January 3, 2005: I wanted to point out a practice I'm calling "Behavior Modification UI" (please suggest a better term) where the interface of an application is intentionally made difficult to discourage specific behavior. An obvious example is iTunes, where it is possible to convert secure AAC files to MP3s in order to circumvent their file-sharing limitations, but it is made extremely cumbersome to do so (you have to burn the AAC files to a CD, then rip them back to iTunes as MP3s).

Similarly, I've worked on several projects where someone suggested making something "hard to do" because the company didn't want people to do it but recognized that the actual people using the product would want to do so.

I just wanted to point this phenomenon out and suggest that designers do everything they can to avoid it.

UPDATE: Eric rightfully wrote to admonish me, pointing out that it's not constructive to dismiss this practice entirely when there are cases where it may be useful. He also sent a link to this excellent page on "Soft Security." I still believe that behavior mod UI should generally be a last resort because it tends to punish the innocent many without stopping the guilty few (I mean, who out there hasn't copied files off an iPod?). But Eric's right. Maybe the correct approach is just to question the practice when it's suggested, asking yourself whether there's a better way to discourage the behavior than by making it difficult to do in the UI. Many of the techniques on the above Soft Security page, for example, use the power of the collective to modify behavior by making it visible or allowing it within a safe space. I think it's not the idea of using UI to modify behavior that bothers me (because all UI does that), but the idea of making it "physically" harder.