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Most companies doing this are not naive in their design. They want you to come back to the website so you can read it and hopefully be lured into doing somethin

Most companies doing this are not naive in their design. They want you to come back to the website so you can read it and hopefully be lured into doing something else on site while you are there. I agree for the PSD2HTML example it is silly though. Most social networks and dating sites are the biggest offenders as they want you to continue browsing or in some cases, upgrade to pro to read the message. It may not be 'desirable' ui/ux in the endusers view, but when its done like that I suspect the provider has found out "this makes me more money both now and in the long run" I think we could just as easily see a post on HN tomorrow saying "One simple tip to increase your email click rates 2500%"

bpatrianakos 14y ago
You hit the nail on the head. It's getting very annoying to read posts by people who get up on their high horse and proclaim "this is terrible design and I'm shaming companies who do this"... except that's not the case. It's just a mildly annoying thing for them but as far as the sites are concerned this is great design. Rather than go around saying "I proclaim this wrong" we should start saying "I don't like this" because in the end that's really what most people are saying and they come off like dicks when it turns out there's a pretty good reason for the "wrong" thing to be such.
- pifflesnort 14y ago
  It's good design to provide a worse experience to your customers? This is why I've always enjoyed Apple products. They don't perform these kind of ridiculous mental gymnastics to justify doing a worse job for their customers.
  - timr 14y ago
    "It's good design to provide a worse experience to your customers?" Define "worse". People will complain about doing all sorts of things that are better for their long-term interests. If you're building a product that provides greater value to users with greater user engagement, then it's in everyone's best interest to promote user engagement, even if that means upsetting the people who would rather gain the benefits of your product without actually using it. You can't make all of the people happy all of the time.
    - pifflesnort 14y ago
      > Define "worse". People will complain about doing all sorts of things that are better for their long-term interests. It's telling that you're comfortable deciding on your user's behalf what is better for their long-term interests, in a way that just so happens to benefit your perceived interests. > If you're building a product that provides greater value to users with greater user engagement, then it's in everyone's best interest to promote user engagement, even if that means upsetting the people who would rather gain the benefits of your product without actually using it. You can't make all of the people happy all of the time. If you're building a product that provides greater value with greater engagement, then it's in everyone's best interest to drive engagement by giving users value that makes them want to be engaged, rather than playing tricks like annoying them with e-mails that contain no content.
      - stanleydrew 14y ago
        This is quite ironic, since I'm pretty sure Apple is the king of deciding what's in their users' long-term interests in a way that's actually better for their interests. Some examples: removal of the floppy drive from the iMac, removal of the optical drive from the Air, removal of "Save As" from MacOS, removal of Google Maps data from the native iOS maps app, "you're holding it wrong" response to the iPhone's antenna issue. Just because you agree with these decisions or the mental gymnastics required to justify them, doesn't mean they can be ignored.
        pifflesnort 14y ago
        Do you actually believe Apple made those choices to benefit themselves at the cost of their users?
  - cookiecaper 14y ago
    There're plenty of self-interested design decisions in Apple products. Don't be naive.
    - pifflesnort 14y ago
      Clearly I hit a nerve by praising Apple. You can argue that they're doing things contrary to what some user's might want, but I have a hard time seeing where they're doing it for self-interested reasons. As far as I can tell, the people on the ground there genuinely believe what they're doing is what's best for their users. That's quite a bit different from knowingly sacrificing user experience for something you know isn't best for your users. It's a shame that the leading comment on hacker news is that smarmy and user-detrimental business behavior is a good thing. Then again, the audience is as much "startup hustlers" as it is hackers, if not more so.
      - potatolicious 14y ago
        The reality isn't quite so simple. Take the email case for example - while it's mildly annoying to the user to have to click on the link to read the message, it may be proven by data that by doing so they're improving their experience with the product in the long run. Take a dating site as an example - you click on the link to read the message, which causes you to browse more profiles, which causes you to message a few more users - improving your chances of success overall and creating more interactions for other users. For a service whose goal is to get as many people interacting with potential partners as possible, the slight bit of anti-user design serves a greater purpose and improves the end experience not only for you but for the userbase as a whole.
        pifflesnort 14y ago
        > Take a dating site as an example - you click on the link to read the message, which causes you to browse more profiles, which causes you to message a few more users - improving your chances of success overall and creating more interactions for other users. So you don't think users are capable of making that decision on their own? There's no other way to provide a fair exchange of value so that users want to visit the site, other than holding their message(s) hostage?
  - trotsky 14y ago
