“It’s ok to deceive people if it’s in their best interests or if they’ve given implicit consent to be deceived as part of a persuasive strategy.” so says Chris Nodder, author of Evil by Design. Thought provoking comments, don’t you think? 😈
It was truly insightful going behind the scenes and getting a better understanding of the sneaky going ons of companies who desire to profit from our ignorance or pure human tendencies to behave in a certain way. Being aware will likely (and hopefully!) make me more careful and mindful!
I have listed the 57 design patterns below and am going to try to add my own examples to them as I ponder upon them in real life and digitally (this is probably going to take a while!) You can also refer to the Evil by Design website for examples which were also mentioned in the book. (Basically, you can go through the whole site without reading the book! 😂 #truestory)
Pride 😎
Being concerned about how you are perceived and assisting users to change & rationalise their opinions
- Provide reasons for people to use. If you expect that users will be conflicted about the product or service you offer, provide them with many reasons they can use to prevent cognitive dissonance and keep their pride intact.
- Dispel doubt by repeating positive messages. Hearing the same positive message several times from different trusted sources can provide the social proof that helps users form a decision.
- Personal messages hit home. Messages aimed directly at the user grab attention. Messages that come from friends and trusted others have even more effect.
- Gain public commitment to a decision. Make a user’s decision public and they will feel more inclined to carry through with the action and defend the decision.
- Change opinions by emphasizing general similarities. People don’t like to change opinions and will ignore counterfactual information. Instead, give them information that shows how similar your desired position is to their current opinion.
- Use images of certification & endorsement. Membership of third party certification schemes is cheap in comparison to the conversions it can produce. Or just make up your own certification, promise, or guarantee.
- Help people complete a set. The compulsion to collect, to be complete, drives people to action. Start them down the path by giving them some initial items in the collection “free”, then show them the empty spaces and the task they need to perform to fill those spaces.
- Pander to people’s desire for order. Capitalize on people’s compulsion to be tidy. Make them “tidy up” by giving you the information you want or completing the tasks you require.
Sloth 😴
Avoiding work or not caring about outcomes; exploit desire lines that require the least minimum user effort
- Path of least resistance. Ensure that your desired end result is on the easiest path through the process. Hide disclaimers in locations away from this path.
- Provide fewer options. The more items, the more likelihood of procrastination.
- Pre-pick your selected option. Prime people so they are open to accepting the choice you highlight.
- Make options hard to find or understand. Place opt-outs out of the way and obfuscate.
- Negative options: Don’t not sign up! Sign people up by default and make it harder for them to un-sign than to continue down your preferred path. Use desire lines to hide the sign-up in plain sight.
Gluttony 🐖
Enticing through rewards & thus requiring reciprocity
- Make customers work for a reward. People put more value on a reward that is not available to everyone.
- Consider a small reward rather than a big one. Consider a small reward rather than a big one. People will be forced to create justifications, which increase the perceived value of the reward.
- Hide the math. People don’t like doing sums, and so if you show them answers rather than the workings, they’ll be inclined to believe you — even if the answers are only partial.
- Show the problems. Mention weaknesses before customers find out. They’ll trust you more.
- Foot-in-the-door. Gain commitment to a small thing in order to convince about a big thing.
- Door-in-the-face. Ask for a big thing, expecting to be turned down. Then ask for a small thing immediately afterwards. Guilt at turning you down makes users more likely to agree to the small thing.
- Present hard decisions only after investment. Ensure that people are hooked before you ask them to give you “valuable” information or perform hard tasks. Better to give something away free than lose the future value.
- The Tom Sawyer effect. Scarcity breeds desire: “In order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.”
- Instil doubt to prevent cancellations. If customers want to cancel, instil doubt by tapping into loss aversion.
- Impatience leads to compliance. Put a time constraint on a task and then offer to help users through it.
Anger 😡
The other side of fear, with a focus
- Use humour to deflect anger. If you mess up in a small way, convey your apology with humor to defuse the situation. However, for bigger issues or if you anticipate an angry response, use a calming and respectful tone instead.
- Avoid overt anger with a slippery slope. Start small, and avoid a backlash by making several small sequential changes rather than one large one. If individual changes are sufficiently inoffensive then users won’t become irate enough to revolt.
