It is a kind of influence, and with the various terms, folks are talking past one another in some of these messages. The question for me is "do I use my powers of design for good or for Awesome?" I think ethics here is in what the user desires to have done.
Influence covers a wide range of factors, and while a pre-selected box isn't on the coercion or forced end, the influence lies in the ease of use towards the users' purposes: did they want to be an organ donor? Is it easier and/or more common for people to let defaults remain no matter what their intent was? Does the treatment of the form elements make it easy for the user to understand what they want to do and how to do it? Design choices will inherently influence the person using the web page/application/widget/gizmo. Despite my best efforts, this doesn't necessarily mean an arm pops out of their machine and drags their finger to select what I want them to do. :(, Scott On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 1:33 PM, adrian chan <adr...@gravity7.com> wrote: > 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 -- "You always have the carny connection." - Clair High ________________________________________________________________ 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