    That sounds like a rather credulous statement in the face of regularly imposing restrictions in the ios ecosystem that punish or restrict users to damage a competitor. It's difficult to believe the ebook war was pro-customer for example. They clearly usually make decisions in good faith, and generally fuck with the user less often than the competition. Unless it's a core strategic goal in which case they're arguably the worst.
- devcpp 14y ago
  Dark patterns suck. I'll shame companies that do this, regardless of how efficient it is. We should be focusing on selling products, not manipulating clients into buying them. A business that needs this kind of practices is a sloppy one that will collapse before it gets big. It's a waste of time and money on both sides.
jimktrains2 14y ago
In all honesty, though, email is not exactly a secure way to send a message. Now, I'm not disagreeing with you, but there are times when it makes sense.
- fjh 14y ago
  If someone has access to your email, it is almost certainly trivial for them to access your account for the service holding the message.
  - jimktrains2 14y ago
    I'm not arguing with you, but that doesn't dispute it's insecurity though. You don't have to use email to reset a password; there are other methods.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
dredmorbius 14y ago
All of what you've said boils down to one thing: sites and companies doing this put their interests and concerns ahead of yours, utility, and functionality. Which is another reason I make very little use of such services.
- cookiecaper 14y ago
  Is it not in the interest of a service's users for that service to operate at a healthy clip of profitability? Email alerts like this can make a very big difference in clickthrough rates, implying both that users find them useful and that the company would take a significant viewership loss if they stopped the practice.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    Look at what Google did that other portals weren't doing. Yahoo, AltaVista, Excite, Jeeves, etc., kept trying to get stickier and sticker, and reduce bounce rate. Google sought to get increasingly relevant, and increase bounce rate. A user hitting the site and not clicking through to another page was viewed as a success, not a failure. Sure, it's a lost ad impression, but it's a satisfied user. By putting the user experience first, Google completely trounced a "sewn-up" market.
    - cookiecaper 13y ago
      Google won by trouncing the others in search, but Google has expanded into all the same kinds of services that Yahoo, AltaVista, et al were attempting to provide; there is Google Mail, Google News, Google Finance, etc., for the same reasons that Yahoo and others provided this -- because they live and die by page views. Google simply attacked the problem from a more intelligent angle; first, they greatly focused on providing hugely, undoubtedly better search results, which, despite the "niceties" of Yahoo et al, was a game-changing deal. Secondly, they outsourced their ad network much more effectively than everyone else, so that most of the time when you followed a link outside of Google, you'd end up on a page that showed ads from Google anyway, so Google still made money. Thirdly, they started wrapping up as many services as possible under their umbrella, both to increase page views and to increase the intelligence and targeting of their ad delivery. So Google really did end up following the same approach, they just did it in a cleaner, more subtle fashion, and I don't even think that's the main thing that allowed them to excel; the primary reason they killed Yahoo and friends is because their search results were ridiculously superior, so there was no way Yahoo could compete despite its "personalizations". If Yahoo was smart, they would have licensed the tech from Google early on and Google could've been an IP vendor to the extant search engines, licensing out its algorithm. Yahoo's dominance would have remained that way, because once a certain critical mass is reached, the inertia is difficult to overcome unless you have a very serious improvement over your competitor's product. The secondary reason Google killed Yahoo is that they aggressively expanded AdSense so that when you followed a link off Google's site, they were still making money, and the tertiary reason is that they bundled as many services as they could under the Google umbrella, increasing data to mine for ad targeting and increasing ad views, expanding even to your cell phone (that is, they did the "portal" thing). Yahoo et al neglected points 1 and 2 because they thought they had it locked up. Google came out of left field with a far superior search system, and that was really the killer app.
timr 14y ago
This is correct. I've observed dramatic differences in click-through rates when including even a tiny bit of message text in the email notification you send to users. There's not one right answer. What (some) users want isn't always the same as what's good for your business, so you have to be judicious.
- pifflesnort 14y ago
  I can't help but wonder what the long-term business effects are of intentionally damaging your relationships with your customers by wasting their time and choosing to prioritize arbitrary business priorities (eg, e-mail click-through rates) over actual user satisfaction.
  - timr 14y ago
    "I can't help but wonder what the long-term business effects are of intentionally damaging your relationships with your customers by wasting their time and choosing to prioritize arbitrary business priorities (eg, e-mail click-through rates) over actual user satisfaction." Exaggerate much? As I said to your other comment, sometimes it's in everyone's best interest to promote engagement. If you're running a product with a strong social component, it isn't an "arbitrary business priority" to want to get people back to the site. As in all things, good judgment is key.
    - pifflesnort 14y ago
      > As I said to your other comment, sometimes it's in everyone's best interest to promote engagement. If you're running a product with a strong social component, it isn't an "arbitrary business priority" to want to get people back to the site. If you can't get people back to the site by providing value, then it's worth spending time figuring out how to provide that genuine value, rather than trying to force your users into it. As you said, good judgement is key.

