Human Factors Cast E002 - Manipulation and Tinder

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today on the show we're going to be talking about manipulation we're reviewing tender and we're gonna be taking your questions

welcome to human factors cast your weekly podcast for all things human factors psychology and design carry your host Nick Rome and Billy Hall

the backward pass money

how's it going today oh man what are we gonna be talking about today there so Billy may be talking about manipulation no hold on me maybe but before we begin let me just give a huge shout out to Erika Ackerman I love this woman this woman is amazing so what Erika has done for us has helped us out with the artwork for our podcast and I just wanted to give you give her a shout out because her work is great if you like her work you can find her on LinkedIn and we provided her email address in the description of this podcast you can you can contact her so again thank you Erika for everything so Billy again what are we talking about today this week's topic comes from a suggestion of Scott one of our listeners in Pullman Washington where is Pullman Washington it's it's in Washington so it's it's in it's in eastern Washington kind of on the border of Idaho is it by a big lake where there's a giant alligator no you're thinking Florida oh damn you're right yeah I was thinking movies week so just to note that we talked about what you want to hear about Scott commenting on our previous episode with the next part podcast should focus on how easily humans can be manipulated which I am very easily manipulated by a game I mean emotionally telling me what to do and things like that but what isn't it well you know I was thinking about this what I was talking about it and I realized you do a lot of manipulation just by your job it yeah it's kind of my job description is to manipulate but whether or not for good or evil I mean you can you can manipulate for good or for evil right and I wasn't even talking about your job really oh you're right in both cases but what is manipulation in the form of what design or in programming or what is it in in that sense and I think German factor of it I think just the basic definition of manipulation right it's it's some sort of social influence that it kind of has this goal to change the behavior or the perception of another person through some sort of abusive deceptive or underhanded tactic right and so usually the outcome with manipulation is to be in favor of the manipulate or it really sounds like a whole little like 19 you know eighties sci-fi movie Big Brother's watching you sort of thing I mean it doesn't sound like a positive thing how is this positive right well I mean it makes it happen okay so well to answer your first question what makes it positive is it all depends on your intent behind it right so if your intent is for the betterment of your user yeah I mean okay let's let's be honest manipulation is all gray area okay but you can argue that if you were in for the best interest of your user whoever that may be you can you can call it good manipulation maybe and I say that with a huge grain of salt like there's it could be it could be good but really who can who can tell what your intentions are so it's kind of like one of those exercise apps that they always make you use it tells you it talks to you it makes you get out there and move around like the Fitbit tells you every like a couple of hours to get up and move around right is that a form of manipulation from your argument uh it depends on what context it's you so let me let me go into like what makes manipulation happen right so okay so there's a psychologist his name is George K Simon and he basically states that there's there's sort of these three sort of pillars that need to happen for manipulation right and or for successful manipulation I should say so basically the manipulator has to conceal aggressive intentions and haters I guess so that's that kind of gets back to what we were talking about good manipulation versus bad manipulation I guess it really can't be called manipulation if it's in the best interest for the user right so he says it has to be aggressive uh-huh it has to be aggressive towards the user or the person we're talking about just basic manipulation we're not even talking about when it comes to like an app or a website or whatever yet right so that's one is concealing aggressive intentions and behaviors they also need to know the vulnerabilities of the victim right to determine which tactics are likely to be the most effective so it kind of goes back to last week when we were talking about you know heuristics right uh-huh if you know the person's lock combination you're able to punch in 7 3 5 or whatever because you know that's their favorite number right right right knowing that piece of information you're able to manipulate them a little bit more and I think it kind of this all sounds like my mother I mean this sounds like I mean just in general it always seems like our parents because nothing infuriates us more than family sometimes right well let me let me ask you this with our parents is a true manipulation because there are their intentions aggressive because I don't know what kind of environment you got but for me my parents always telling me not to do this or not to do that was always in my best interest right right right right I mean sometimes it could be with in their best interest you know I can see that point but for the most part when I was doing something stupid and they told me not to like that's that's at least the kind of context that I just okay okay so that's our form of like how the parents interact with people is kind of a form of positive manipulation if we can even call it that I don't know if there's a word for positive manipulation other than the influence in the region because manipulation every time you hear about a you know da ZZZ you know I'm like I've manipulated you like a puppet on the street right so so that's the second one right there they need to know their vulnerabilities of the person they don't need to know where to stab at all yeah they needs another weak point uh-huh and so that last pillar to make successful manipulation happen they need to have a sufficient level of ruthlessness and this one just sounds militia this one just sounds malicious man like