The ‘front line’ of digital disruption is (still) UX, not (yet) AI
Two current court cases, both involving Meta, caught my attention since they speak to very different developments in digital technology that are worth tracking as digital marketers. The first, related to Facebook selling user data to third parties, is for $725 million in damages ($30 for each participant). The second, being litigated now, is about Instagram’s targeting young people to engage in a platform that research shows can harm young people (and Meta knows this). I’m not here to judge Meta’s actions— they are doing (perhaps not well) what any public company should do, that is, maximize profits. Rather, I’m noting that, across the three main drivers of issues with digital engagement — accessibility, experience design, and data privacy — only experience design (UX) remains relatively open to interpretation vs. subject to regulation. Digital marketers will therefore need ‘study up’ on UX to ensure that it delivers without landing us in hot water.
Back in the day it was accessibility that was the big issue — in 2006 national retailer Target got sued — successfully — for having a website that effectively barred certain users from accessing content and thereby benefitting from the service. Building from pre-internet accessibility laws, in 2008 WCAG 2.0 was released, which put some teeth into accessibility requirements, requiring private companies receiving government support to maintain website accessibility. And Google reacted to the increase in mobile web usage by delivering meaningful SEO benefits to websites specifically set up for easy mobile access. Now it’s industry standard to deliver an accessible digital experience, with an array of evaluation criteria and levels of conformance to keep all digital content available to all.
Building on a broader effort to address identity theft and data sharing, data privacy became a larger issue for social media platforms and digital marketing efforts, especially given the degree to which it influenced our political system with the Cambridge Analytica scandal after the 2016 U.S. election cycle. After the EU pushed GDPR in 2018 with the potential for significant fines for violators, Google moved quickly to update its suite of products and services (which I complained about in a separate post). But unlike accessibility, digital marketers don’t really have a comprehensive set of requirements here, and must instead fall in line with a range of U.S. state regulations.
Lastly, user experience design. It’s a highly skilled area of expertise, it’s how web interfaces are designed, and it seems to be subject to “Laws” rather than ‘the Law.’ So what? Well, it’s through UX (mostly) that website users can be tempted/cajoled/tricked into engaging with digital content and ads, and through which their data is being captured. These UX “dark patterns” work, and should be avoided — even if they generate results. After all, even a well-intentioned UX can result in data capture that is at best a poor exchange of value between the user and the recipient, and at worst, well, it results in where Instagram finds itself currently—under litigation due to what resulted from an opt-in experience that drove pre-teens into the service, with no age verification. Hard to believe UX is still, from a regulatory standpoint at least, open to interpretation — and therefore open to manipulation from bad (or let’s just say, ‘poorly motivated’) actors.
What’s next? Our industry is currently focused on AI, and it’s understood that digital platforms and their machine learning-based algorithms can drive engagement in a way that harms as well as helps. But it’s UX that delivers the initial hook, so a focus on effective UX principles should be on every digital marketer’s list of “must reads” right now — even as we figure out how AI will impact our processes — so we can keep our eyes squarely focused on the prize, not the penalty…
