Evil by Design

Learn how companies make us feel good about doing what they want. Approaching persuasive design from the dark side, this book melds psychology, marketing, and design concepts to show why we’re susceptible to certain persuasive techniques. Packed with examples from every nook and cranny of the web, it provides easily digestible and applicable patterns for putting these design techniques to work. Organized by the seven deadly sins, it includes:

• Pride — use social proof to position your product in line with your visitors’ values
• Sloth — build a path of least resistance that leads users where you want them to go
• Gluttony — escalate customers’ commitment and use loss aversion to keep them there
• Anger — understand the power of metaphysical arguments and anonymity
• Envy — create a culture of status around your product and feed aspirational desires
• Lust — turn desire into commitment by using emotion to defeat rational behavior
• Greed — keep customers engaged by reinforcing the behaviors you desire

Now you too can leverage human fallibility to create powerful persuasive interfaces that people will love to use — but will you use your new knowledge for good or evil? Learn more on the companion website, evilbydesign.info.

Table of Contents

• Pride
• Sloth
• Gluttony
• Anger
• Envy
• Lust
• Greed

About the Author

Chris Nodder is a user researcher and interaction design specialist who got so frustrated by seeing poor examples of persuasive design on web sites that he wrote a book on how to be good at being evil. Evil By Design is for user experience practitioners, developers, and the general public alike. It shows you how companies use persuasive techniques, and how to avoid being persuaded by them. Chris also hosts the evilbydesign.info site, where he invites you to add your own examples of evil interfaces.

Chris is the founder of Chris Nodder Consulting LLC, an agile user experience company that helps large organizations and lean startups build products that users love. He was previously a Director at Nielsen Norman Group and a Senior User Researcher at Microsoft. 

Chris wants to spread the word about User Centered Design. He creates online video training classes for Lynda.com, and writes about agile user experience research and design techniques at QuestionableMethods.com.