they need to have a sufficient level of ruthlessness to have no second thoughts about causing harm to the victim if necessary it seems like that would be the most easiest thing I mean like you when you're a sociopath no because like the idea of it is is that you know it's kind of like it's like that old experiment where the guy would push the button there would electrocute the guy in the other room you're talking about Stanley Milgram yeah yeah Stanley Milgram that guy San Lee Kubrick um Malloy Milgram he you bring people in you would push a button a guy gets electrocuted right yes in another room yeah it's a button it's a college study so you're sitting at your computer desk writing code or developing a theory or collecting data these are just faceless people in numbers it seems like that would be a lot easier to collect because it's not like it's your neighbor it's your cousin it's your wife or girlfriend or mother or father that's a really good point being detached from whoever it is that you're hurting definitely helps well helps quotes around that in case like it helps in the sense that it facilitates this last point right so yes I get that I mean this is all like those those Facebook games or those mobile app type of ideas they know you know your friends are playing you're playing they're doing all this thing they're visiting it seems like it would be a lot easier this seems like those type of stuff they do and a lot of apps do to get you to play more or to pay more with pay walls and things like that right right so basically when it comes down to it though all these pillars right when it when some sort of aggressive intention meets all these pillars the manipulation is likely to occur and it's likely to

it's likely to accomplish this by damaging some sort of social status or some sort of indirect expression of hostility right so like passive aggressiveness so forth are three passive aggressiveness I should say mm-hmm well what kind of we've talked about about it but uh what manipulation is but how do you use that in design right well I'm not going to tell you the secret to like I don't know hurting people but I can tell you like [ __ ] tell me quits I will tell you what some companies use in order to either extort information from you or sort of get ahead in ways that may or may not be beneficial to you right and if it's not beneficial to you that kind of falls under the category of manipulation so basically there's there's a ton of different ways that companies sort of get at this manipulation but but some of the more interesting ones at least to me are things like desire paths dark patterns altering the choices that are available to somebody even demonstrating somebody's achievement or even the concept of closure okay you know I run a lot of D&D games and you're sounding more and more like some sort of evil wizard or Dark Lord ready to manipulate the people in the world you know I mean I'm assuming Drizzt Do'Urden is gonna knock on this door at any moment to slice you up and I don't want to be here because I do kind of look like an orc well I hope I'm not coming off like an evil wizard I would like to be seen more like Gandalf all right do I want to be Gandalf fly you fools fly you fools I got firecrackers and stuff can't no a real decent spell but whatever that's me so you the first one you mentioned was desired paths right so what does that mean what is the designee not desired path to me seems like the way you go down the thing that you want them to do kind of like go left instead of right type of thing you want them to go left so they don't want to go right you reward them more for it you're really close okay what desire paths are have you ever been sort of strolling through a park and you're on a sidewalk and you see a small unpaved path off to either side of you that connects with the sidewalk another sidewalk sort of down the road a little bit mm-hmm right and it's just kind of like a shortcut okay that that path is made by people actually treading through that right and it's people actually walking on this ground and preventing the grass from growing and there's been there's been you can see this in like architecture for example so like when architects will design like let's say a college campus they'll design it without or at least this was this was one case I I'm not quite sure of the reference but in one case they they built an entire college campus without sidewalks and they just put grass everywhere and they waited a year to see where the desire paths oh that is so cool that is so cool right so you can see like what pathways students were taking to get from one building to another and that's where they built their their their sidewalks so so what this means for apps right is basically to have the most lucrative or or the most desirable action for the company or huh be the easiest to get to right if you have that you know easy path if you have a different pathway to where you have to go through 20 different steps to buy something on a website for example mm-hmm right then then it's not going to be accomplished as easily as if they had what they call a call to action button and that's just that big order now button on the website I remember this kind of thing like for example when I was playing around with just going back to the last episode when I'm playing Pokemon go it's really easy to get to the store to buy things with actual money which is what they want me to go to they even say hey sometimes you need to do that so it's just one button click there you are it's right there in front of you easy to get to you know but the Blake place to get free money is in the same place but it's hidden in the top-left corner it's not readily available to see is that kind of the idea of a desired path you got it yeah and yeah the the easiest example you can see of this is when you go to a website and you see the big order now button right or Buy It Now button Buy It Now one-click order on exactly yeah yeah okay make the thing that's gonna get the company the most money or the thing that's gonna benefit them the most the easiest to do same thing with like the steam summer sale you click on a picture it's right there and big letters it's this much off click here to do this right okay okay okay but that isn't the only thing you talked about was you know those seem like nice things you know