Addictive Product Design…

Addiction Economy Thought for Today - Addictive product design. A pull-out of the first component of our new Economic Model of Addiction.

Addiction Economy companies embed properties into the product which undermine an individual’s ability to control their consumption beyond the point at which it harms them - the definition of addiction. Such as:

(a) ADDICTIVE INGREDIENTS OR FORMULATIONS:
e.g. nicotine in cigarettes and vapes; alcohol in drinks; sugar in soft drinks and specific formulations and processes in ultra-processed foods.

* Innovation to optimise these addictive properties, such as: Designing new ways to undermine stopping cues and stimulate excessive use, e.g. the evolving design of disposable vapes to stimulate continued unobtrusive use.

* Combinations of known addictive properties eg sweet fruity flavours combined with alcoholic drinks or as the basis for vape flavourings in combination with nicotine.

* Changing traditional formulations of substances to make them more addictive, eg change traditional foods to more addictive foods through super-palatable ultra-processing; increase nicotine content or speed to bloodstream in cigarettes or vapes or chemically redesign ingredients to increase strength and addictive properties, eg cannabis to spice, synthesizing opioids like oxycontin to make fentanyl (100 times stronger than heroin) to Nitazenes (a class of different opioids which can be up to 40 times stronger than Fentanyl).

(b) 'PERSUASIVE DESIGN'
The use of behavioural science & the psychology of addiction to design elements which are known to stimulate a compulsion to use. Eg:

* Vape design using multiple flavours and colours, are introduced to create social dynamics and connection, particularly among young people. These traits encourage trading and sharing flavours, for example, linked to colours or sets of colours, encouraging users to match to clothes, sports teams, accessories, moods, days of the week.

* The use of ‘intermittent variable rewards’ in design of Fixed Odds Betting Terminals, and other forms of digital gambling and slot machines to stimulate excessive use

* Attention validation through the design of content moderation algorithms, together with the use of constant feed refreshes, notifications, likes, streaks and intermittent variable rewards in social media.

( C) FAILURE TO PREVENT
Most of these are known and could be prevented at design stage. Companies ignore societal concerns at all points in the design of the products.

If you want to see more about the others, see full model here:

https://lnkd.in/enuF7_t4