How to make customers feel good about doing what you want
Learn how companies make us feel good about doing what they want. Approaching persuasive design from the dark side, this book melds psychology, marketing, and design concepts to show why were susceptible to certain persuasive techniques. Packed with examples from every nook and cranny of the web, it provides easily digestible and applicable patterns for putting these design techniques to work. Organized by the seven deadly sins, it includes:
Pride use social proof to position your product in line with your visitors valuesSloth build a path of least resistance that leads users where you want them to goGluttony escalate customers commitment and use loss aversion to keep them thereAnger understand the power of metaphysical arguments and anonymityEnvy create a culture of status around your product and feed aspirational desiresLust turn desire into commitment by using emotion to defeat rational behaviorGreed keep customers engaged by reinforcing the behaviors you desire
Now you too can leverage human fallibility to create powerful persuasive interfaces that people will love to use but will you use your new knowledge for good or evil? Learn more on the companion website, evilbydesign.info.
Foreword xi
Introduction xiii
Evil designs and their virtuous counterparts xiii
Pride 1
Misplaced pride causes cognitive dissonance 1
Provide reasons for people to use 3
Social proof: Using messages from friends to make it personal and emotional 5
Dispel doubt by repeating positive messages 7
Personal messages hit home 11
Gain public commitment to a decision 16
Change opinions by emphasizing general similarities 19
Use images of certification and endorsement 22
Closure: The appeal of completeness and desire for order 25
Help people complete a set 26
Pander to peoples desire for order 32
Manipulating pride to change beliefs 35
Sloth 39
Desire lines: From A to B with as few barriers as possible 39
Path of least resistance 41
Reduced options and smart defaults smooth the decision process 44
Provide fewer options 45
Pre-pick your preferred option 50
Make options hard to find or understand 53
Negative options: Dont not sign up! 56
Sloth: Is it worth the effort? 64
Gluttony 67
Deserving our rewards 67
Make customers work for a reward 69
Consider a small reward rather than a big one 72
Hide the math 75
Show the problems 78
Escalating commitment: foot-in-the-door, door-in-the-face 84
Foot-in-the-door 84
Door-in-the-face 87
Present hard decisions only after investment 90
Invoking gluttony with scarcity and loss aversion 93
The Tom Sawyer effect 93
Instill doubt to prevent cancellations 96
Impatience leads to compliance 99
Self-control: Gluttonys nemesis 101
Anger 103
Avoiding anger 104
Use humor to deflect anger 104
Avoid overt anger with a slippery slope 107
Use metaphysical arguments to beat opponents 112
Embracing anger 117
Use anonymity to encourage repressed behaviors 119
Give people permission 124
Scare people (if you have the solution) 129
Using anger safely in your products 134
Envy 137
Manufacturing envy through desire and aspiration 138
Create desirability to produce envy 138
Create something aspirational 140
Make people feel ownership before theyve bought 145
Status envy: demonstrating achievement and importance 150
Create status differences to drive behavior 151
Emphasize achievement as a form of status 154
Encourage payment as an alternative to achievement 156
Let users advertise their status 159
Let people feel important 161
Manufacturing and maintaining envy in your products 166
Lust 169
Creating lust: Using emotion to shape behavior 169
Say I love you 170
Be the second best 174
Frame your message as a question 178
Create an in-group 182
Controlling lust: Using desire to get a commitment 185
Give something to get something 186
Make something free 190
Sell the intangible value 195
Make a request in order to be seen more favorably 198
Lustful behavior 201
Greed 203
Learning from casinos: Luck, probability, and partial reinforcement schedules 204
Use a partial reinforcement schedule 208
Make it into a game 211
Customers should win rather than finish or buy 214
Further inflate peoples (already overconfident) feelings of skill and mastery 217
Make rewards seem due to skill, not luck 221
Create a walled garden 225
Anchoring and arbitrary coherence 227
Own the anchor 229
Move from money to tokens 233
Encourage breakage 236
Make it expensive 238
Show your second-best option first 240
Break coherence to justify prices 243
Feeling greedy? 246
Evil by Design 249
Should you feel bad about deception? 250
Should you feel bad about using the principles in this book? 254
Be purposefully persuasive 258
The Persuasive Patterns Game 259
References 269
Index 297
