Dark Patterns

Adrián Bolonio

User Interfaces Designed to Trick People

What is a UI Dark Pattern?

"A Dark Pattern is a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills."

Harry Brignull

Bait and Switch

The user sets out to do one thing, but a different, undesirable thing happens instead. This is one of the oldest tricks in the book, and it is very broad in nature – many dark patterns involve some kind of bait & switch.

Bait and Switch

Clicking the cross in the top-right hand corner of the pop-up box now agrees to a scheduled upgrade rather than rejecting it.

Roach Motel

A Roach Motel makes it very easy for a user to get into a certain situation, but then makes it hard for them to get out of it when they realize it is undesirable.

Easy IN - Difficult OUT

Roach Motel

Roach Motel

Roach Motel

Opt-out

Roach Motel

Sneak into Basket

The user attempts to purchase a specific item. However, somewhere in the purchasing journey the site sneaks an additional item into their basket, often through the use of an opt-out radio button or checkbox on a prior page.

Sneak into Basket

Trick Questions

The user is required to respond to a question (typically in the checkout process), which, when glanced upon quickly appears to ask one thing, but if read carefully, asks another thing entirely.

”We don’t read pages. We scan them.“

Steve Krug

Trick Questions: Opt-out

Trick Questions: Opt-out dance

Trick Questions: Opt-out

More Categories of  UI Dark Patterns

  • Hidden Costs

  • Faraway Bill

  • Forced Continuity

  • Friend Spam (games)

  • Road Block (pop-up ads)

Mobile Games

Mobile Games

http://darkpatterns.org/

Harry Brignull

THANKS

Dark Patterns - User Interfaces Designed to Trick People

By Adrián Bolonio

Dark Patterns - User Interfaces Designed to Trick People

Dark Patterns - User Interfaces Designed to Trick People

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