bpatrianakos 14y ago

You hit the nail on the head. It's getting very annoying to read posts by people who get up on their high horse and proclaim "this is terrible design and I'm shaming companies who do this"... except that's not the case. It's just a mildly annoying thing for them but as far as the sites are concerned this is great design. Rather than go around saying "I proclaim this wrong" we should start saying "I don't like this" because in the end that's really what most people are saying and they come off like dicks when it turns out there's a pretty good reason for the "wrong" thing to be such.

pifflesnort 14y ago
It's good design to provide a worse experience to your customers? This is why I've always enjoyed Apple products. They don't perform these kind of ridiculous mental gymnastics to justify doing a worse job for their customers.
- timr 14y ago
  "It's good design to provide a worse experience to your customers?" Define "worse". People will complain about doing all sorts of things that are better for their long-term interests. If you're building a product that provides greater value to users with greater user engagement, then it's in everyone's best interest to promote user engagement, even if that means upsetting the people who would rather gain the benefits of your product without actually using it. You can't make all of the people happy all of the time.
  - pifflesnort 14y ago
    > Define "worse". People will complain about doing all sorts of things that are better for their long-term interests. It's telling that you're comfortable deciding on your user's behalf what is better for their long-term interests, in a way that just so happens to benefit your perceived interests. > If you're building a product that provides greater value to users with greater user engagement, then it's in everyone's best interest to promote user engagement, even if that means upsetting the people who would rather gain the benefits of your product without actually using it. You can't make all of the people happy all of the time. If you're building a product that provides greater value with greater engagement, then it's in everyone's best interest to drive engagement by giving users value that makes them want to be engaged, rather than playing tricks like annoying them with e-mails that contain no content.
    - stanleydrew 14y ago
      This is quite ironic, since I'm pretty sure Apple is the king of deciding what's in their users' long-term interests in a way that's actually better for their interests. Some examples: removal of the floppy drive from the iMac, removal of the optical drive from the Air, removal of "Save As" from MacOS, removal of Google Maps data from the native iOS maps app, "you're holding it wrong" response to the iPhone's antenna issue. Just because you agree with these decisions or the mental gymnastics required to justify them, doesn't mean they can be ignored.
      - pifflesnort 14y ago
        Do you actually believe Apple made those choices to benefit themselves at the cost of their users?
- cookiecaper 14y ago
  There're plenty of self-interested design decisions in Apple products. Don't be naive.
  - pifflesnort 14y ago
    Clearly I hit a nerve by praising Apple. You can argue that they're doing things contrary to what some user's might want, but I have a hard time seeing where they're doing it for self-interested reasons. As far as I can tell, the people on the ground there genuinely believe what they're doing is what's best for their users. That's quite a bit different from knowingly sacrificing user experience for something you know isn't best for your users. It's a shame that the leading comment on hacker news is that smarmy and user-detrimental business behavior is a good thing. Then again, the audience is as much "startup hustlers" as it is hackers, if not more so.
    - potatolicious 14y ago
      The reality isn't quite so simple. Take the email case for example - while it's mildly annoying to the user to have to click on the link to read the message, it may be proven by data that by doing so they're improving their experience with the product in the long run. Take a dating site as an example - you click on the link to read the message, which causes you to browse more profiles, which causes you to message a few more users - improving your chances of success overall and creating more interactions for other users. For a service whose goal is to get as many people interacting with potential partners as possible, the slight bit of anti-user design serves a greater purpose and improves the end experience not only for you but for the userbase as a whole.
      - pifflesnort 14y ago
        > Take a dating site as an example - you click on the link to read the message, which causes you to browse more profiles, which causes you to message a few more users - improving your chances of success overall and creating more interactions for other users. So you don't think users are capable of making that decision on their own? There's no other way to provide a fair exchange of value so that users want to visit the site, other than holding their message(s) hostage?
- trotsky 14y ago
  That sounds like a rather credulous statement in the face of regularly imposing restrictions in the ios ecosystem that punish or restrict users to damage a competitor. It's difficult to believe the ebook war was pro-customer for example. They clearly usually make decisions in good faith, and generally fuck with the user less often than the competition. Unless it's a core strategic goal in which case they're arguably the worst.
devcpp 14y ago
Dark patterns suck. I'll shame companies that do this, regardless of how efficient it is. We should be focusing on selling products, not manipulating clients into buying them. A business that needs this kind of practices is a sloppy one that will collapse before it gets big. It's a waste of time and money on both sides.

