Thesis Paper
The impact of the deceptive design of the account deletion process
on social media
Main field: User Research, Interaction Design Examiner: Bruce Ferwerda
Supervisor: Domina Kiunsi Project group: Group 7
Course: Final Project Work in Informatics - TWIP17 - S20 Group members:
Tingmo Liu (liti1731@student.ju.se) Oleg Kron (krol1717@student.ju.se)
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the study is to establish whether there is any impact on the social media company that is implementing the deceptive practices in their interfaces, or so-called “dark patterns”, from the perspective of a user, his feelings and potential actions towards it after going through a process with a deceptive interface that the social media company has implemented.
Method
According to the qualitative research, the methods are User Testing and Interviewing.
Findings
The research showed a weak influence on the Instagram company of using deceptive design on the account deletion process on Instagram. This is because people consider the deceptive account deletion process a small factor compared to the other reasons they may have to quit Instagram. Moreover, some people have expected and accepted this particular deceptive design due to the fact that it has become a common choice for social media companies. Although users may feel frustrated and challenged during the process, it would not change their attitudes towards the Instagram company. The ones who learned about the fact that Instagram is using such deceptive design on the account deletion process from friends or family, would not change their attitude towards the company either.
Implications
These results are built on the existing evidence such as the definition of deceptive design, the intentions behind deceptive design and the working principle behind the deceptive design. Based on the above, the study investigates the new field of how the deceptive design on account deletion process of Instagram affects the Instagram company. The study can help social media companies, such as Instagram, to figure out if they should use the deceptive design on their account deleting function and if so how would that affect their company, be that image or profits.
Limitations
The first limitation is the Convenience sampling that approaches people based on their availability and willingness and potentially could have bias. Even though the study topic is general, people should not have any personal preference in it. The results were also limited by the number of research participants and its age group. Another
limitation is introduced by the Interview method, where the issue is that people may react differently in real-life situations from what they say in the interviews.
Keywords
Deceptive design, social media, account deletion process, user interface design
Table of content
Abstract 2 Purpose 2 Method 2 Findings 2 Implications 2 Limitations 2 Keywords 3 Table of content 4 1 Introduction 6 1.1 Background 6 1.2 Problem statement 71.3 Purpose and research questions 8
1.4 Scope and limitations 9
1.5 Disposition 9
Chapter 1 - Introduction 9
Chapter 2 - Methodology 9
Chapter 3 - Theoretical Framework 9
Chapter 4 - Empirical Data 9
Chapter 5 - Analysis 9
Chapter 6 - Discussion and Conclusion 9
2 Methodology 10
2.1 Link between research questions and method 10
2.2 Work process 10
2.3 Approach 11
2.4 Design 13
2.4.1 Target group 13
2.4.2 Usability Test 13
2.4.3 Before the test 14
2.4.4 Interview 14
2.5 Data collection 16
2.6 Data analysis 17
2.7 Validity and reliability 17
3 Theoretical framework 18
3.1 Link between research and theory 18
3.2 Deceptive Interface 19
3.2.2 How deceptive design affects users 20 3.2.3 The intentions behind the deceptive interface design 20
3.3 Social media 20
3.3.1 Overview of social media and its users 20 3.3.2 The purposes of using social media 21 3.3.3 The users’ attitude about giving up social media 21 3.4 Account deletion process on Instagram 21 3.4.1 The process of account deletion on Instagram 21 3.4.2 The account deletion process on Instagram as deceptive design 22
4 Empirical data 23
4.1 Introduction 23
4.2 Demographic data 23
4.3 General user test questions 24
4.4 Users’ feelings on the account deletion process 26 4.5 Users’ attitudes and opinions on the account deletion process 27 4.6 The potential user actions and effects 29
5 Analysis 32
5.1 How would users feel after they have been through the account deletion
process? 32
5.2 How would deceptive interfaces impact users’ attitudes towards the
company? 34
5.3 How would the users who have been through the account deletion process
affect Instagram company? 35
6 Discussion and conclusion 36
6.1 Findings 36
6.2 Implications 36
6.3 Limitations 37
6.4 Conclusions and recommendations 39
6.5 Further research 39
7 References 40
8 Appendices 43
Appendix 1 - Task description in the research for participants: 43
Appendix 2- Interviews 43
Appendix 3- Thematic analysis tables 70
1 Introduction
1.1 Background
Social Media networks are widely used nowadays, they usually play an important role in how a person communicates and consumes information. There are lots of
advantages Social Media Networks brought to humanity, but there are some hidden costs for such advantages. One of which is deceptive interfaces.
Deceptive interfaces are the ones that by design make a user take actions that one didn’t necessarily desire, but due to the psychological tricks that are used in such deceptive interfaces or so called “Dark Patterns” a user ends up doing things that benefit not himself but the company, that intentionally implemented such interface. As the book “The Dark (Patterns) Side of UX Design” (Gray, 2018) specifies, “We use the term dark patterns to define instances where designers use their knowledge of human behavior (e.g., psychology) and the desires of end users to implement deceptive functionality that is not in the user’s best interest“.
It’s not uncommon that companies and web services use deceptive practices in their interfaces to make as many users as possible perform the tasks that are favorable for a company and to prevent as many users as possible from doing the things that are not. One of the known deceptive methods that is used around the internet is the so-called “Roach Motel”, which means that it’s easy for a user to get in a certain situation but much harder to get out of it. As it’s specified in the book, (Gray, 2018) – “design makes it very easy for you to get into a certain situation, but then makes it hard for you to get out of it (e.g. a subscription)”.
The particular issue that we are going to research upon is the account deletion process in one of the most popular social networks of 2019 – Instagram. According to the “ Global Web Index – The Latest Social Media Trends to Know (2019) report, Instagram is in the top 5 of the most popular social networks of 2019.
The reason this particular process in the social network is chosen is that it also falls into another category of “dark patterns” or so-called “Malicious Interface Design Techniques” described in a book (Conti, 2010) as “Forced Work – Deliberately
increasing work for the user. “ If in order to remove a piece of software or delete an account a user has to go through a process that’s deliberately made to be more difficult than an average process on the website, that is considered as “Forced Work”. It has already been discovered that such deceptive interfaces cause frustrations within users, as in (Láng Lili, Pudane Paula Dana, 2019), yet there has still been no detailed research taken on what the consequences such frustrations cause, therefore how it actually impacts the company that’s implementing such deceptive interfaces.
