with the design of the
form, isn't it? Would you consider it an "ethical violation"? In
either case, the box being checked or not is going to influence the
user.
Brian
________________________________________________________________
Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)!
To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org
Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe
List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines
List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
