Designing for Scarcity is Designing for Survivors
By Niki Saenz
How to Reduce Cognitive Load When Designing Digital Tools for Domestic Violence Survivors.
Introduction: What Is “Scarcity”?
Most basically, scarcity is the state of being scarce, or short in supply of something. It has been studied in terms of economics and website design, and importantly, in psychology. In psychological terms, scarcity refers to “how people's minds are less efficient when they feel they lack something—whether it is money, time, calories or even companionship.” Being in a scarcity mindset leaves less “mental processing” for tasks at hand.
Psychological studies of the scarcity mindset originally centered on people living with financial concerns. Early studies found that simply raising monetary concerns for people with lower income erodes cognitive performance—even more than being seriously sleep deprived. More recently, the principle can be extrapolated to other types of scarcity, as well. Those feeling like they are lacking in other necessities, such as time, food, or safety, are also experiencing scarcity that reduces their cognitive capacity. These findings follow common sense. After all, the human cognitive system has limited capacity, and feeling preoccupied with meeting basic needs leaves fewer cognitive resources available for other decisions and actions.
Domestic violence provides an example of a scarcity mindset in regard to safety. Domestic violence affects more than 12 million Americans every year. In fact, among adults in the U.S., 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men have been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime. However, domestic violence spans beyond physical violence and can include “sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, or technological actions… or other patterns of coercive behavior that influence another person within an intimate partner relationship.” Moreover, domestic violence has detrimental impacts on the mental health of survivors. Those who have experienced domestic violence also experience higher rates of mental health disorders such as PTSD, anxiety, depression, and more. Applying the psychology of scarcity, it is likely that many survivors facing immense concerns for their safety, well-being, and mental health will also experience difficulty processing complex information and making informed decisions.
Implications for the Civil Legal Justice System
The psychology of scarcity is reflected in the already-weakened civil legal justice system in the U.S. Unlike in the criminal context, those facing civil legal issues are not afforded the right to legal counsel. As a result, many Americans do not have any or enough legal help for their civil legal needs. The civil justice crisis is even more prevalent for low-income Americans. In 2022, for example, although 74% of low-income households faced at least one civil legal problem, 92% did not have any or enough legal help.
Legal technologies have the potential to help alleviate the civil justice crisis, but only when built, designed, and implemented in a way that is accessible and useful for those who need them. Legal technologies have the ability to “enable users to address their legal issues themselves, educate them about the legal system, and motivate them to pursue their rights and seek positive political change.” However, many legal technologies do not live up to this potential. First, there is an access issue. Only half of people with household incomes of $30,000 or less have access to broadband internet access. Moreover, one-third of low-income Americans do not have a cell phone. If people cannot access digital legal tools, those tools cannot serve their intended purpose in alleviating the civil justice crisis.
A second issue with legal technologies is a usability issue. Even when people recognize that their problem is legal, digital legal tools can impose barriers that make understanding and using the tool difficult. Moreover, people in poverty often do not have the reading-level literacy or computer skills to use legal technologies effectively. Legal concepts can already be complex and difficult to understand, and these challenges are compounded when factoring in the psychology of scarcity.
How Human-Centered Design Can Help
Legal technologies can help alleviate the civil justice crisis and account for the psychology of scarcity with the help of human-centered design. Human-centered design (HCD) is defined as “a problem-solving technique that puts real people at the center of the development process.” At its core, HCD seeks to deeply understand users' needs, behaviors, and experiences to create effective solutions to users’ unique challenges. A simple example is a company hearing feedback that users were frustrated that they were closing their files without saving and losing their work. A human-centered solution became a dialog asking users if they want to save their work before exiting. This is a simple and effective fix to the problem of users exiting or turning off their computers before saving, and therefore losing their work.
When commercial technologies utilize HCD, their designers identify the specific needs of their narrow customer segments and design solutions that meet those needs. When a technology is built for the justice system, its users are really everyone. To address this challenge, it makes sense to focus HCD efforts on segments of people who need the most assistance—this ensures that the target segment can use the tool, and that all users benefit from the accessible design. Therefore, legal technologies should be designed for users that are facing scarcity in some part of their lives. Those looking for legal solutions are already facing a substantial issue in their lives, and may be facing other issues that are limiting their mental bandwidth, as well.
In order to incorporate HCD in legal technologies, therefore, it is important to design with scarcity in mind. Some prominent principles of designing for scarcity include (1) making it easy, (2) creating slack, and (3) promoting positive mindsets. Under the first principle, making it easy, the goal is to reduce the decisions placed upon the user. Some design examples include pre-filling information and providing default choices. Not only does this improve efficiency and reduce errors, but it can also lead to more positive outcomes for users. The second principle, creating slack, intends to account for user mistakes in a graceful way. Some examples include providing timely reminders and actionable feedback mid-way through a process, as well as providing helpful error responses. The third principle, promoting positive mindsets, seeks to create a safe environment that is not stressful or triggering for users. Some examples include using intentional language and inclusive contextual cues to encourage users to persist through lengthy processes.
i4J’s Work
i4J works to incorporate the psychology of scarcity into our projects by understanding how it impacts the civil legal justice system and how it intertwines with HCD. In the fall of 2023, students in the UX4Justice class interviewed domestic violence advocates and other system actors who interface with the protection order process in Nevada to design a domestic violence protection order portal for Nevada. Interview data confirmed that many survivors were engaging with the justice system while experiencing a scarcity mindset. After three rounds of prototyping and testing solutions, the team delivered data-driven recommendations for designing a tool that was more usable and reflective of survivor needs. To learn more about this project, visit A UX Discovery: Nevada’s New Domestic Violence Protection Order Portal.
In the spring of 2024, the i4J team expanded on this project by looking nationwide. In tandem with the National Center for State Courts, i4J is reviewing all 50 states’ processes for filing domestic violence protection orders. Currently, most states only provide protection order forms online in the form of a PDF, which presents technological, access to justice, and scarcity mindset challenges for many. The ultimate goal of this multi-year project is to integrate trauma-informed, usability, accessibility, and inclusive design best practices to provide guidance on how states can best design human-centered protection order portals.
Conclusion
Legal technologies have the ability to help alleviate the civil justice crisis that exists throughout the U.S. However, in order for these technologies to be accessible and usable for those who need them most, it is critical to understand the mindset and the potential scarcity that users are facing. Understanding the challenges that users face and how they impact users’ mental capacity is key to implementing human-centered design, which in turn can help make legal technologies usable, understandable, and helpful to all.