Deception in Design

This post was originally written for an assignment under a different name.

Lying is wrong. Intentionally or negligently deceiving people without their consent is wrong even when one avoids lying per se. So deceptive design is morally wrong. The severity of this offense scales with the potential to harm the person being deceived. So fibbing about the used car you're about to sell is worse than designing a “close door” elevator button that doesn't actually do anything, even if both are deceptive. This may seem overly broad, but we should be careful about how we define deception. It is possible to confuse the willful influence of perception with deception, but these are not the same thing. Consider the persuasive factor of the design of a jar of peanuts. Suppose that people are more inclined to purchase a tall jar of peanuts than a wide squat one due to the perception that the tall jar contains more peanuts, even though the jars hold the same quantity. Is this deception? It is not. This is a non-deceptive influence of perception. The tall jar does not suggest that it holds any more peanuts than it actually does. Its design simply does a better job at advertising and advocating for the product inside, a particular quantity of peanuts.

Alternatively, suppose a peanut jar was designed with a hollow cavity so that the jar appeared to hold more volume than it actually did. This would be deception. An objection to this reasoning may claim that this design does not suggest that there is no hollow cavity and is thus analogous to the tall jar. But this isn't true. This jar willfully invites customers to assume that its full volume is occupied by peanuts even if its labeling does not explicitly suggest that this is the case. The jar suggests that it holds more peanuts than it actually does. This is wrong.

We can apply this distinction pretty broadly with good results. Is it deception to describe a mediocre product as “great” in the labeling? No. This is an opinion and does not suggest anything factually false about the product explicitly or implicitly. This is an instance of benign influence of perception. Is it deception to cut an exciting trailer for a boring movie? No. This is another example of the perception of a product. Consumers, with the possible exception of young children, understand that advertising will portray a positive perception of a product to influence the consumer into considering that he, too, may experience that same perception. Is it deception to cut a movie trailer in a way to suggest that it has an entirely different plot and premise, possibly recording new scenes for the trailer with no intention of including them in the movie, to convince audiences that this is a movie they would like to see? Yes. This willfully suggests false facts about the product to its consumers.

Maybe some will still consider this perspective excessively strict. That's okay. Y'all can keep your useless elevator buttons for now.