When Design Creates Anxiety
Engagement platforms are meant to support our wellbeing. Yet too often, they unsettle us. A scroll that should offer learning becomes endless and addictive. Notifications flash red, sending signals of danger through our nervous system. Scarcity prompts—“Only 2 remaining!”—turn shopping into stress. Even booking a stay can spiral into pressure, where the fear of missing out outweighs calm judgment. It is what Nielsen Norman Group calls the anxiety-ridden vortex.
These experiences are not about personal weakness. They are the product of systems designed to maximize engagement rather than nurture balance. And if design can create this cycle of anxiety, it can also help us break free from it.
How We Got Here
At its best, engagement platforms enriches life. It saves time, connects us, and expands possibility. But too often, even well-intentioned products arrive burdened with illusive patterns, bias exploitation, and unintended harm.
The challenge is not a lack of talent, but the way many organizations are structured. Too often, designers are brought in after key decisions are made, rather than being included in shaping what a product could be. As Don Norman observes: “When a new product is being developed, almost never is the design team asked to help in defining what the product should be.” Without early involvement, designers may have limited influence, and cultural habits can solidify quickly. Even though designers bring deep insight into user needs, their contributions are not always fully leveraged.
This imbalance allows systems to reward speed and revenue over empathy. Education skips over the biology of behavior. Institutions with low UX maturity keep policies stagnant. And in big tech, investor pressure, conformity bias, and the myth that money solves all problems stall meaningful change.
The Cost of Illusion
User experience design works through mental shortcuts. When applied responsibly, these heuristics simplify complex decisions. When misapplied, they become biases that fuel urgency, fear, and anxiety. Without grounding in psychology, many teams cross this line without realizing it.
This is why I call it illusive design. Unlike “dark patterns”, which suggest deliberate deception, illusive design includes the subtle, systemic ways products distort perception and emotion. Over time, overstimulation erodes motivation, comparison undermines self-worth, and our sense of balance—what scientists call allostasis—breaks down.
Princeton’s research shows how frequently these biases are exploited: anchoring, bandwagon effects, defaults, scarcity, sunk cost fallacies. Hanson and Kysar argue that markets themselves encourage this manipulation. And these dynamics go far beyond interfaces. They are reinforced by leadership choices, algorithmic incentives, and company culture.
The impact is visible everywhere. Chronic stress weakens immune systems. Algorithms exploit social comparison, devastating the mental health of teens. Leaders know their platforms harm users, yet often look away. Dark patterns are dangerous. But illusive design—systemic, normalized, often invisible—is more insidious.
A Different Way Forward
Awareness is the beginning of change. Just as stepping back from overstimulating systems restores balance in the brain’s reward pathways, redesigning technology can restore agency to people. Simple practices—breathwork, reflection, boundary-setting, show us how awareness can shift power back to the individual.
Compassion is key. While empathy helps us understand, compassion moves us to act. Studies show we feel others’ pain in our own sensory cortex. Designers carry the privilege to act on these insights. That responsibility demands that we question which vulnerabilities we might exploit and whether our solutions solve surface symptoms or reach root causes.
It is not enough to stop at empathy maps or user stories. Hidden motives shape behavior. Customers may give agreeable feedback out of social desirability bias, not truth. That is why observation—watching what people do, not just what they say, is so vital. Moving too quickly tempts us to design for ourselves, falling into consensus bias.
As Don Norman notes, “Good designers never start by trying to solve the problem given to them: they start by trying to understand what the real issues are”. This process may frustrate managers who want speed, but it is the only way to reach meaningful solutions.
Returning to Applied Compassion
Research is central to design, but too often underfunded or rushed. Remote work distances us further from observing users in context. We need to return to applied ethnography—studying real behavior in real environments. Only then can we see the patterns that bias our reality.
Compassion also requires humility. Our brains are wired to conserve energy, giving rise to biases and distortions. Recognizing these limits helps us avoid exploiting them in others. Design should not fuel cycles of addiction or comparison but instead strengthen resilience and dignity.
Designing for Trust
Business is not a zero-sum game. Human interaction, whether online or offline, relies on reciprocity. Illusive design thrives on fear, urgency, and exploitation. Ethical design thrives on trust.
By creating tools that respect biology, nurture wellbeing, and foster genuine connection, we can shift the trajectory of our industry. This is especially critical in health and wellness, where technology directly affects how people feel and heal.
The opportunity is clear. We can move beyond the illusion of design toward practices that restore balance. Toward products that do not manipulate, but empower. Toward technology that doesn’t just avoid harm, but actively supports human flourishing.
That is the future worth designing for.
Further Reading
- The Vortex: Why Users Feel Trapped in Their Devices — Nielsen Norman Group
- Don Norman Says the Way We Design Today is Wrong! — YouTube
- How the Mind Works — Steven Pinker
- Design is Dead — Circlo Blog
- Deceptive Design (formerly Dark Patterns) — Harry Brignull
- Dark Patterns at Scale — Mathur, Acar, Friedman, Lucherini, Mayer, Chetty, Narayanan (ACM Paper)
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind — Yuval Noah Harari
- Facebook Whistleblower Testifies at Senate Hearing — NBC News (YouTube)
- Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst — Robert Sapolsky
- The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life — Kevin Simler & Robin Hanson
- The Student’s Guide To Becoming A Successful Startup Founder — YouTube
- First Rule of Usability? Don’t Listen to Users — Jakob Nielsen, NN Group
- Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited — Steve Krug
- You Are Not the User: The False-Consensus Effect — Nielsen Norman Group
- The Design of Everyday Things — Don Norman
- The Cold Start Problem — Andrew Chen
- About Profile Labels — Twitter Help Center
- Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) — W3C
- Social Media — Jonathan Haidt
- Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People — Susan Weinschenk
- Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products — Nir Eyal
- The Molecule of More — Daniel Lieberman & Michael Long
- Grayscale Is a Quick Cure to Smartphone Addiction — Observer
- The Happiness Hypothesis — Jonathan Haidt
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