desired path you know but then you started talking about a little bit something a little bit darker a little scary of the dark patterns what are dark patterns so this is when the human factors Wizards all come out right now you are secretly wizards I knew it no so a dark pattern and these are really really fascinating to me at least Wow now I am sounding like a manipulator no they're fascinating to me because it really capitalizes on the human species laziness uh-huh right so what dark patterns are is basically some sort of user interface component that has been crafted to trick the users into doing something that's beneficial for the company right and so one example of this can be seen like where the default option in in whatever selection they are making is not beneficial to the user right so kind of like the idea like you might accidentally click into this situation without even realizing you've done it yet exactly it's a so one good example would be to to think about those programs that you download and when you download it and install it it says also change my browser to this is default like Firefox nothing right right Google Chrome does that right so well when you download an app right and it says you know also make Internet Explorer my default and make Yahoo search like that is a callback you're right I don't own a computer but you're right I do remember those things right so if you're clicking through right and and and you just don't like yes I want to install this right and that's selected by default you get back on your internet and your Yahoo search is your default and it's really annoying there's there's a company now this company is pretty well-known and I'm not going to mention the company but I think they actually got you might know who I'm talking about just by listening okay there's I think they actually got in a lawsuit or they got sued for this very thing right so there was an issue where it was a social media site and basically what happens is you sign up for this thing and you see all of your contacts in a list that says add your friends right and and the apps permissions said we need to access your contacts so whether or not your contacts had a an account with this company they would still show up on this list and you can just click on them and they would get a notification they would get an email saying hey so-and-so has invited you to be friends or whatever it is for that website I almost let and and so then you know they're sending out emails that you have given them permission to do because it was a dark pattern it was hidden it was the default yes I want to share my contacts and it's it's so hidden that when you click on the person's name you can't tell whether or not they're a member of that site right I mean I mean those are a lot of things like that I mean like mobile games on certain or social networks that actually do that thing as well you know send this to all these people use this thing exactly and they might not even do it and then they befriend you and I'm really sorry about that Chuck Gordon and Lindsay which aren't real names I know but still okay but these are all choices people make these are all options that you have but you also say you mentioned that people have choices right tell me more about the choices so there's a couple different ways one of the one of the most sort of interesting ways you can use choices to manipulate people is sort of altering the choices that somebody has to make it seem like those are the only options right or or maybe not highlight something that they didn't know was available right so like let's say you can accomplish this by providing fewer options so let's say that when you go you're using an app or a service that converts your real world money into in-app currency or in-game currency whatever it is right and so your five dollars equals seventy three coins or tokens or whatever it is in this app right now let's say they give you three tiers of options you can buy 20 coins for a buck you can buy a hundred coins for five bucks you can buy a thousand coins for ten bucks now what they're not and let's say you can put in any denomination in between mm-hmm this is most well-known and well seen with gift cards right they give you these certain predetermined denomination 550 $100 yeah it's easier to see with gift cards so I'm going to switch over to that example so you have you have the different denominations of gift cards but they you know they don't tell you that you can put in your own denomination so you can but limiting those choices will either have somebody more likely than not go and select either the higher or the lower option and it'll probably tend towards the higher option right though they'll be more likely to buy the $50 gift card because 20 is too low but they didn't know they could put in 25 wait you can change the amount on gift card in most cases oh you're gonna have a crappy Christmas man all right now you know and well this can also be used let me let me back up really quick to this can also be used to use or to highlight the company's preferred option right like you can alter their choices in this way right so if you are buying a gift card and you say oh you know most people buy the $50 gift card even though you know you want 25 so you're gonna be more likely to pick that 50 you know and then there's other there's ways to make the options hard to understand as well like don't not sign up for this thing and there's just a ton of different ways that you can alter alter these choices for people well a lot of people seem to actually have things like I mean like a lot of people when you get these things it gives you a bonus it's usually a better deal these things like you were saying earlier these achievements so it seems like but not everything offers is I mean like how does the idea of how much an achievement get or not get how does the bow you mentioned these achievements how does that work right so well achievements they can be sort of a form of status and I or they can fancy hats and a lot of game exactly and they can they can be used to highlight you know different groups right like let's say you are a triple-a Plus member versus a basic member right and as one plus member you get these exclusive things you get sort of the you know roadside assistance and and whatnot versus the basic members who only get the