Increasing User Engagement, Ethically

Rarely do I have to think about ethical design responsibilities in my work.

It's not as if I'm designing highly addictive social media apps aimed at children.

For example, last year we launched ScanPayGo: Waitrose's in-store scanning app. It's used by thousands of customers every week and worth millions to the business, but it's purely a utility-based application. You can't get addicted to it, you won't feel compelled to look at it while eating dinner with your partner. You can use it in-store when shopping (if you want to), and forget about it the rest of the time.

Recently however, I have been leading a piece of work with the goal of attracting more users onto our app, more oftern.

I’ve found myself in meetings saying things like:

"How can we get our customers to open our app when they aren’t shopping?"

"How might we give customers a reason to open our app while they're eating breakfast?"

As someone concerned about smart-phone addictions, this does make me a bit uneasy.

Something to think about...