1.2 Problem statement
Since social networks such as Instagram are profit-oriented companies, it is relevant to investigate the impact of such deceptive interfaces on users’ attitudes and behaviour towards the company because the audience is an essential part of the company’s revenue, since a vital part of it comes from advertising on-site, an indication of which can be found in Facebook Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2019 Results. Since dark patterns can negatively impact user experience on the website, as the paper (Láng Lili, Pudane Paula Dana, 2019) suggests, it may result in changing users’ attitude towards the company which may subsequently result in potential issues for the company such as a damaged image, users changing their preference and switching to a competitor’s social media network or even boycotting the company, all of which ultimately impacts the company’s revenue since its very dependant on the amount of daily users of the social network. So the problem here is the unknown extent to which deceptive interfaces can damage a company, be that financially, reputationally or in any other way: the potential impact has to be assessed.
The knowledge gap can be identified by looking at the current state of the art with the research on the topic of deceptive interfaces and “dark patterns”. The paper by
Michael Chromik, Malin Eiband, Sarah Theres Völkel, Daniel Buschek (2019) doesn’t state that there is any potential impact on the company who implements deceptive interfaces, but the feelings of the users such as “Users might be annoyed and irritated by explanations, developing a negative attitude towards them.” and the short-term actions of users that are frustrated with an interface such as “As a consequence, users might dismiss or disable explanations entirely.”
Another recent paper by Jamie Luguri & Lior Jacob Strahilevitz (2019) is investigating the legal part of the issue of Dark Patterns, again, not stating the actual impact for a company that comes from a user directly. Finally, the paper by Jonathan Lazar, Katie Bessiere, Irina Ceaparu, John Robinson, Ben Shneiderman (2003) after researching
upon dark patterns states a conclusion exclusively about users feelings after going through such patterns, in particular, “...high levels of frustration and low rates of success for many typical tasks.”
1.3 Purpose and research questions
Drawing on the problem statement, it is evident that deceptive design is a ubiquitous problem that demands intervention to reduce its negative effects (Conti & Sobiesk, 2010). Further, it is evident that the user experience design of social media plays a key role in the social media business. Consequently, the purpose of this study is to raise the awareness of social media companies about how the usage of deceptive design on the account deletion process can affect social media networks. More specifically, how users think and behave after they have been through the deletion account process.
To be able to fulfill the purpose, it has been split into 3 questions.
To analyze how deceptive design on the account deletion process can affect social media, we first need to analyze the influence of deceptive design in account deletion processes on users. So, it is important to focus on the users’ feelings after they have been through the deceptive account deletion process because it will be the study base for this research. Hence, the study’s first research questions is:
1. How would users feel after they have been through the account deletion process?
We are then to take one more step to analyze the possible attitudes of users based on users’ feelings. Since the usage of social media applications is the primary focus of social media companies it is important to identify if users’ attitudes towards Instagram have changed after the process. Hence, the second research question aims to
measure if the feelings change users’ attitudes to the company.
2. How would deceptive interfaces impact users’ attitudes towards the company?
Last but not least, it is necessary to do the research on users’ potential reactions and whether these reactions bring a negative influence on the social network company. Hence, the last question is:
3. How would the users who have been through the account deletion process affect the Instagram company?
To answer the questions and thereby fulfill the purpose, we are to analyse users’ experience of the account deletion process on the Instagram social network.
1.4 Scope and limitations
The main focus of the paper is the user experience. Since the study mainly
concentrates on the actual impact of social media on users and the consequential impact of users on social media, the study is not concerned about UI design solutions.
Within the time limitations, this study in the field of deceptive design only focuses on the process of account deletion within the social media networks. In particular, the study is to analyse the impact of the deceptive design of account deletion process, however the definition of the deceptive design and the examination of how the deceptive design works are not the purposes of this paper.
1.5 Disposition
Chapter 1 - IntroductionDescribes deceptive interfaces, outlines a current state of research in the area, the problem of deceptive interfaces and the purpose of the research.
Chapter 2 - Methodology
Describes the methods of research that are to be used to answer the research questions, the design of the research, how the data is to be collected and how it ensures that the data is valid and reliable.
Chapter 3 - Theoretical Framework
Describes the theoretical foundation for the study. It describes, compares and evaluates them depending on how they are used in the thesis.
Chapter 4 - Empirical Data
Displays and describes the raw data that has been collected.
Chapter 5 - Analysis
In this chapter the data is analysed according to the methods described in the Methodology chapter.
Chapter 6 - Discussion and Conclusion
The final chapter concludes the results of the study based on all of the above chapters.
2 Methodology
2.1 Link between research questions and method
The first method to be used to answer the research questions is the usability testing. Since we need to obtain the information about users’ opinions on the deceptiveness of an account deletion process, we need to set a task and let users go through that process themselves first. Creating task-based scenarios is an essential function of usability testing methods. (Carol M. Barnum, 2011).
Secondly, in order to further answer our research questions and obtain users’ feelings and thoughts about the process they went through, the interview method is to be used. According to Muthuswamy and Fataneh (2006), ‘Interviews are an appropriate method when there is a need to collect in-depth information on people’s opinions, thoughts, experiences, and feelings. Interviews are useful when the topic of inquiry relates to issues that require complex questioning and considerable probing.’ This allows us to gather specific and detailed users’ thoughts and feelings about the process which we would then analyze and interpret. The users are also to be asked whether or not they consider the design to be unethical and if they are likely to continue using the service or to quit it.
After conducting the interview, we will be able to answer all of our research questions by asking users of the following: how users feel after going through the account
deletion process, how did that particular account deletion process impact their attitude and behavior towards the company, whether they are likely to quit it or take other actions and how they will affect Instagram. The implementation involves a meeting with a participant, who will go through a usability test on our machine (mobile phone and a computer) After the test is finished, the participant is to be interviewed, which is also to be recorded on a dictaphone and analyzed in the further stages of the research.
2.2 Work process
In order to find out the study results, we need to design the research to collect data. To design research, we first need to find suitable approach methods that can lead the research to answering the research questions. The approach method for the study that
is chosen is qualitative research. Within that approach method User Testing and the Interview methods will be used.