coverage right and so you know being part of this status makes you feel that sort of achievement like I've achieved this because I pay for it basically companies have you pay to be part of a group they feel good about yourself right because you're socially better off then I have that nice new fedora I have roadside assistance exactly I now have the gold armor and overwatch right not to say that people who wear fedoras are you know all Triple A plus members but it helps I mean we don't we don't want to partition our audience here right all right so well you can there's there's another way to write so you can you can think about sort of even achievements and games right so like it seems like it's the most relevant one that's around one of them I mean there's there's been a lot of gamification with just regular apps right like audible has there yeah there are many men for vending yeah right so they're trying to game if I everything but just and that goes to show you the testament that yeah this works I mean it's a really addictive thing I know a few people who are just diehard achievement hunters in games and things like that and that's all they ever talk about right and silver oh you're making a jab at me forever Nick I'm a trophy hunter what do you always have to hunt all the trophies let me let me explain what's going on here so game you okay when you make sort of these arbitrary achievements or trophies I guess you you quantify it right you make it tangible you make these things it all comes back to status right if you get these things other people will see that and sort of you know know that you have done these things in the game and now that may or may not be true and trophies and achievements don't hold up on a resume but what you know it makes it makes you feel good inside because you've done something that not a whole lot of other people have done right and that's that it makes you play games or use apps in ways that you normally wouldn't right I mean and it leads to a sense of completion of the last thing you were talking about closure right yeah and this is yeah this is basically the desire for completed miss can be seen in checklists when you're signing up for products or you know progress bars when you're going through a like a survey or something and the way they manipulate you here is that you know when when they get to that gotcha moment right where they say alright you filled out all this information that's taken you five ten minutes to fill out now we need your credit card info that's the gotcha moment right that's my gotcha but you're 90% done with this thing so just give us your credit card and you'll be a hundred percent done right right the surveys online type of thing right and I'm here like do this one thing and you'll be done and you know it's often the biggest barrier that comes last right look you know I mean um not to shame ly promote but one of my favorite books cuz I'm one of my favorite books I ever heard and read was Chris Hardwick's The Nerdist way and one of the things he talks about is gamifying your life you know make progress bars for your tours chores what goals you're trying to get to and it gives it that you're almost manipulating yourself which is kind of like the positive manipulation you were talking to you know if you want to buy this new car make a progress bar watch that you put in a way that money so you could visually see yourself getting closer to it yeah there's there's a great book I'm blanking on the name right now but it's by Jane McGonigal and she does she does a lot of gamification she made an app called super better that kind of gamma Phi's exercising uh-huh and it's it's worth a read it's really good if you're interested in you know game gamification and understanding how things how that can improve your performance I guess right and it all comes back to achievement right if you give them a taste of completed nacinda sprite don't want to get they'll want to get that platinum trophy they'll want to get all of the points right they they want to get all the achievements in a game right so all right they show you what's left that way you want to complete them huh I like that idea by the way we're not a paid or sponsored to actually promote Chris Hardwick's book it's just one of my favorites you should read at the Nerdist way I'll shamelessly promote on this platform I don't care okay I have an audience of like what it means you and whoever else wants to listen but I will shamelessly promote whenever I can but that that's just me because I'm weird like that but we talked a lot about this stuff this stuff seems really interesting it seems like it can be used in a lot of different ways in your life not just the keep I mean like it is psychology but I mean it can be used for a lot of positive and negative things like I want I was looking over all this stuff and I wanted to implement some of these things in my role-playing games you know when I sit down at the table and play that you know give them that sense of a closure and achievements and you know altering choices and things like that I want to give that to it you're in an awful DM because you want to manipulate your players no I'm an amazing GM ask Chris Perkins shamelessly promote people I like to but I want to know more oh can you only have an hour here what we here else can we do where else can I go teach me o dark one o dark one so you know Chris not her he has a really great book and again we are not sponsored by any of these guys I'm just letting you want to yeah I mean if you want to send us free copies we can give it two out to our listeners but we're not sponsored by anyone but Chris Hart or Chris Mader you had me thinking Chris Hardwick Chris Noth oh great we're supporting to Chris's in this pot I love it Chris Mader you're amazing he is amazing he has a book and it's titled evil by design this you know the stuff that we talked about today it kind of gives you a taste of what he goes over in that book but really he breaks down how companies use manipulation or sort of these techniques based on the seven deadly sins that's so cool I dig that yeah so and you know his goal is basically to get you to understand what's going on like those companies those evil corporation trying to do their bidding yeah yeah I mean it's a great read and it talks more about some of the things we covered today