Suppose you are in the market for a new winter coat. You do the research and end up with a great choice from a fashionable imported brand. The coat you purchased is very light and very warm, you love the material and the color, it fits you well. Additionally, the price was very reasonable, and significantly cheaper compared to coats by other brands with similar features. Everyone compliments you on your purchase, which was hassle-free in a well-designed store owned by the brand on the most expensive shopping street in the city. The entire purchase experience has been positive. You feel very good about the brand and congratulate yourself on a good choice.

And then, about a month into winter, the front zipper breaks and you end up walking home in brutal cold, tightening the coat around your chest with your gloveless hand.

As you walk home, you recall that when you were at the store, you thought that the zipper was flimsy. But at the time, you convinced yourself that, surely, the zipper will be fine, it just looks flimsy. Even now, finally thawing in a hot shower, you are thinking that perhaps the broken zipper was somehow your responsibility. Perhaps you pulled it too hard. And so on.

When you take the coat to the store for repair, you are told that they cannot repair the zipper, and because you wore it for over a month, they will be happy to give you a new coat at 50 percent discount. Now you are upset at the company, and at yourself.

The good experience turned sour because the experience has not been consistent throughout--some aspects of the product were great, but quality issues and poor customer service experience overshadowed the positive.

While this chapter is focused entirely on techniques designers use to create experiences, it should not come as a surprise that good user experience depends not only on the product's look and feel, but also on its quality and reliability.

Attractive design is powerful. It can be used explicitly to manipulate customers to purchase a product. And so, experience designers sometimes find themselves faced with ethical dilemmas:

• Is the experience they create honest, or does it serve as "smoke and mirror" to mask a known, fundamental deficiency in the product? For example, early in the history of user experience for software, it was not uncommon to hear dismissive references to design as "eye candy" and "dressing a pig". What these expressions mean is that design can help make the product look good, despite the fact that the product is difficult, deficient, and frustrating to use.

• Is it ethical to design perfect "mousetraps"? By mousetraps, I refer to products that appear to offer compelling user experiences, while collecting detailed data on private users and their behaviors, which is then used or sold by the company for purposes that might eventually harm the user. For example, think about fitness, health, and diet applications that constantly collect and monitor one's physical activity, vitals, and dietary intake. The data is highly personal and intimate, yet it is being collected, analyzed, used, and resold for commercial purposes over which users of such applications have no control.