After defining the methods, the design of the research process is started: it has firstly been decided on the target groups and the details of the research, such as the task that the participants are to be asked to complete, a detailed task description and a consent form for the participants of the user tests, the questions for interviews with the additional literature support of the questions themselves. We have also thought about how we would approach the potential participants, prepared all the tools required for the user test and an interview and practiced the user-testing process ourselves. Finally, It is also necessary to plan where and when the research is to be conducted.
The planning was not only done for the consistency of the user tests but also for minimizing the possible influential factors in the data obtained.
The next step of the work process is to conduct the research itself and collect the data.
After the data is collected, it is then to be analysed, interviews are to be transcribed and interpreted with the conclusions to be drawn.
2.3 Approach
As was outlined above, the study uses qualitative research methods. The objective of this study is to measure the impact of the deceptive design on account deletion process on Instagram and consequently the impact of users that have encountered such a process on the company that has implemented it. To be more precise, this study analyses what users think they would actually do in a real-life situation if they have gone through such an account deletion process and measures how that would potentially affect the company. “Qualitative research involves verbal description of real-life situations. Quantitative research is often concerned with meanings – questionnaires or surveys are commonly designed to establish how people ‘see’ themselves or others. Qualitative researchers can be interested in behaviour just as much as how people see things” (Silverman David, 2011). So, the qualitative research method is a suitable approach for this study.
Usability testing and the semi-structured interviews are chosen as a part of qualitative research methods. It is necessary to conduct the usability testing since the account deletion process isn’t particularly popular among the users of social media. According
to Edelman (2018), “Forty percent said they have deleted at least one social media account
in the past year because they did not trust the platform to treat personal information properly.”
So even though the concerns about deleting social media accounts rise among the public, it is still expected that not every user has been through such a process before. In order to make sure whether or not the user has been through the account deletion process on Instagram in particular, after the test is conducted there is a specific question in the interview that asks the interviewee if he/she has ever deleted the
account on Instagram. According to Carol M. Barnum (2011), “When I refer to usability testing, I mean the activity that focuses on observing users working with a product, performing tasks that are real and meaningful to them. Although much has changed in the approaches we may take to doing usability testing, even including the possibility of not observing users when conducting remote unmoderated testing, the core definition remains basically unchanged”, in order to collect accurate data about users’ reactions to this particular process, it is necessary to create a task-based scenario and allow the participants to get the real experience. Since the study is to analyze how users feel after completing the whole process and their potential consequent actions, it is unnecessary to conduct the think-out-loud process during the usability testing. Therefore, a semi-structured interview will be conducted after the user test.
The Interview research method is chosen as a main one due to the requirement of the study to collect the in-depth data about users’ feelings, opinions and reactions which is done in order for the research to be valid. ‘Interviews are an appropriate method when there is a need to collect in-depth information on people’s opinions, thoughts, experiences, and feelings. Interviews are useful when the topic of inquiry relates to issues that require complex questioning and considerable probing’ (Muthuswamy and Fataneh, 2006). It is also essential to use the semi-structured interview method for this study since we cannot predict all the possible answers that users will give and
sometimes will need to ask the follow-up questions to be clear with users’ answers. According to Adams, William. (2015), ‘Semi-structured interviews are superbly suited for a number of valuable tasks, particularly when more than a few of the open-ended questions require follow-up queries.’
2.4 Design
2.4.1 Target groupThe report of Smith and Anderson (2018) states that “Social platforms like snapchat and Instagram are especially popular among those ages 18 to 24”. Based on this particular report it has been decided to take this age group alongside the nearby one - 25 to 29, among the members of which, according to the report, Instagram is also popular. By taking not one but two age groups who according to the report are
considered the most frequent users of Instagram, we are able to provide a broader and clearer picture of the research.
The members of the age groups that are chosen are usually university/college
students, therefore we decided to go to Jonkoping University to approach them there. Prior to the user test, we ask people about their ages and their Instagram experience to make sure if they are from the target group after they show interest to participate in this research. The participants are also going to be asked about their age again in the beginning of the interview to officially record the data in the study.
2.4.2 Usability Test
The usability test involves a participant, who is given a smartphone with the Instagram app installed, and asked to attempt an account deletion procedure. After which the participant will be given a laptop for completing the same task on the desktop web version of Instagram. The reason to test a participant in both desktop web interface and mobile app interface is that those are the only two interfaces Instagram is
accessible in. Users are required to find an option to permanently delete an Instagram account. It is unlimited time for users, they are free to quit the test any time if they get frustrated and fail to find the option. After both tests are performed, there will be a short interview held with a participant, where his opinions, feelings and potential actions connected to the account deletion process are going to be discussed, his voice recorded and the recordings then transcribed and analysed.
User Test details:
● The participant is allowed to quit the test whenever he or she feels so, because we account for the cases where he/she might not find the option after several tries and gets frustrated therefore since we want to capture the participant’s feelings and thoughts with interviews we allow to quit whenever he/she feels to as if a real user would quit after trying enough times without a desired outcome.
● There are no hints given in order to not influence the process of the test apart from one: the participant will be informed that the option he/she is supposed to find isn’t the one for temporary account deletion, which is on the surface of a sitemap and easy to find, but a permanent one.
● The usability tests are to be conducted on both mobile and laptop versions. ● The task involves a user being asked to find an option to permanently delete an
account on the Instagram app as well as Instagram desktop web interface. After the task is done, a user is to be asked a few questions about the test he/she participated in via the interview.
2.4.3 Before the test
Before the actual test starts, a participant is to be shown a consent paper, with the necessary information on how the test will be performed, the fact that his voice will be recorded during the interviews and other legal aspects of the test. A participant will be asked to sign the paper before the test to indicate that he agrees for his voice to be recorded and understands all of his rights according to the data we would obtain.
2.4.4 Interview
All the questions in the interview are split into 5 different sections based on the theme of the questions themselves.
The first section is aimed at gathering some basic information. Users will be asked about their age and whether they are Instagram users to double check they are from the right target group and collect official data in record.
Q1. What’s your age?
Q2. Would you consider yourself as a rare, occasional or frequent user for
Instagram?
