Scorpion and the frog 蝎子和青蛙

Scorpion and the frog

A scorpion asks a frog to carry him over a river. The frog is afraid of being stung, but the scorpion argues that if he did, both would sink and drown. The frog agrees to carry him, but midway across the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog. With his last dying breath, the frog asks “Why?” The scorpion replies: “it’s my nature.” 

This fable plays out all the time when building products. The scorpion is the temptress, and we are the frog. Maybe it’s using take-over screens to juice adoption of a new feature. Or using dark patterns to get more customers to engage. 

When Amazon tested sponsored products, there was a small but statistically significant decline in checkout conversion. The long-term customer effects were unknown, but it was an undeniable business jackpot. Advertising has since become a lucrative pipeline that funds their R&D — Amazon’s own way of crossing the river.

In other words, the scorpion nicked the frog. Time will tell whether the bite was poisonous.  

The temptation of putting business before customers is all around us. Even with good intentions, the pressure for relentless growth can lead the best of us to make a deal with the scorpion.

While you can’t eliminate temptations, you can try a more pragmatic approach. By treating customer trust like a bank, you know that to stay solvent, you should always put in more than you take out.

 

https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/36973724

Dark Pattern 指的是一种「精心布局以诱导用户完成某件事的界面设计」。（听上去好像就是 UX 设计师天天在做的事情。

总结来看，dark pattern 的几个惯用手法：

• 默认：默认勾选，用户并不会那么仔细阅读页面每一个信息；
• 弱化/强化：弱化 primary action CTA，强化设计者希望用户采取的操作；
• 增加难度：让退出/放弃操作变得复杂且困难；

 

作者:Chuck Lu    GitHub