anyway this is the part of the show where we do a review of something you guys our listeners send in now this could be anything from a video game to a website to an app on your phone we'll take a look at the usability of the app and compare it against ten usability heuristics what are we reviewing today Billy hold on I got to get into the right tone here mm-hmm we're gonna talk about some love in the form of the app called tinder gonna start a little fire oh yeah what what is tinder tinder is a location-based dating and social discovery service a social hang on he said social discovery service what does that mean I am Lea pro this is a family program so yeah family terms what has social discovery service and a boy and a girl like each other very much but don't have time to actually go Rimi tree'll people they go to tinder so that they could just kind of like you know slam together and kind of like a blender for meu nome and women seeking men or women and they either/or goes in this sort of app but it's quick and easy and gives you that instant gratification and if you're lucky it'll give you some other kinds of gratification so [ __ ] yeah I did okay there that was okay it was okay so how do you like tender Billy do you use tender I used it when I was younger or my exact reasons intended probably okay so so you were looking to slam some bodies up against somebody I wanted to get in that social blender you are I am in a happy and loving relationship with my fiance who I love and care deeply about and you wanted to get into that social discovery right you know I had to ask permission just to download the app again to do research on this but yeah I did too and I actually didn't even end up downloading the app I actually did the review on your who chickened out I did but you also had a download you had a you had a account already made and I just didn't want to associate that with my - no it was deactivated now for the next six months I'm gonna keep getting tinder notification through my email saying you sure you want to close this out again which I do once again I love you Kea don't hate me don't know I know buddy I met nobody on it but um I failed at tinder I failed horribly at dinger when I was on it I don't know once again I think I because I looked like an orc or because I just don't have a good duck yes I was about to see was that because of the app or was that because of was that due to the usability of the app or was that just good to know because there's some changes that were made when I went back on the app and I want to talk about those but I think we can talk about it as we go through these like the first thing I wanted to talk about was the number one one the visibility of the system status right this is as a user I know what's going on right so in tinder right it gives you sort of the idea of us to have a status of the status of the app basically right as soon as you start interacting with it right right now it doesn't necessarily give you any affordances it doesn't tell you how many likes you have it doesn't tell you that these things are limited that kind of thing right it didn't seem to now mind you I didn't start a profile at the beginning of everything but it it didn't seem to tell you that I had a limited amount of likes or dislikes I mean I can dislike people all day long which is a very negative way of going about it I think yes and but I usually love yeah where's the line are you going love like where's these commands where is the social discovery social discovery I really love that work too sticking to that idea but yeah it was a little bad about it I I think it doesn't really take you through it it kind of just makes you stumble into it but it's not very like our last one with Pokemon go it's very um what's the word Pokemon go doesn't tell you that you have limited things and it's not very good at it but this one punishes you for it it's like every like 11 hours if you run out of likes there you have to wait that's almost like a daily login bonus right yeah come back to our app it's a dark pattern ah

would that be a dark pattern though cuz it's is a carefully crafted interaction that well everybody knows right left swipe right do they are tech savvy now it's a good invention we'll get to that later okay but but I mean that would be kind of a dark pattern because you just get used to swiping right because you're sad and lonely and you just want to like everybody right well let me talk about affordances really quick because this is one thing that I think the app doesn't really do and you know like I said I didn't sign up to the app so I didn't see like the opening sort of deal but when you're just looking at the picture of somebody it doesn't give you any indication that you can swipe left or what was swipe right or swipe up it just kind of sits there and you know it doesn't do this until you actually interact with the picture right so when you interact with the picture and you swipe slightly to the left of the right or up it kind of gives you this overlay right that tells you what that action will do crap I didn't even know you could go up what does that do super like oh cool I didn't even know it did that we all learned something new every day okay I've never you've been this thing again alright so so what do we got next Billy okay so the match between system and the real world right so this is basically as a user I know what you're talking about alright and right I mean for the most part they do right I mean swiping feels pretty natural right flipping pages to the left or sorry swiping to the left kind of emulates like flipping a book right going to the next page you're good you're going on going on going on unless there's something unique or or something that stands out unusual or terrible to you then you're going to you know do the opposite action you're gonna swipe right or swipe up now the up thing is that's what I mean like tender seems like it really is following the whole book motto you know you're turning the page to go on you know or you're going back because you really like something I guess pushing up is like ripping out a section of the book that you want like this section oh man this is reading material I'm frame this I buy it for the articles oh right right obviously obviously uh so I mean overall I pin it it kind of matches pretty well I mean tender is a