jimktrains2 14y ago

In all honesty, though, email is not exactly a secure way to send a message. Now, I'm not disagreeing with you, but there are times when it makes sense.

fjh 14y ago
If someone has access to your email, it is almost certainly trivial for them to access your account for the service holding the message.
- jimktrains2 14y ago
  I'm not arguing with you, but that doesn't dispute it's insecurity though. You don't have to use email to reset a password; there are other methods.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

dredmorbius 14y ago

All of what you've said boils down to one thing: sites and companies doing this put their interests and concerns ahead of yours, utility, and functionality. Which is another reason I make very little use of such services.

cookiecaper 14y ago
Is it not in the interest of a service's users for that service to operate at a healthy clip of profitability? Email alerts like this can make a very big difference in clickthrough rates, implying both that users find them useful and that the company would take a significant viewership loss if they stopped the practice.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Look at what Google did that other portals weren't doing. Yahoo, AltaVista, Excite, Jeeves, etc., kept trying to get stickier and sticker, and reduce bounce rate. Google sought to get increasingly relevant, and increase bounce rate. A user hitting the site and not clicking through to another page was viewed as a success, not a failure. Sure, it's a lost ad impression, but it's a satisfied user. By putting the user experience first, Google completely trounced a "sewn-up" market.
  - cookiecaper 13y ago
    Google won by trouncing the others in search, but Google has expanded into all the same kinds of services that Yahoo, AltaVista, et al were attempting to provide; there is Google Mail, Google News, Google Finance, etc., for the same reasons that Yahoo and others provided this -- because they live and die by page views. Google simply attacked the problem from a more intelligent angle; first, they greatly focused on providing hugely, undoubtedly better search results, which, despite the "niceties" of Yahoo et al, was a game-changing deal. Secondly, they outsourced their ad network much more effectively than everyone else, so that most of the time when you followed a link outside of Google, you'd end up on a page that showed ads from Google anyway, so Google still made money. Thirdly, they started wrapping up as many services as possible under their umbrella, both to increase page views and to increase the intelligence and targeting of their ad delivery. So Google really did end up following the same approach, they just did it in a cleaner, more subtle fashion, and I don't even think that's the main thing that allowed them to excel; the primary reason they killed Yahoo and friends is because their search results were ridiculously superior, so there was no way Yahoo could compete despite its "personalizations". If Yahoo was smart, they would have licensed the tech from Google early on and Google could've been an IP vendor to the extant search engines, licensing out its algorithm. Yahoo's dominance would have remained that way, because once a certain critical mass is reached, the inertia is difficult to overcome unless you have a very serious improvement over your competitor's product. The secondary reason Google killed Yahoo is that they aggressively expanded AdSense so that when you followed a link off Google's site, they were still making money, and the tertiary reason is that they bundled as many services as they could under the Google umbrella, increasing data to mine for ad targeting and increasing ad views, expanding even to your cell phone (that is, they did the "portal" thing). Yahoo et al neglected points 1 and 2 because they thought they had it locked up. Google came out of left field with a far superior search system, and that was really the killer app.

timr 14y ago

This is correct. I've observed dramatic differences in click-through rates when including even a tiny bit of message text in the email notification you send to users. There's not one right answer. What (some) users want isn't always the same as what's good for your business, so you have to be judicious.

pifflesnort 14y ago
I can't help but wonder what the long-term business effects are of intentionally damaging your relationships with your customers by wasting their time and choosing to prioritize arbitrary business priorities (eg, e-mail click-through rates) over actual user satisfaction.
- timr 14y ago
  "I can't help but wonder what the long-term business effects are of intentionally damaging your relationships with your customers by wasting their time and choosing to prioritize arbitrary business priorities (eg, e-mail click-through rates) over actual user satisfaction." Exaggerate much? As I said to your other comment, sometimes it's in everyone's best interest to promote engagement. If you're running a product with a strong social component, it isn't an "arbitrary business priority" to want to get people back to the site. As in all things, good judgment is key.
  - pifflesnort 14y ago
    > As I said to your other comment, sometimes it's in everyone's best interest to promote engagement. If you're running a product with a strong social component, it isn't an "arbitrary business priority" to want to get people back to the site. If you can't get people back to the site by providing value, then it's worth spending time figuring out how to provide that genuine value, rather than trying to force your users into it. As you said, good judgement is key.