{"id":21105,"date":"2022-09-25T16:04:54","date_gmt":"2022-09-25T20:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/?p=21105"},"modified":"2025-08-27T15:40:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T19:40:14","slug":"regret-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/regret-test\/","title":{"rendered":"Regret Test"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"NirNir Eyal<\/em>
\nBook Author<\/em>
\nPosts may contain affiliate links to my two books, \u201cHooked\u201d and \u201cIndistractable.\u201d Get my free 80-page guide to being Indistractable at: NirAndFar.com<\/a>
\nPublished in Words That Matter Dec 7, 2017, republished on Medium.com<\/em><\/p>\n

What are the ethical responsibilities of companies that are able to manipulate human behavior on a massive scale? It\u2019s a question one hopes technologists and designers ask themselves when building world-changing products \u2014 but one that hasn\u2019t been asked often enough.<\/p>\n

Operant conditioning, intermittent reinforcement, the search for self-actualization \u2014 the techniques used by product managers at the world\u2019s largest companies are equal parts psychology and technology<\/a>. As Sean Parker, founding president of Facebook, recently acknowledged<\/a>, the company has long been engaged in the business of \u201cexploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our gadgets and apps are more persuasive than ever. Yet for the makers of these technologies, few guidelines exist on how to change user behavior ethically. Without a standard, businesses tend to unthinkingly push the envelope in the never-ending quest for more engagement, more growth, and, ultimately, more profits. As one startup founder told me, \u201cAt the end of the day, I have an obligation to my investors and employees, and I\u2019ll do anything I can, short of breaking the law, to get people using my product.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tech industry needs to do better than the threat of jail time to decide to do the right thing.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, most technologists and designers I know are working to make people\u2019s lives better. Around the world, entrepreneurs aspire to build products customers love. Whether working at a large Silicon Valley tech company or out of a garage, they dream of moving people to action by offering them the next indispensable improvement to their lives, and most try to go about this in an aboveboard way.<\/p>\n

How It\u2019s Used<\/h3>\n

Of course, many of them also wouldn\u2019t mind getting rich. But this mix \u2014 the drive to make both a difference and a profit \u2014 is how humankind has solved many of our most vexing problems. There\u2019s nothing wrong with building products people want to use, but the power to design user behavior ought to come with a standard of ethical limitations.<\/p>\n

The trouble is the same techniques that cross the line in certain cases lead to desirable results in others. For example, Snapchat\u2019s use of streaks<\/a> \u2014 which tally the number of consecutive days friends have shared photos \u2014 has been criticized for conditioning teens to compulsively keep coming back to the app. But the same persuasion technique<\/a> is used by the language app Duolingo<\/a> to help people learning a new language stick with the program.<\/p>\n

The same variable rewards<\/a> used to extract cash from gamblers playing electronic slot machines are also used in video games that help kids with cancer distract themselves<\/a> as they receive painful treatments.<\/p>\n

Clearly, it\u2019s not the persuasion technique itself that\u2019s the problem \u2014 it\u2019s how the technique is used.<\/p>\n

But without a test to tell the difference between good and evil uses, it\u2019s easy to see how designers can go astray.<\/p>\n

The Regret Test<\/h3>\n

The tech industry needs a new ethical bar. Google\u2019s motto, \u201cDon\u2019t be evil,\u201d is too vague. The Golden Rule, \u201cDo unto others as you would have them do unto you,\u201d leaves too much room for rationalization.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d argue that what we ought to be saying is,<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cDon\u2019t do unto others what they would not want done to them.\u201d But how can we know what users do and don\u2019t want?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I humbly propose the \u201cregret test.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

If we\u2019re unsure of using an ethically questionable tactic, \u201cIf people knew everything the product designer knows, would they still execute the intended behavior? Are they likely to regret doing this?\u201d<\/p>\n

If users would regret taking the action, the technique fails the regret test and shouldn\u2019t be built into the product, because it manipulated people into doing something they didn\u2019t want to do. Getting people to do something they didn\u2019t want to do is no longer persuasion \u2014 it\u2019s coercion<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So how do we tell if people regret using a product? Simple! We ask them.<\/p>\n

Just as companies test potential features they\u2019re considering rolling out, they could test whether a questionable tactic is something people would respond to favorably if they knew what was going to happen next.<\/p>\n

This testing concept isn\u2019t new to the industry \u2014 product designers test new features all the time. But the regret test would insert one more ethical check by asking a representative sample of people if they would take an action knowing everything the designer knows is going to happen.<\/p>\n

The test wouldn\u2019t necessarily require much added effort or cost. In a recent article, Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group wrote that he believes<\/a>usability test results can come from testing with as few as five people.<\/p>\n

Shipwrecks<\/h3>\n

The history of technological innovation involves many unintended consequences. As the cultural theorist Paul Virilio once said, \u201cThe invention of the ship was also the invention of the shipwreck.\u201d The beautiful thing about the regret test is that it could help weed out some of those unintended consequences, putting the brakes on unethical design practices before they go live to millions of users.<\/p>\n

The regret test could also be used for regular check-ins. Like many people, I\u2019ve uninstalled distracting apps like Facebook from my phone because I regret having wasted time scrolling through my feed instead of being fully present with the people I care about. Wouldn\u2019t it be in Facebook\u2019s interest to know about people like me?<\/p>\n

If any company, be it Facebook or another business, doesn\u2019t listen to users who increasingly resent it for one reason or another, it risks more people ditching its service altogether. And that\u2019s exactly why understanding regret is so important. Ignoring people who regret using your product is not only bad ethics, it\u2019s also bad for business.<\/p>\n

Nir\u2019s Note: Thank you to Jason Amunwa, Rafael Arizaga Vaca, Ahmed Bouzid, Jamie Kimmel, Julie Li, Jennifer McDonald, Bo Ren, Irina Raicu, Julian Shapiro, Shannon Vallor, AnneMarie Ward, Susan Weinschenk, Guthrie Weinschenk, and Casey Winters for reading versions of this essay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nir Eyal Book Author Posts may contain affiliate links to my two books, \u201cHooked\u201d and \u201cIndistractable.\u201d Get my free 80-page guide to being Indistractable at: NirAndFar.com Published in Words That Matter Dec 7, 2017, republished on Medium.com What are the ethical responsibilities of companies that are able to manipulate human behavior on a massive scale? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21106,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[152],"tags":[153,127],"class_list":["post-21105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive","tag-153","tag-joline"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/regret.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21105"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21109,"href":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21105\/revisions\/21109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umainenewmedia.net\/nmd200\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}