pretty simplistic app but yeah it's like that left that button a metaphor you use all the time the best app would be just push the button app but it's not a very fun app right all right I mean what about the user controls and freedom you know alright that's not work this is kind of like the emergency exit for the user right so hoops let me out of here all right I didn't really see a whole lot of that but tender I I kind of felt like you know when I accidentally liked or unliked or I accidentally unlike or what is the what is the swipe level 8 it's not hey not like it's nope nope okay when I accidentally noped somebody or when I accidentally liked somebody you know it gave me no way to undo or you know unless I paid and you know as a user that's not it's not something I want to do I just want to I just want to get into a what is it social social situation when a social situation social discovery rule discovery blender yes I just wanted to get into a social discovery I didn't want to have to pay for this right right I mean that's the other thing I mean when we're talking about it if I'm like sometime I mean before this app I guess this is kind of a plus to the idea of limited likes now but when I used to do this app I would always go like ah these people I don't know no no no no no I would go through 30 people just saying no and then I would accidentally see someone that interests me but I would still be in that pattern of going you know so I wouldn't be to go back and do like right now get into a rhythm of things right they do have an undo but God dude no no no on everybody what kind of damage do you have Nikki I am but they do have an undo button they do but yeah if I press it right now I have to pay I have to pay for that which is silly I think I mean give me so many undos but at least give me something yeah I want a social disgust not that I would have bothered picking undo on any of those pictures because it's not like I was looking for anybody at the time I loved yukia all right so I mean you know we talked about manipulation that's that underline extortion I mean okay but I mean like the SAP hat seems to have a lot of consistency and standards which is the next one right yeah no I mean so this is seems familiar makes sense to the user right it's almost in our society nowadays yeah I mean it works well there is that undo button that's that's pretty familiar to users but again you have to pay for it all right you know it also has like the typical X that you would find on most apps this is the nope option you have a heart which is I like it and then you also have this star which is seen in some apps like it like a favorite option yeah bookmark out uses favorites a lot yeah I mean you know it's it's one of those things I feel like it does pretty good job and in terms of so so it sticks with the standards it doesn't really switch them up so consistency isn't really an issue but the one thing to me that that was kind of a novel idea when this came out well as the swiping right that really didn't go with any standard up until this point but we'll talk about that later what's next up okay Error error prevention yeah this which is usually something you do after a tender David Billy's got the jokes over here ding error prevention it's social discovery social discovery right the night after social discovery so that's a what your thesis on the discovery Oh God oh god what did I do anyways oh is that an appropriate opening sentence oh man let's get back on track so on your a prevention err prevention is basically glad I didn't do that so no I mean when it comes to tender though this this really sucks but not for the reasons that we just Illustrated but you know for the reasons that unless you pay well if you pay all this is great yeah I'm talking about it like from from the perspective of the everyday user right I mean unless you pay you can't undo right it doesn't ask you to perform preneur to come confirm the like right do you are you sure you want to like this person like nobody sure you in it I mean isn't that kind of the style of the app though you asked a nard right I mean that Wow this is a family show bill like you took up there I didn't take it there you know what we kind of opened it up when we talked about tinder but let's just let's bring it back in all right I mean that is kind of the name of the game though right like you swipe left you swipe right you have to make a decision before you commit mm-hmm you know I mean it tells you probably the first time that you open up the app but probably not after I mean like are you sure yes this is are you sure this is this is what this means but they don't go into it after yeah I mean it rewards you for going quickly get into the next person or not getting to the next person you have to become a picky and choosey rush is kind of the idea of the app well it's up next recognition rather than recall so this is uh from the users perspective this is basically I know what I need to do here right kind of a no-brainer Bethesda it kind of is yeah I mean so you you log in you see the picture and you see these options right X heart star a pretty self-explanatory right to what degree the star differentiates itself from the the heart who knows really but you know it's all there right star and heart probably mean something positive and X probably means something negative now the one thing that I was talking about earlier it was the swiping left and swiping right now this this has become sort of a convention right this is something that you see now in other apps right and you know the the way this app well like I said when it first came out there weren't any real standards for this kind of thing uh-huh you know people now know what it is and so when they get on they notice wife left or right but right it gave them you know there's no way for them to recognize that there was a way to navigate this app in another way right right I mean they do recall the options based on what they see on the main screen or sorry they recognize what they see on the main screen but they they need to recall the like gesture-based right right right the gesture-based of it I mean they can just use the buttons but it's just the gesture bait and this goes into kind of the idea that I was thinking of the aesthetic and minimalist design now this thing app does it perfectly in my opinion because