In September 2025, Amazon agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle a lawsuit alleging that its design manipulated millions of people into paying for subscriptions (e.g., Prime) and purposely made it hard to cancel (despite internal employees flagging this).
Manipulative design choices can lead to significant financial and reputational damage. Whether organizations use it intentionally (e.g., to boost revenues in the short term) or unintentionally, coercive and deceptive design frustrates customers and erodes trust in the brand.
This holiday season, focus on delivering a great customer experience, and sales (and ensuing trust and loyalty) will follow. Your mission now: Ensure that your digital experiences are free of coercive and deceptive patterns such as hidden costs, difficult cancellations, confirm-shaming, fake countdown timers and low-stock messages, and many more. We know you only have a matter of weeks left this holiday season to identify and eliminate these patterns, but you’ll improve shopping experiences by answering these questions as you review each experience:
1. Are we forcing customers to sign up for products or services that they don’t need? We’re seeing more examples of companies asking customers to download an app or sign up for a service to earn rewards in return (see the figure below). These behaviors are often the result of internal incentives and metrics in a company, and even though they yield short-term gains (e.g., boosting app download numbers), in the long term, they leave customers with products or services that they don’t need and harm the company financially, as customers are unlikely to repurchase or recommend the brand.
A retail site incentivizes adding its shopping extension while making declining the offer less appealing.
2. Are we pressuring customers to act? Countdown timers, low-stock warnings, and phrases such as “Act now!” create a sense of urgency for the customer to act — and are particularly manipulative when those warnings are fake. Stop and ask if creating a sense of urgency actually benefits the customer or if it is solely aimed at driving short-term gains by pressuring the customer to take action. If it’s the latter, don’t do it.
3. Are we shaming customers for their choices? How many times have you declined buying additional protection when booking a flight and been forced to select a button that says “No, I don’t want my travel to be protected.” Or think of a time you declined giving your email address for a discount, selecting a button that says “No thanks, I want to pay the full price.” Confirm-shaming — pressuring the user to pick a certain option by making the alternative sound undesirable or shameful — is a common type of manipulation (see the figure above). Eliminate these patterns by reviewing whether the choices you offer to customers are presented as factual and without judgment.
This is not an exhaustive list of questions, but they are key to help eliminate the most common types of manipulative design from your digital experience this holiday season. In the long term, avoid negative consequences by adopting responsible design methods and building systems to listen and act when employees raise red flags about experiences.
Get In Touch
If you have questions about how to avoid manipulative design and practice responsible design, you can set up a conversation with us. You can also follow or connect with us (Gina and Senem) on LinkedIn.
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