Study: Consumers are likely to be susceptible to slick graphic design of trading platforms

Over the past few years, breakthrough developments in blockchain technology combined with the isolating effects of the pandemic to bring an unprecedented number of inexperienced individuals to use defi and cryptocurrency services like Coinbase, Gemini, and OKCoin. — Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

TROY: In today's digital society, online investment trading tools have become commonplace. So are user design elements like flashing graphs, zero commission trading, and notifications on mobile devices. But preliminary findings from a new study out of the Lally School of Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute indicate that new investors may be falling prey to these sophisticated elements of web design, thereby putting their money at risk.

Research conducted by Gaurav Jain, a behavioural economist and assistant professor at Rensselaer, and John Chen, an undergraduate student studying biology in Rensselaer's accelerated B.S./M.D. program, explored how certain graphic designs on decentralised finance (defi) apps can target an investor's inexperience to elicit decisions that are quick and uninformed, using an investor's intuition rather than information.