it's simple it's easy to understand and use the app I mean it might take a little work to Reese like you know set up but it's bam bam I'm in you know I know what I'm doing yeah I mean it's very simple you know what to do uh-huh it's I I would have to agree with you it's very it's very simple you kind of have a good idea of what's going on right what's up next the other one was help users recognize diagnose and recover from errors now I don't see a lot of errors that ever come up from tinder other than oh god oh god I did this wrong thing but it's kind of like a shrug your shoulders and move on with your life well yeah and I mean it's also from the users perspective right I know what went wrong I know how to fix this right and you definitely have that right yeah I mean you have the I know what went wrong I accidentally liked this person or accidentally didn't like this person I hope to them right and you can always stop talking to them I know tons of girls did that to me I mean well yeah thank you blame him really just kidding no okay when it comes down to it that part's easy but it's the ability to undo right it all comes back to the stupid paywall right it really does like it's like a weight on the end of this app this app would be probably so much more usable if it didn't have that stupid paywall attached to it right that's the thing I mean okay so the last one we have are we talked a little bit before the show but help and documentation right so this is from the users perspective I need help right you know is there an easy way for me to get access to the help and you know it's a little hidden I mean you have to go into settings right and then you have to go down to I think it's like just help or something it's a help and support help and support which I mean you know help and support is typically found in settings it's just a little hidden maybe like a tip section just a little fat Q that they download well not even that just like a like a little thing that gives them some sort of feed feed forward right wait you've heard of feedback right after you've completed an action you get the feedback that you've done it right but feed forward is this concept where you know like let's say you're on the main screen right and and the the picture of the person of interest kind of Wiggles to the left or Wiggles to the right right it tells you that these are the actions that you can do right right tells you kind of how to use the app now that would that be nice they do sort of supply this FAQ section outside of the app you know it'll be nice to seen it see it inside the app but I mean overall they do a pretty good job they kind of break it down by category now you said it was a little bit off due to the fact that you had to go to a separate website like it takes you to the tinder website and it actually do that yeah but I was saying that it's an app that's constantly updating that people are monitoring wouldn't it be easier to take it from what most mobile apps go take you to a website first over everything else they do but I'm saying like if there's just some sort of in-app tip that would be like the most common of questions but yeah I mean you know something that's not gonna change something that's static over time that's that's all I'm saying with the in-app stuff see like I'm saying though I mean just my little closing thoughts on using this app before and now is that the really the biggest thing is that this paywall hit you like a brick you know what I mean like a brick paywall yeah yeah you know really it's it really hinders this app like I originally decided brought forward discussing this app one because it was very different it was mostly different than what we were doing before you know and that's what we try to do we try to keep a little variety from show to show but the other side of it is is that this thing bogum I'll go over took this thing and I can see why it took the over this thing because it has more social interaction than there's a what do they call I keep forgetting no social discovery Pokemon go has more social discovery than this app if I go somewhere that Pokemon go tells me to go to chances are I'm gonna run into other players you know what Pokemon go is almost being used as a tender replacement for social discovery it's it's out there I mean people oh my god you're telling me I could really use the line to a girl if I was still single I cute you choose you oh hey girl let me get a Pikachu this is thank God we found women thank God we found women that to put up with us oh yeah yeah but ya know the paywall is really what comes into it you know what I mean you know what overall I think it's age I would never use it but now I think well maybe if I was like alone and really desperate and like I I don't want to bash anyone who does use it because you know if that's if that's your cup of tea that's fine it's just not for me but in terms of usability I think it's pretty usable alright like it's at its core it's pretty simple to understand what the concept is what you're doing it's easy to navigate I mean it's it's like your argument is it the app works the app is heuristically successful I would agree uh but uh uh personal note I think it's flawed because of these things the manual not to mention just one little quick thing I really wanted to bring up here because leave love is love in this type of podcast and and I put down women and men just to get an idea of both sides of the app even though I'm a straight male and everything like that I didn't really think anyone was going to take me up on it but it said show me I it just says in the app settings show me men show me women but it doesn't necessarily say show me men that are my orientation or show me women that are my orientation this could be manipulation on their part right they just show you any one of that nice or gender to sort of get you to expend your likes and spend more on the app that's the thing a lot of people do that but they don't actually talk about some of them say yes I'm gay and thereby little bio blurbs that they have here and things like that but not all of them are some have actually said that they are looking for women in this thing in their bio like some want some special girl and they still showed it to me even though apparently I'm also looking for men and that right there is just flawed you know I mean yeah if