5. Shady

“Straightforward and multi-options rather than luring and single-optioning”

Smartwatch App Design Antipattern

5. Shady

Straightforward and multi-options rather than luring and single-optioning

App creation might be well intended. But that does not mean that, from time to time, some interactions could be hiding or not revealing a bigger intention from the provider, who is trying to privilege, promote or sale by reducing the user's options or forcing him into only one way to proceed. Even when he manages to decline the offer, there is a risk he might feel fooled, lured or deceived by this antipattern.

Key Considerations

Forces to do
Missing options
Frustrating

Apparently Positive

Give the user an alternative option that will give the app a competitive advantage; it may be an option that the app is trying to push or that is not that widely used.

Negative Side

The user may not have another option and may choose to settle with the current alternative. This may cause unexpected reactions on the user that may provoke him to feel "tricked", "fooled", "lured" into doing something that they didn't want to, thus, drawing the line before using the app again.

Examples

Camera Shutter app

With camera preview built in, flash configuration, color filtering in real time and timer adjustment, the app provides enough customization features for the user to start using it. Nevertheless, once the image is taken, it displays an option to save the picture in Facebook and only there. The users wanted to save the recently taken photograph on their phones but without other option, they are lured into choosing the next best option available: sharing in Facebook. The user may feel tricked, fooled or lured into sharing the photo and might decide to stop using the app.

Email app

Email arrives, the users decides to glance over it and once they are done, they might as well just mark is as read so that they don't see it as pending on their phone. Nevertheless, the only option available is to "Archive" the email. They have to "settle" with using the feature "archiving" even though they wanted to "Mark as read".