I once tapped on a push notification that said, “You won’t believe what just dropped.” It was vague enough to hook me, sneakers? tech? global news? I was curious. Five seconds later, I was staring at a page advertising a limited time deal on car insurance.
That tiny moment, curiosity flipping into regret, is the cost of clickbait. And it’s everywhere.
In the world of product design, curiosity is a tool. Clickbait is a shortcut. And the line between the two is thinner than we like to admit.
Good design knows how to spark curiosity. It doesn’t scream, it invites.
A well written prompt. A subtle visual teaser. A cleverly placed question in a product tour. These are signals that say, Hey, there’s something interesting here. Want to see for yourself?
When done right, curiosity in design rewards exploration. You click because you’re intrigued, and what you find feels worth your time. There’s a quiet satisfaction in that, a sense that your interest was respected.
That kind of design builds trust. It encourages a deeper relationship. It makes users feel smart, not manipulated.
Clickbait uses the same mechanics, intrigue, ambiguity, urgency, but with a different goal. It doesn’t aim to satisfy your curiosity. It aims to hijack it.
Think: headlines that overpromise, buttons that don’t deliver, or content that’s adjacent (but not actually related) to what you were looking for. You click because something grabbed you, a mystery, a surprise, and end up somewhere you didn’t want to be.
Over time, that experience dulls your curiosity. You start to assume the worst behind every bold headline or alert bubble. Trust thins out. And once it’s gone, it’s hard to win back.
Here’s the tricky part: clickbait works. For a while, anyway. The numbers look good. Engagement spikes. Click through rates soar.
But those metrics rarely tell the whole story. They don’t measure how someone felt after the click. They don’t show how often someone regretted tapping. And they definitely don’t account for long term trust erosion.
Product teams often get stuck here, caught between the need to drive metrics and the desire to create meaningful experiences. It’s easy to lean on tricks when the scoreboard rewards them.
But over time, a product built on cheap curiosity starts to feel thin. Users notice. They may not be able to name what’s off, but they feel it. That shift from interest to skepticism happens quietly, and once it starts, it’s hard to stop.
The best design doesn’t just ask, “How do we get attention?” It asks, “What are we inviting someone into?”
That shift matters. It moves the focus from extraction to relationship. From getting clicks to earning them.
Good curiosity leaves people feeling more connected, more informed, more in control. It respects their time, their intelligence, their intent. And it holds up after the click, because what’s delivered aligns with what was promised.
Rebuilding trust after clickbait isn’t easy. A cleaner UI won’t fix it. Neither will softer language. You have to prove, again and again, that when someone clicks, what they get is honest, relevant, and worth their attention.
Some platforms have started to get this. They’ve pulled back on outrage bait headlines. They’ve redesigned notifications to be clearer. They’ve stopped shoving “trending now” into every corner.
It’s slow work. But it’s worth it. Because when people know your product doesn’t trick them, they’re more likely to come back, not because they were baited, but because they’re genuinely curious.
At its best, design invites. It opens a door to something worthwhile. At its worst, it tricks. And in that moment between spark and click, the user can’t always tell which one it is.
But they remember how it made them feel.
So if you’re building products, writing copy, designing flows, ask yourself what kind of curiosity you’re creating. Is it the kind that earns trust? Or the kind that burns it?
Because the difference is subtle.
But it’s everything.