Secondly, users are to be asked about their experience with instagram and some general questions about the user test. This is done in order to establish some fundamentals which could influence the later interpretation of the interviewee’s
answers such as if a user has ever attempted the account deletion process. The user is then to be asked if the deletion process on the mobile felt similar to the one on the desktop web version. This is required to establish whether the mobile and desktop tests should be performed separately for better accuracy. Also, it has to be established whether the user was successful in the account deletion process. Finally, we need to
measure if there are users who currently have the intention to delete their account and if they do how that would affect their feelings and actions in the later interview
questions.
Q3. Have you ever tried to delete your account on Instagram?
Q4. Did you feel that the deletion process on mobile and desktop were similar? Q5. Were you successful in finding the account deletion option?
Q6. Did you generally have an intention of deleting instagram before the usability
test?
After the required general questions are asked, it’s time to record the actual feelings of the users. The following questions are designed to measure users’ feelings and
attitudes after the process according to the first research question of the study.
Q7. How easy was it for you to go through the deletion process?
Q8. How did you feel during the process?
Q9. Is the process the same as you expected it to be?
The second research question aims to measure users’ attitudes. In Láng’s study
(2019), users were interviewed about their opinions on why the company did deceptive design on the account deletion process and if it’s ethically correct. It’s also necessary to find out if users’ feelings of the account deletion process changed their attitudes toward Instagram after measuring their feelings and opinions. Therefore, another question in the interview is about if users’ attitudes towards the company have changed.
Q10. Why do you think Instagram has such an interface for account deletion? Q11. Did your attitude towards Instagram change after going through this
process? If so, how did it change?
Q12. Do you think it is ethically correct for Instagram to have such an account
deletion process?
Lastly, it is important to study how users who have experienced the deceptive design of deleting accounts affect the company. There are two paths that need to be
measured. Since the primary focus of a social media company is to get more users, users can directly affect the company by deciding if they think the usage of deceptive design on account deletion plays a key role in their continued use of the social
network. Another way is if there are other possible actions that the users will take and would these actions indirectly affect other users.
Q13. From scale 1-5, to what extent would you consider it as a factor when you
decide to delete it? Why?
Q14. What would your actions be on Instagram after going through such a
process?
Maybe you would: Tell a friend about this, leave a bad rating for an app, post on social media about this, contact the company, boycott, choose a competitor, or would you do anything else?
Q15. If you know this deceptive design from friends or online somewhere, would
it change your attitude towards Instagram?
2.5 Data collection
The qualitative data collection method is used in the research. The data collection methods that we used according to qualitative research methods are usability tests and semi-structured interviews. In order to gain a better understanding into how the deceptive design of account deletion process on Instagram affects the Instagram company, usability tests and semi-structured interviews are to be conducted with 20 interviewees from the target group. Twelve interviews are regarded as a qualified sample size for interview research method in data collection because it is the first time when saturation occurred (Guest et al., 2006). Considering the limited time that we have, we decided to raise the interview sample size to 20 to make the study result more accurate. All the usability tests were conducted on the same mobile phone and laptop.
The interviewees that were picked were Instagram users of the age group of 18-29. Since we randomly approached people who had free time to do the research and were from the target group at Jönköping University, the user tests and interviews were conducted in different places at Jönköping University, such as the tables in the lobby and some cubicles. Approaching random people in University should not have a substantial effect on the data bias since account deletion process on Instragram is a general topic that most people would not have a personal preference on. The whole process lasted approximately 15 minutes each, in particular the interview took about 5 minutes. Answers were recorded by voice recorders on the cell phones and all
interviewees signed the consent that they were agreed to have an audio record and their data could be used in this study.
After all the data collection has finished, we transcribed all the interviews recorded. The answers were also summarized into a table that all 13 questions are in x-axis, 20 users were in y-axis and the rest places filled in users’ answers, so that it would be easy to compare and analyze data later.
2.6 Data analysis
Since the qualitative methods of research are used, in order to gather knowledge from the interviews, within the qualitative methods we are using Thematic analysis.
Thematic analysis is used with qualitative data, in particular, interviews. According to Joffe, 2012 - “Verbal interview (or focus group) data or textual newspaper data tend to be at the root of thematic research.”
In order to perform the Thematic analysis the recorded interviews would firstly need to be transcribed. The method of transcribing that we are going to use is Intelligent
verbatim transcription. This particular method of transcription was used to preserve the thoughts and opinions of the participant, but remove the unnecessary parts such as stutters, laughter and other junk words, without compromising on the relevant parts of the speech. This way the readability of the text can be improved which would help for further data analysis. This method was chosen because as a method itself interviews allow to capture individual feelings and thoughts of the interviewees. As specified in the book by Silverman, (2011) “Qualitative interviewing is particularly useful as a research method for accessing individuals’ attitudes and values – things that cannot necessarily be observed or accommodated in a formal questionnaire. Open-ended and flexible questions are likely to get a more considered response than closed questions and therefore provide better access to interviewees’ views, interpretation of events, understandings, experiences and opinions”. The transcribed interviews are then to be coded in order to identify different emotions, thoughts and uncertainties.
2.7 Validity and reliability
In order to ensure the validity of the data to be obtained we are first making sure the data collection will be performed within a set timeframe of 1 week, which is due to the amount of the total participants - 20, therefore it would be suitable for such an amount of participants. Secondly, taking into account the characteristics of the research, the appropriate methods of research and data analysis have been chosen: as mentioned above - Qualitative research methods and thematic analysis.
The sampling method that was chosen is Convenience sampling, where the respondents were chosen based on their availability and the fact that they use the Instagram social network. This particular method was chosen due to time and financial limitations. Even though the participants were picked based on their availability, they were chosen randomly, so there shouldn’t be much bias introduced in the sampling. Account deletion on Instagram is a general topic therefore people should not have their own preference on it, therefore the fact that the participants were chosen randomly based on their availability and willingness should not mean that there is any additional bias introduced into the data.
The interview method was chosen to allow the participant to express more thoughts and emotions than a questionnaire usually allows. Since more information is obtained from a participant, it could be interpreted more accurately, which reduces human error and therefore increases the reliability of the obtained results. Finally, all of the
respondents were not receiving the suggestions nor were pressured for specific answers at any time at the interview. There also were no hints during the user test itself.
3 Theoretical framework
This chapter is about existing literature in the field of deceptive design, social media, social media users and Instagram that can support the research study to achieve the learning outcomes.
