Dark patterns in UX design and how to avoid them
dodonut.com
dodonut.com
> Dark patterns are not present in user experiences by mistake. They are carefully crafted to appear during a certain moment of the user interaction process.
Despite this, there's a section named How to Avoid Dark Patterns in UX Design. This section doesn't really deliver on its title, as of course the real answer is that you simply don't adopt dark patterns.
Most of the article is a tour of the most common dark patterns. The 10 Dark Patterns in UX Design part is fine, but the and How to Avoid Them part doesn't make much sense.
Source: https://www.whatmatters.com/faqs/okr-meaning-definition-exam...
For example, a dark pattern might increase subscription conversion rate, time spent on a page, and so on -- which can be directly measured and appear in OKRs -- but may also result in people developing negative associations with your brand and gradually avoiding visiting your site in the first place, when they see it in a linked URL.
Think of a website that is relatively free of dark patterns -- maybe McMaster-Carr or something -- and notice how often you might find yourself looking there first. That's good-will, a valuable but ephemeral resource which is be very hard for a company to quantify, and therefore easy and tempting to spend down in pursuit of short-term gains.
As a designer, you have to accept that. If a design you know customers hate has shown a positive effect for the business (and no, they don't re-test these things - it's first past the post my friends), then that design is there to stay. You can try your best to persuade everyone otherwise, but only the law courts can save you.
This, along with the usually quite early realisation that the people you work for couldn't tell a good design if it exploded in their custard, is probably about the worst thing about working as a designer in a commercial context. Just about.
It's actually pretty common to have a holdout group that's basically a long term control group for a series of experiments. This way companies are able to measure long-term impacts, including negative ones.
To be clear, long term effects can be measured, but they typically aren't because it's more complicated, expensive, and capable of disproving hypotheses, blocking promotions.
Beautifully put, thank you!
- Asking you to install app when browsing from mobile (which goes away when you use "Desktop Mode").
- Saying that you have a message in your inbox but not the very message itself.
BTW, Do we have an open source alternative to LinkedIn like there is Mastodon to Twitter? :(
Another teeth-biting favorite is Adobe's "free" online tools (like PDF pages splitter etc.) where you will be able to do everything and once you click "Download", Adobe asks you to create an account to continue. :/
Neal.fun has an entire page of dark patterns in one demo: https://neal.fun/dark-patterns/
I don't think Amazon Prime or New York Times making it hard to cancel subscriptions is putting a dent in their brand image. Big companies can and will get away with it.
People should complain more and there should be more outrage. This is one of very effective way to keep the big companies in line. We are in a society that discourages complaining even if it is completely justified.
A screen that tries to offer me an introductory rate with a big subscribe now button and a small log in link. When I click log in,
A username form only - ie. no password form until I've submitted my username, which means I need to invoke my password manager twice. Then before I see the original article
A fullscreen modal wanting me to upgrade my subscription to get "All of the times" which includes News, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and the Athletic (no pricing info), just a big Upgrade Now button or a small "continue without upgrading" link
before finally allowing me to access the article.
This is such an annoying pattern that was adopted by almost all websites. It almost always breaks password managers (requiring 2 invocations). I guess it "helps" people who can't differentiate between "log in" and "sign up"... at the cost of annoying everyone else.
Yes, it's true, that on the next screen it will tell you how much you saved using Prime and will offer to look at other plans or to continue cancelling. So this screen is sort of a dark pattern, I guess. Even then, privacy-oriented companies like Proton show a similar upsell screen on cancellation.
Overall Prime cancellation is very straightforward, compared to scummy companies that require you to email or call them to cancel membership. Unless the (unreasonable) expectation is that the CANCEL PRIME button should be front and center on every page on amazon.com. And clicking it should immediately cancel the membership without any confirmation.
Edit: the shaming element of the cancellation process was removed by Amazon long time ago.
Unfortunately for us, there is no easy solution, though. I think that the suggested solutions are too lightweight to be convincing, although I agree with the general idea: do your research, get the real competitive advantage. But this is easier said than done, while the dark patterns are easier to use. Like the Dark Force. Not sure the Force wins in real life eventually, but I surely hope so.
I couldn’t even submit the form without ticking the following:
> I would like to receive marketing communications related to Freshworks' business, services, and events. I can unsubscribe from these communications at any time.