they can find a way to get around that but I would make the app a little bit more usable and open cuz other dating sites do it right it's true but we want to know what you guys think do you think we're out of our minds do you think we're spot-on let us know in the comments let us know what you want us to review next we're always looking for new things and we're always listening to you guys we want to know what you want us to review but this next part of the show this is where we take questions from you guys our listeners if you want to be featured on the show send in your questions we're all over social media go ahead and comment on our SoundCloud send us an email at human factors cast at gmail.com Billy what's our first question all right our first question which I'm really excited about it's actually our only question today because we're running short on time that's there our first question comes in to in the tech field today you see a lot of companies using the term UI and UX is really quick who's this from oh it's from Blake that we mentioned earlier Blake yes this is a different guy we always yeah yeah oh my gosh this is so amazing we have so many ways Blake Blake writes in the tech field today you see a lot of companies using the term UI you X interchangeable what are your thoughts on ui/ux where do they overlap and where are they different now what is what is UI UX what do you think they are that's I want to get your perspective right cuz you're not in the field I want to know what you think these things are well I know that UX I don't know what the term for UX is but I do know that in my company they use UX as kind of like a testing for like people testing the software or the product and things like that and getting their feedback from it live they have like a big room that they put people in and do interviews with who use the product that I helped make okay and what do you think UI is I would think it would be the online version of it but I'm just stabbing in the dark here okay so the first one UX it so let me let me kind of back up and kind of give a broad overview of the controversy so what's happening in a lot of tech fields is that they're kind of lumping all this stuff together into one thing and you know there's there's been sort of this outcry of people who have gone no wait no we're not all one thing you know we're not those unicorns that you're looking for we are you know fairly specialized in what we do there's the UI designers uh-huh like Erica Ackerman who put together our logo love you Erica she would do something like you know create the visual appearance of an app mm-hmm she would go through a non-tender she would make like the X she would make the heart she would make the visual appearance of all this stuff mm-hmm now I'm grossly oversimplifying their job and I'm going to grossly oversimplify all jobs but what a UX designer typically or weapon what we kind of consider ourselves to do is to kind of design the overall experience right how does a user go from step one login to step five get a social discovery hmm right how do they go through that process and what is their experience of using the app it's called user experience UI is user interface now there's almost like a third branch here that Blake didn't mention which is this this research right and it sounds like it your company there's they do the UX role almost does this user research role right where they will bring people in assess the usability of a product and sort of see how it's doing you know with real users and you know what it comes down to is that there's a lot of overlap with these three different roles and there's no clear definition where one starts and the other stops there and the other begins you know so often times you'll find the UI designers are working closely with the UX designers to sort of you know the UI will be based on the experience and so they're collaborating together and the researchers validating these sort of things that they found or sorry these things that they've kind of cooked up and it all it all kind of blends together I mean what I think is that you know we each have our own role but at the end of the day you kind of got to have that overlap to work as a team right and and I thought hand helps the other type of player yeah I think the problem though is that these companies they have human resources who just kind of go they look online and they see UI UX designer and and all of these specialties are kind of lumped into one job title mm-hmm and it's like there's even okay I'm gonna back up one more time there's even more to this too because there are the developers as well there are the developers who need to actually implement this right so the UI designer is not coding up the buttons they are just developing the look the UX designer is not you know saying that this button should it behave this way they're just saying it should behave this way they're not coding it up so there's the software coder behind everything as well and what you'll often find in these job descriptions as you'll see people or companies who lump all the responsibilities together so you're going to have a job posting that says I need you to be familiar with the Adobe software suite which is what may be a UI designer with director but with I need you to be familiar with research methods which is maybe what a researcher would be familiar with I need you to have experience with Java or coding and C++ which is what a developer would have experience with and you know to really focus your skills in on one of these things it's really just you know unreasonable to ask people to do this and so I think what Blake is trying to get at here is a you know that that it's not the people in the sort of field that need to be aware of this it's it's the companies it's the higher-ups that are creating these job positions and they need to understand that they each bring something unique to the table who well that seems very complicated there was a lot there I mean that's almost like a show in itself maybe we will do a show about that later yeah let us know what you think do you want to hear more about UI UX and research but for today that's it I've been your host Nick Rome you can find me on LinkedIn Khan / Nick Rome Billy Hall where can they find you they can find me on Twitter on the palm star Kirk until next time it's a college