The chapter contains 4 main sections. The first section in the chapter is about
establishing the relationship between the research and literature. The second section covers the definition of deceptive design, how deceptive design works and the intention of companies to imply deceptive design. The third section presents an overview of social media and its users. Since the paper uses Instagram as a case, the last section is about the account deletion process on Instagram and how it can be defined as deceptive design.
3.1 Link between research and theory
Based on the overview of social media (3.3.1) and the definition of the deceptive interface (3.2.1), the research environment and methods can be decided: We chose Instagram because it is a popular social network that can represent general social
media and decided to analyze its account deletion progress is due to its deceptive design.
Based on how deceptive design works on users (3.2.2) and the intentions behind the deceptive interface design (3.2.3), we analyze the research questions about how people feel, think and react:
“How would users feel after they have been through the deceptive account deletion process?” “What would be the user’s potential actions after the process? ”
According to users’ purposes of using social media (3.3.2) and users’ attitude about giving up social media (3.3.3), we analyze the research question--- “How would the deceptive design of the account deletion process affect people’s opinions about continuing to use this social media?”
The process of account deletion on Instagram (3.4.1) and the account deletion
process on Instagram as deceptive design (3.4.2) provide the research a study base of deceptive interface design.
3.2 Deceptive Interface
3.2.1 The definition of the deceptive interface
The deceptive interface is considered as a dark pattern design that uses knowledge of human behavior and users’ desires aiming at manipulating users to do some things that are different from their willings. (Gary et al., 2018)
Also, Conti et al. (2010) defined the 11 categories of deceptive design, including Coercion (mandating the user’s compliance), Confusion (providing information that users do not understand), Distraction ( attracting user’s attention away from their current task), Interruption (interrupting the user’s task flow), Exploiting Errors (Taking user errors to facilitate the designer’s goals), Forced Work (increasing work for the user), Manipulating Navigation (Creating information architectures to reach the designer’s goal), Obfuscation (Hiding desired information), Restricting
Functionality(omitting controls that would help user task accomplishment), Trick (misleading users) and Shock (Presenting disturbing content to the user). Similar to Conti’s study, the Dark Patterns website (2020) defined the types of deceptive pattern in 12 categories: Trick Questions, Sneak into Basket, Roach Motel, Privacy Zuckering,
Price Comparison Prevention, Misdirection, Hidden Costs, Bait and Switch, Confirmshaming, Disguised Ads, Forced Continuity and Friend Spam.
In addition, in Adar’s research, they divided the interface design that involved deception into two kinds: benevolent deception and malicious deception. After the research, they found it is hard to define the line between benevolent and malicious deception, so they ended it with that if users prefer the deception design than the normal one, then it is a benevolent deception design (2013).
3.2.2 How deceptive design affects users
According to the paper from Jonathan Lazar et al. (2003), deceptive interfaces give users a frustrating experience in order to reduce the effectiveness of the technology. Similarly, from the case study of Amazon (Láng & Pudane, 2019), they found out “user experience is negatively affected by the account deletion process, mainly due to the level of frustration, injustice and pessimism that users attained during the process.”
Moreover, from another aspect, deceptive interface design uses human psychological characteristics and flips it over to the dark side. For example, an honest interface design uses a strong visual hierarchy to make sure the key content can be read dueby users according to the psychological fact that users don’t read pages but scan them. But if the fact is applied deceptively on the interface design, then interface designers may use the long text and try to hide key information. (Us et al., 2011)
3.2.3 The intentions behind the deceptive interface design
One study that researched deceptive design from the perspective of UX designers and companies found that many interfaces are intended to be deceptive and confusing by designers to stop users’ actions because these actions are opposite from stakeholder goals. (Chivukula et al.,2018)
3.3 Social media
3.3.1 Overview of social media and its users
In Andrew’s study (2015), he analyzed the general situation of the usage of social media in America from 2005 to 2015. Nearly two-thirds of American adults (65%) use
social networking sites in 2015 and there was an obvious rise in the numbers of social media users in the decade. The rise of social media has brought a big impact on people’s lives in many aspects,
such as work and communications patterns. According to the report from Perrin and Anderson, about 70% of Americans are Youtube and Facebook users, while the user amounts of Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat and Twitter are among 40% to 20% (2019).
From 2016 to 2018, only Instagram shows a quick rise and other social media stay similar numbers. Instagram is especially popular among young people 18-24 (Perrin and Anderson, 2019).
3.3.2 The purposes of using social media
According to Beninger’s study (2014), there are three main purposes of using social networks for users: social, leisure and professional. For social use, social media
platforms are considered as useful tools to communicate with friends and family. They can view, share, like… their new posts. For leisure purposes, people like to use social media watching videos, joining different communities for different interests... For professional use, LinkedIn as a good example can often help users to approach and build networks with professional people.
3.3.3 The users’ attitude about giving up social media
Considering the possibility of giving up social media for users, in the report, it says “Some 59% of social media users think it would not be hard to give up social media, with 29% indicating it would not be hard at all. By contrast, 40% say they would indeed find it hard to give up social media – although just 14% think it would be ‘very hard’ to do this.” (Smith and Anderson, 2018).
3.4 Account deletion process on Instagram
3.4.1 The process of account deletion on InstagramFor the mobile application, users need to correctly do 12 steps in order to delete their account: users need to first be on the personal page, then click on the hamburger menu, click on ‘Settings’ in the menu, click on ‘Help’, next click ‘Help Center’ to go to the help center page, after that click on ‘manage your account’, users can find ‘Delete Your Account’ and click on that. After clicking on that, users can see three drop-down
options and choose ‘How can I delete my Instagram account’, inside it users can find a link and redirect you to ‘the Delete Your Account page’. After users fill in both the reason for deleting the account and their passcode, users can finally delete their accounts permanently by clicking on the red button.
For the process on the web version, it is quite similar to that on the mobile application. Users need to first go to the personal page, then scroll down to find the linked item ‘Help’ and the rest steps are exactly the same. In total, users need to take 10 steps.
