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