- Use metaphysical arguments to beat opponents. When appeals to rational thought fail, side-step logic and use metaphysical constructs in your arguments. Claim to have something that science can’t explain.
- Use anonymity to encourage repressed behaviours. People will do more when they’re anonymous than when they’re identifiable.
- Give people permission. If an authority figure tells people to do something, it removes individual responsibility.
- Scare people (if you have the solution). Make people afraid, then show them how to remove that fear using your product.
Envy 💎
Discontented desire
- Create desirability to promote envy. An object has to be desirable in order for envy to work as a motivating force.
- Create something aspirational. Give your users something to aspire to. Benign envy is a powerful motivator.
- Make people feel ownership before they’ve bought. They will value the item more, increasing their desire to purchase.
- Create status differences to drive behaviour. Without differentiation, there can be no envy.
- Emphasize achievement as a form of status. Give people more status when they achieve certain (company-serving) goals. This trains them to keep coming back for more.
- Encourage payment as an alternative to achievement. Show impatient people a shortcut to improved status via their wallets.
- Let users advertise their status. Encourage users to build and advertise their status within a community.
- Let people feel important. Giving people a little bit of recognition makes them love you more, and do more for you.
Lust 💋
Intense desire & craving
- Say “I love you.” Flattery makes people more responsive to persuasion.
- Be the second best. Game theory and self esteem dictate that in a competitive space, we’ll avoid the top of the pack.
- Frame your message as a question. “Have you considered why so many people are switching to our brand from the competition?”
- Create an in-group. Show customers they belong to your preferred group, and they will take on and defend its traits.
- Give something to get something. People will feel obliged to reciprocate.
- Make something free. And rationality disappears. You can recoup the money elsewhere.
- Sell the intangible value. Reality is costly to change, perception less so.
- Make a request in order to be seen more favourably. The Ben Franklin effect shows that people who have done us a favor see us in a better light.
Greed 💰
Kinda self-explanatory?
- Use a partial reinforcement schedule. You’ll keep people playing for longer.
- Make it into a game. Turn onerous tasks into a game by providing (minimal) rewards for participation.
- Customers should “win” rather than “finish” or “pay”. Tap into the fear of losing out by describing events as competitions rather than as lotteries.
- Further inflate people’s (already overconfident) feelings of skill and mastery. Ease unskilled individuals into a task with some quick wins. Enhancing their feelings of “illusive superiority” will make them more likely to continue when the stakes are higher.
- Make rewards seem due to skill, not luck. Requiring action to get a reward increases the perceived value of the reward.
- Create a walled garden. If you own the infrastructure, ensure that people have little reason to leave, and that they return frequently.
- Own the anchor. Create the anchor point that describes the value of your offering so that you control the terms.
- Move from money to tokens. Tokens can have an arbitrary value. People respond to price points (99c rather than $1), so if you move them to a token-based currency, you can charge 99 tokens even if that equates to $1.50.
- Encourage breakage. If unredeemed tokens have a value in your jurisdiction, profit by requiring purchase of more tokens than are necessary for immediate redemption, but not sufficient to purchase more items.
- Make it expensive. Increasing cost can increase people’s appreciation of a product.
- Show your second-best option first. To create a frame of reference and contrast for the best option.
- Break coherence to justify prices. To justify higher prices, make the new option appear sufficiently different that it shouldn’t be compared to other options.
My Take: Extremely detailed look into dark patterns with ample examples to aid understanding. Did become a bit draggy & repetitive though. If you really have no time, going through the Evil by Design website cover to cover will suffice.
3 books done, 3 more to go but I am looking to stretch my target and go up to 9 books!
Click here for my reviews on Mobilized and Hooked.
More Resources:
- Great list of books to read if you are interested to further your knowledge in consumer behaviour and human psychology.
- Stanford Persuasive Tech Lab Apparently there is a field studying computers as persuasive technologies called Captology. Research into this subject is done at this lab and there are many research papers you can refer to on this site. BJ Fogg heads up the Lab and his models (Fogg 4 Elements to Website Credibility) were referred to in this book as well as Hooked (Fogg Behaviour Model).
- Dark Patterns documents some of the sneaky design patterns used with lots of examples.