3.4.2 The account deletion process on Instagram as deceptive design
There are some popular Instagram features: Post new content and story, view the new post and stories of following people and explore more. Users need to take 3 steps to complete the process of posting new content and story on both the website and mobile application. Also, users take at least one step to view posts and stories from the following people. Exploring more posts only takes one step, too. Besides, for some common functions on Instagram:
To register an account on Instagram, it takes three steps, switching different accounts of a user simply takes two steps. To edit a user’s profile, it only takes four steps to complete the process.
Compared with the step numbers of all these popular features and common functions, the steps taken for deleting an account are extremely high. The account deletion is an important function for users on the application which has the login function. For a user-center social media application, it is clear that Instagram aimed to avoid people finding it. An interface which is primarily not designed for the user's interests is considered as a deceptive design. (Chivukula et al.,2018)
In addition, the account deletion process on Instagram can be proved as a deceptive design by another two studies. In the study of Conti et al. (2010), an interface design increase users’ work on purpose can be considered as the ‘Forced Work’ type of deceptive design. Comparing the process of deleting an account with the processes of other common functions, it is obvious that Instagram is trying to increase users’ work. So we believe it is a deceptive design. Also, in the Dark Patterns website (2020), ‘Roach Motel’ is a kind of deceptive design that makes it easy for a user to get in but hard to get out of it. On Instagram, users can take 3 steps to register an account but more than 10 steps to delete the account. Therefore, it is a deceptive design.
4 Empirical data
4.1 Introduction
The data has been collected according to the Convenience sampling method outlined in the Validity and Reliability chapter. The participants were first taking a user test in both mobile and desktop interfaces, then the participants were interviewed.
After the data has been obtained and transcribed, it’s necessary to outline the significant and indicative parts of the interviews as well as a general and objective representation of the gathered data. For a better structure the interview questions were split into three separate parts where each one defines a certain aspect of the
participant’s thoughts and feelings with a category-specific group of questions. It is also worth noting that the transcribed interviews were coded for a better visual and semantic understanding of users’ responses.
4.2 Demographic data
Participant Q1 Age
Q2 What kind of user User1 24 Frequent User2 25 Frequent User3 23 Frequent User4 19 Rare User5 21 Frequent User 6 21 frequent User 7 23 Occasional User 8 27 Frequent User 9 29 Frequent User 10 22 Frequent User 11 29 Frequent User 12 21 Frequent
User 13 26 Occasional User 14 22 Frequent User 15 24 Frequent User 16 21 Frequent User 17 23 Frequent User 18 22 Occasional User 19 20 Occasional User 20 18 Frequent
Before the data is represented, it has to be mentioned that all of the participants of the user tests fit in the target age group that the research was aiming for. 15 among 20 participants fitted in the age group 18-24 and another five participants belonged to the age group 25-29 (question 1). We also double checked their user experience on
Instagram (question 2), all of them were Instagram users. 15 participants defined themselves as frequent users, 4 participants considered themselves as occasional users and only one participant thought she was a rare user of Instagram. The genders of the participants were not split equally, with males being the majority of the
interviewees, although there hasn’t been found much if any difference in the answers of the participants based on gender, therefore there shouldn’t be any additional bias introduced in the research, since as was mentioned in the validity and Reliability section, the Instagram account deletion process is a general topic therefore there shouldn’t be much difference in interviewees’ opinions based purely on gender.
4.3 General user test questions
Participant
Q3 Ever tried to delete it?
Q4 Desktop & mobile similar? ( If not, where are the differences)
Q5 Succeeded to find? Both mobile and desktop
Q6. Have an intention to delete the account?
User1 No Yes No no
User2 Yes No Yes no
User4 No No No no
User5 No
No, little bit different
(Easier on desktop) No no
User 6 Yes Yes No no
User 7 No Yes No no
User 8 No
No (The beginning parts are different)
Mobile Yes,
desktop No Yes
User 9 No yes yes no
User 10 Yes No No Sometimes
User 11 No Yes Yes no
User 12 No Yes No no
User 13 No Yes Yes no
User 14 No Yes
Mobile yes, desktop
no no
User 15 No
No (first steps are
different) Yes Occasionally
User 16 No Yes Yes no
User 17 No Yes No no
User 18 No Yes
Mobile yes, desktop
no no
User 19 No Yes Yes no
User 20 No Yes
Mobile no,desktop
yes no
Before the section where a user is going to be asked about his feelings there is a series of questions that determine what the user's experience actually was during the user test which is important to ask in order to correctly interpret the answers to the questions that will follow after the section.
The first question (question 3) of the question-group was to find out whether or not a user had an experience on account deletion previously. Based on the obtained
responses, 17 out of 20 participants have not gone through the account deletion process on instagram.
Question 4 is about if the processes of account deletion were similar on both mobile and desktop in participants’ opinions received 13 positive answers, 4 negative answers and 3 participants pointed out a slight difference. Two of them mentioned the
difference is the first several steps. Question 5 is about if they have succeeded in the usability testing, 9 participants stated that they weren’t successful in finding the option neither on the desktop interface nor the mobile app interface, 4 participants didn’t find the option in either of interfaces and 7 participants were successful in finding the options. Finally in Question 6, three participants among the 20 stated that they either have an intention to delete their account or are hesitating about it (2 participants).
4.4 Users’ feelings on the account deletion process
Participant
Q7 1-5 how hard
was it Q8 How did it feel
Q9 Expected that? If not, what was the expectation
User1 5 Stupid No
User2 5 Lost and confused No
User3 5
Weird and
confusing No
User4 4 Hard and confusing Yes
User5 5 Confused Yes
User 6 5 Lost Yes
User 7 4
Felt like I didn't
want to do this No
User 8 4 Very frustrating No, much easier
User 9 5 challenged No
User 10 3 About to give up No
User 11 3 Complicated Yes
User 12 4 Struggling No, easier
User 13 4
Tricky and
inconvenient No, easy to find
User 15 5 Sick, hard No
User 16 4 Lost and Frustrated Yes
User 17 4 Lost No
User 18 4 Annoyed Yes
User 19 3 Confusing yes
User 20 4 surprised No
Question 7 is about how hard was the process of finding the account deletion option on a scale from 1 to 5, 7 participants stated a level 5, 10 of them stated a level 4, and 3 stated a level 3.
Then it comes to the question how users felt a variety of responses was received. Participants mentioned feeling frustrated, confused, lost, annoyed, struggling, tired and about to give up, with “confusing” and “lost” being the most common responses. The last question of the question-group asked participants if they expected the process to be the way it turned out to be for them. 12 participants said that the process turned out not to be as they expected, and 8 said that they expected the process to be like that.