The only email I’ve received since has been a fake real sales email with no unsubscribe link.
And I was like - nobody actually likes that though. Nobody likes that, people resent it, it’s basically a way to trick people into giving you permission to send them spam.
Everyone kind of laughed and agreed, but the account supe was like “yeah, but it’s what the client wants, so”
Tech lead was walking past my desk on his way out at the end of the day, and he was like, “the thing about the subscription box? Let’s just ‘forget’ to do it and see if anybody notices.”
Seemed like a good thing to do, so we did - but it came back as a QA ticket, and we deprioritized it, until finally the account guy swung by my desk and was like, “I know we don’t like the checkbox thing, but we do actually need to do it.”
And I was like alright fine I’ll do the checkbox thing
wah-wah.
Then a month or so later, "accidentally" introduce a regression. Oops, the checkbox isn't checked by default any more! Nobody is thinking about it by then, nobody is checking it, and nobody will notice.
Until I was outside of the culture of the company for a bit, I didn't see any issue. Improvement of metrics was all that mattered.
Not that I support any of these patterns, but there’s a reason companies do them. Just telling someone to not do them will not stop companies from doing them.
However, if this type of content was aimed towards grandmas, boomers, etc it could have a huge positive effect. The people most susceptible to dark patterns are those who don’t know better.
As I’ve written in another comment, my mom has needed help to make “her computer work again” after Microsoft has changed her default browser to edge. It happens (seemingly) on every meaningless update.
It should be illegal.
Yes modern UX (or what we just call 'UX') is based on dark patterns and psychological manipulation. Even something as innocent as gamification is manipulation exploiting same thing as gambling. So yes there is reason companies doing them: trapping user.
"Maybe later" is the best example.
No excuse for this other than them refusing to understand.
Which is why, when companies try to apply dark patterns to you, you should bug the fuck out of their support channel.
Slack changed the design again to push features you never use? Ask support how to get the old design back. Be incessant. Act like it's the most sensible possible request and they are just not getting it.
Obligatory Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern
A study about dark pattern usage from my bookmarks: https://webtransparency.cs.princeton.edu/dark-patterns/
The page I have always in my mind when the term comes up: http://darkpattern.org -> redirects to https://www.deceptive.design
Just for fun (it has some gems): https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
From the results: 'I was let go for refusing to deploy a dark pattern' https://www.peachesnstink.com/p/6pJoCuczOj8cxCUQDMlfQv
Not going to lie, this might be more effective than shaming designers.
Step 1. Murder weapons allow to murder people. Murdering is bad.
Step 2. Avoid using murder weapons to murder people.
Next week: Manipulative techniques in psychology and how to avoid manipulating people.
It's one of the most asinine design decisions (of many more) of Macs, and leads to web designers adding equally asinine scroll indicators on websites.
Sometimes, measuring long-term effects might be an option, but that might also not help. I am still in favor of fighting for a good UX, but you should not categorize everybody as a horrible person who builds such crap (even though I want to too) ;-)
OnlyFans is a Dark Pattern via Tools.
It needs a new name. It's not a Dark Pattern if so many firms are employing it successfully for profit.
Obviously the community isn't self policing. Cartels do a better job down in Mexico overall in my opinion. Rather it's clear the incentive in this sector in particular (new tech / apps) only leads to further development and twisting and bending into it becoming normalized somewhat or somehow.
See also: the success of microtransactions and who made money on them
Serious: I think this actually highlights the importance of ethics as a field of study for everyone going into computing/software/information work professionally.
I don’t think any of us want to live in a world where our computers are lying, tricking, deceiving, fooling, shaming, or manipulating us. Yet so many of us ignore the ethical implications of our work to make a quick buck.
It is clear as day to me that these things are wrong. It wasn’t always like that. In college I thought the idea of teaching ethics was stupid, and we should do whatever we can to fuck people over (I wouldn’t have used those terms). I don’t know why I grew out of that, but I did, and I think the world might be better off if the people who knew better intervened earlier in people’s careers.
This is your sign to reflect on how many times you have been an enemy to your fellow man through your work (and if your work scales, an enemy to thousands to billions of people), and start your job search if that number bothers you.