Design decisions are institutional decisions

Digital products are often discussed as though their behavioural effects are accidental. Yet every interface contains choices. Should the next item begin automatically? Should a notification sound urgent? Should the user see a natural ending? Should privacy be the easy option? Should an emotional reaction be amplified because it increases activity?

These decisions may be made by product teams, but responsibility does not stop there. Senior leadership determines incentives, approves metrics and decides which trade-offs are acceptable. If employees are rewarded only for increasing time spent, return frequency and conversion, the institution has already established a behavioural policy—even if no document uses that name.

The governance question is not whether design influences behaviour. All design does. The question is whether that influence respects the user’s interests or quietly overrides them.

Why attention belongs on the governance agenda

There are at least four institutional reasons. First, attention is connected to wellbeing. Systems designed for constant interruption can contribute to fatigue, fragmented work and unhealthy use. Second, attention is connected to fairness. Personalised nudges may affect vulnerable users differently. Third, attention is connected to trust. Customers eventually recognise when a service is helping them and when it is exploiting them. Fourth, attention is connected to regulation. UK frameworks increasingly require providers to assess how service features and recommender systems can increase risk, particularly for children.

Ofcom’s current guidance under the Online Safety Act identifies recommender systems among the functionalities that can increase children’s exposure to harmful content. It expects risk assessments and safety measures to be reported through appropriate governance and accountability channels. That language is significant: online safety is not to be left only with a technical team. It belongs within institutional oversight.

Five governance failures that create manipulative systems

A responsible attention-governance framework

The Syed Group proposes that institutions examine digital attention through six linked responsibilities.

1. Purpose: define the human outcome the service is meant to support. Engagement is a means, not the mission.
2. Design: identify defaults, nudges, interruptions, recommendations and stopping points that shape behaviour.
3. Evidence: test how different groups actually experience the product, including children and vulnerable users.
4. Authority: assign a senior owner who can stop or change a release when behavioural risks are unacceptable.
5. Transparency: explain the logic of recommendations and provide meaningful user controls.
6. Review: measure wellbeing, complaint, abandonment, trust and unintended use—not only commercial activity.

What should replace “maximum engagement”?

Institutions need better measures. A learning platform should ask whether people understood and completed the lesson. A financial service should ask whether customers made informed decisions. A workplace tool should ask whether it reduced friction rather than multiplying notifications. A news service should ask whether readers gained context, not merely whether outrage produced another click.

This does not require abandoning commercial performance. It requires recognising that durable value depends on consent, usefulness and trust. A customer who feels respected is more valuable than a user who remains because an interface made leaving difficult.

The role of boards and senior leadership

Boards should receive a clear account of how digital products influence behaviour. That account should include the most powerful engagement features, the groups most exposed, the evidence used to assess harm and the controls available to users.

Leadership should also examine incentives. If a team’s success is measured only by attention captured, ethical statements will remain decorative. Governance becomes real when performance systems reward long-term value, transparent choice and reduced harm.

The ICO’s age-appropriate design guidance illustrates the principle. It recommends positive nudges toward wellbeing and privacy, warns against dark nudges used for commercial advantage and calls for testing to ensure children are not steered down a preferred route. The underlying lesson applies beyond children: behavioural influence should be visible, proportionate and answerable.

Responsible design is a trust strategy

Public trust cannot be repaired by communication alone when the operating model continues to contradict the message. If a company claims to value wellbeing while designing for compulsive return, people will eventually understand which value governs the system.

Responsible design creates a stronger institutional identity. It shows that the organisation can pursue growth without confusing dependency with loyalty, interruption with service or captured time with human value.

The institutional conclusion

Human attention has become measurable, tradable and programmable. That makes it a governance issue. The institution must decide whether attention will be treated as something to capture at any cost or something entrusted by the user for a legitimate purpose.

The Syed Group position is clear: technology should help people act with greater capacity, not quietly weaken the conditions of choice. Governance is the mechanism by which that principle moves from aspiration into design.

Syed Raheel Shahzad · سيد راحيل شهزاد