4.5 Users’ attitudes and opinions on the account deletion process
Interviewee Q10 Why Instagram does that
Q11 Attitude change? If yes, from .. to...
Q12 Ethically correct?
User1 Don't want to lose their users No Hesitant
User2 Want more users No No
User3 Secure network No Yes
User4 Instagram wants to keep users No No
User5
Keep more accounts, company can
make profit from it No No
User 6 Want people to stay on the platform No No
User 8 Keep more users No No
User 9 Don't want to lose their users Little bit No
User 10 They want people to stay No Yes
User 11 keep users to make profits No Yes
User 12 keep users No No
User 13 Keep more users No No
User 14 Keep more users No Yes
User 15 Keep more users Yes No
User 16 Keep more users No No
User 17 Keep more users No Yes
User 18
Users would not to delete their account and it is unnecessary to put in an
obvious place No Yes
User 19
Create an obstacle for users that want
to delete an account No No
User 20 Keep more users No No
In the study, regarding the question 10 why do they think Instagram has such an interface for account deletion, 18 participants among 20 thought that Instagram is trying to keep more users. Some of them mentioned that Instagram designed the hard account deletion process on purpose, so that some users will just give up. As
participant 19 said 'they just want to create an obstacle for users who want to delete their account’. Also, the participants 5 and 11 believed Instagram can make more profit from keeping more accounts on the platform. Except for the majority opinions, one participant responded it is a secured design in case users accidentally delete their account (participant 3) and one participant believed that Instagram did this design because deleting account is not a popular behavior on Instagram and it is unnecessary to put the account deleting button in a obvious place (participant 18).
When it comes to question 11 if their attitudes towards Instagram company has changed after they have been through the process, the majority responded ‘No, not really’. Some of them thought the reason is using the deceptive design on account deletion process of social media has become a common choice for companies. As
participant 10 said ‘I’m not really surprised that they have set up this process. You know, most of the social network apps arу designed for us to stay there as long as possible’ and participant 20 said ‘because they are not the first ones to use that type of an interface and certainly not the last ones’. But two of the participants had different answers. One thought it changed his attitude towards Instagram because it is such a low behavior for a world-well-known company (participant 15). Another participant considered that it changed his attitudes a little bit (participant 9), he may think to change to another platform, such as Facebook, because it is using a less deceptive design on account deletion function.
Considering question 12 if the account deletion process on Instagram is ethical, the opinions of participants were splitted. Except one participant was so hesitant about it and could not give a certain answer, 13 participants considered it as ethically incorrect, while 6 participants considered it an ethical design. Among the participants who
thought the deceptive design on account deletion process on Instagram is unethical, some of them mentioned the reason that it should be easy if users have the need to delete their accounts. Participant 7 has his own reason that ‘For children it’s certainly unethical. Because being used to something, like if you develop this regular type of approach, it’s really hard to get rid of bad habits.’ For the participants who believed it is ethical, they do not think it is an ethical issue. As participants 14 and 17 said that users still keep the option to delete their accounts.
4.6 The potential user actions and effects
Participant Q13 1-5 consider to quit (why) Q14 Any actions?
Q15 Attitude change if you learned from friends or online
User1 1 No No
User2 1
Tell a friend and
leave a bad rating No
User3 1 Tell a friend No
User4 1 No No
User5
1, enjoy to use the app, the
process is not a big thing Tell friends No
User 6 1, Nothing No
User 8
1, accept that, experience just once and not important
Report the problem
to Ins No
User 9 1 Tell a friend Little bit
User 10 1, just once, so small () No No
User 11 1, totally not affect me Nothing No
User 12 2, not that important
Tell people when they talk about
delete their account No
User 13 1, it is not that important for me Tell friends No
User 14 1, not important Post online No
User 15
2, not important, but still irritated
Tell friends and
Report to Ins No
User 16
1 - Just way too many things I do on Instagram to start caring
about such a little thing Tell a friend No
User 17 1, not mind at all
Tell friends and post
online Kind of affect
User 18 2, not related to my usage Tell friends No
User 19 1 - Benefits outweigh Nothing No
User 20 1, Ins brings too many benefits Tell friends No
When inquiring about the consideration of quitting Instagram due to this deceptive design (question 13), the majority of people do not care about it at all. From the scale 1-5, 17 of 20 participants chose 1 that they would not consider as an important factor if they want to quit Instagram. Two kinds of reasons were mentioned in the interviews. Some people mentioned they would not quit Instagram because it is not important compared with other things on Instagram. Some people also mentioned that the account deletion process is just a one-time thing that would not really be related to their user experience on Instagram. Especially, for the three participants (participant 8, 10,15) who stated that they currently have the intentions to delete their account in interview question 6, all of them mentioned the reason why they do not think this process will be one of their big reasons if they want to quit Instagram. They said the use of deceptive design on account deletion process is not important compared with the reason why they want to quit. Two of them also mentioned it is not important because they will just experience it once among the whole period of using Instagram.
Another three participants who chose 2 in this question, including participant 15 who had the intention to delete the account in the interview, and they talked about the reasons why they chose 2 that they still mind about it or get irritated but it is still not that important as a factor.
Question 14 is about the possible actions that users would take after they have been through the account deletion process, five participants said they would do nothing about that while the other 15 participants have diverse answers. For the participants that chose to do nothing, the majority opinion is that they don't really care about it. Among the participants that would take actions afterwards, 11 participants thought they would tell their friends about it. Some thought ‘it is interesting to know that for their friends (participants 5), some thought they would ‘tell a friend about that, so he knows how to do it in case he needs to’ (participant 3) and some thought they just want to complain about that with friends. Three participants among eleven said they would not only tell friends, but also do other behaviors: posting related information online, leaving a bad rating in the application store, reporting the problem to Instagram. Two participants in total decided to report the problem to Instagram. According to participant 8, “I found a ‘report problem’ button during the process, I would report it. I wouldn’t email them, but if there is a place in the app that can complain about it, I would do that.” Two participants in total decided to post the related information online. ‘I think I will just post a post to complain a little bit. But it will not be from a bad
intention. I don’t know how others will feel about my post’(participant 14). Plus, one participant would leave a bad comment on the application store.
