Human-Centered Design And Digital Addiction In 2019
When Forrester’s user experience (UX) analysts put together our “Digital CX Trends, 2019” report, two things stood out to me as especially positive changes:
First, modern design practices — like workshops, iterative prototyping, and user research — now direct digital CX efforts. Sophisticated companies are adopting these human-centric methods and abandoning touchpoint-by-touchpoint, feature-focused approaches. Why? Because they face seemingly infinite choices across their designs of sites, apps, third-party apps, voice interfaces, chatbots, connected devices, and notifications. As a result, many have wisely decided to design with human needs as their focus rather than checking all potential feature boxes.
Second, many companies’ efforts to maximize engagement have sparked a movement to overcome digital addiction. Firms have used dark patterns and manipulative design that leave people struggling to avoid being tricked and to control their usage of apps and sites. In response, Apple and others have released features such as screen-time notifications. And legislators have started pushing back on behalf of consumers with the recently introduced DETOUR Act to protect against dark patterns.
These changes are a win-win: They’ll of course help users, but they will also help businesses that embrace them grow — by winning and retaining more customers.
You can read more about these trends and eight others in our just-published report: “Digital CX Trends, 2019.”
—Andrew