For the last question in the interview (question 15) that would users change attitudes towards Instagram if they are informed about this deceptive design by friends or online somewhere, the answers clearly show a trend. 18 of 20 participants responded that it would not affect their attitudes at all and only 2 participants said ‘maybe a little bit’ (participant 9) and ‘kind of affect my opinions’ (participant 17).
5 Analysis
The method that is to be used in the analysis of the collected data, Thematic Analysis, has been outlined in the Methodology chapter, within which we are also using the inductive approach. ‘This approach aims to generate meanings from the data set collected in order to identify patterns and relationships to build a theory’ (Inductive Approach (Inductive Reasoning) - Research-Methodology, 2020). We believe inductive approach suits our study that the field we are investigating does not have an existing theory and we need to collect data, analyze the pattern and find out a new theory. By using this strategy, the data has been coded in order to be separated into groups.
5.1 How would users feel after they have been through the account
deletion process?
Prior to analysing the actual feelings of the users that questions 7 - 9 are aimed at measuring directly, the questions 3 - 6 have to be analysed, since those are the general context questions that are vital to be considered in order to correctly interpret the following responses of the interviewees. The responses to question 3 which established whether a participant has deleted his/her account on Instagram makes it clear that the majority of participants did not have any experience of account deletion on Instagram, therefore neither their experience during the usability test nor their further answers were affected by previous experience of account deletion. Out of the three participants who have performed an account deletion process on Instagram, two still failed to find out the account deletion option and all three stated that the processes were hard. From question 4 we learned that most participants consider that the
account deletion processes on mobile and desktop interfaces are similar. Half of the participants who stated that the processes were different, pointed out there still were similarities in the processes. Based on the responses above we consider the account deletion processes on desktop and mobile to be similar therefore the validity of users’ opinions should not vary based on either mobile or desktop versions. The interview question 5 is again a context question required to record the results of the usability tests for a correct interpretation of the following answers during the interviews. Almost half of the participants weren't successful in task goal completion in neither mobile nor desktop and almost a quarter was successful in at least one interface. As the study result from Gary et al.: deceptive interface is ‘aiming at manipulating users to do some things that are different from their willings’ (2018). The interview question 6 is aimed at
measuring if there is any impact on the study result depending on whether users currently have an intention to delete their account or not. Three out of 20 participants had the intention to delete their accounts, but considering the answers of those participants to question 13, everyone chose “1” and hasn’t considered the deceptive deletion process as an important factor of quitting Instagram. So the users’ intentions are not expected to bring a negative influence on the study result.
After going through the general context questions, the questions that we need to focus the most on are the questions 7 - 8, which are specifically aimed at measuring the participants’ feelings after going through the account deletion process. While
questions 3 to 6 can give us a bit more context for the actual feelings of a participant. In order to analyse the data it has been coded and the answers of the participants were assigned into groups based on similarities between each other.
There were three groups that the respondents’ answers were assigned into for question 7, which asked the interviewee to state how hard is the account deletion process for him/her on the scale from 1 (easiest) to 5 (hardest). 7 out of 20 respondents stated a “5” as their answer. 10 respondents, the largest share, labelled the hardness level with a “4”. 3 out of 20 respondents stated a “3” as their answer. From the
observed results it’s seen that all of the respondents consider the process to be hard to at least some scale. 82% of the interviewees consider the process to be either hard or very hard. The conclusion that can be done based on this particular data sample is that the account deletion process is not intuitive and user-friendly as of the 20 users that have taken the user-test. Based on the study of Conti et al. (2010), it is clear that the deceptive interface on account deletion process on Instagram belongs to one of the deceptive design categories – ‘Forced work’, which aims to increase the work for users. Also, according to Conti’s study (2020), the account deletion process on
Instagram can be defined as ‘Roach Motel’ among all types of deceptive patterns that it is easy for users to register but hard to get rid of.
When the actual questions about how the interviewees felt during the user-test were asked, the answers varied. The answers are again based on the similarities between each other, separating them into 5 groups in total. The largest group of 7 respondents reported feeling “confused” or “lost” during the process. 6 out of 20 interviewees reported that it felt “hard”, “complicated” “tricky” or “challenging” for them. 4 interviewees reported feeling “frustrated”, “annoyed” or “stupid”. 2 interviewees mentioned being “about to give up”, and one interviewee mentioned feeling
“surprised”. So we can clearly see that the feelings vary. Based on the obtained results we can’t clearly state which emotions are clearly evoking from the particular process, but they certainly vary from being “confused” to “challenged” and in some cases “frustrated”, and with the data we received we can clearly say that 19
respondents out of 20 experienced negative feelings during the account deletion process. In comparison to the study of Jonathan Lazar et al. (2003) and the study of Láng & Pudane (2019), they stated the deceptive design purposefully gives users a frustrating experience in order to reduce the effectiveness of the technology. The results that were received from this particular research also showed that users experience negative feelings such as frustration and confusion.
The final question from the ‘Feelings’ section asked the users if they expect the process to be as it turns out to be. 8 interviewees said that they were expecting the process to be as it was, 12 participants responded that they didn’t expect the process to be like that. It’s worth noting the comments of the participants who said they
expected the process to be as it was. Because almost half of participants expected this process proves the use of deceptive design, the account deletion process is becoming a common choice and users are getting used to it. The next question about the participants’ opinion on the topic is discussed in a subchapter below.
5.2 How would deceptive interfaces impact users’ attitudes towards
the company?
To figure out this research question, we need to focus on the interview questions 10-12. Question 10 is about why Instagram keeps this design on account deletion process in the participant’s opinion. By using an inductive thematic analysis method, it is easy to find out 18 of 20 participants thought Instagram was trying to keep more users. From the study of Chivukula, a good user interface should be designed primarily for users’ interest, but the intention behind the deceptive interface design is to stop the behaviors of users that are against the company interest (2018). The design of account deletion process on Instagram is to stop users’ from their intention of permanently deleting Instagram account in order to protect the company interest that keeps more users stay on Instagram. Therefore, it is an obvious deceptive design done by
Instagram on purpose.
According to question 12, more than half people thought the use of the deceptive design on deleting accounts on Instagram is not ethical and still a small group of
