What are Dark Patterns in UX Design? Part 2 🎞

What are Dark Patterns in UX Design? Part 2 🎞

Courtesy of @arunpattnaik
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A dark pattern is a user interface carefully crafted to trick users into doing things they might not otherwise do, such as buying insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills 💫
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⁣Normally when you think of «bad design, ” you think of the creator as being sloppy or lazy — but without ill intent.
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Dark patterns, on the other hand, are not mistakes ❌
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They’re carefully crafted with a solid understanding of human psychology, and they do not have the user’s interests in mind 🧠

What is a dark pattern?

A dark pattern is a term used in user experience that presents the user a user interface carefully crafted to trick users into doing things they might not otherwise do.

Misdirection

*Please check part 1 for #1-#5
The design purposefully focuses your attention on one thing in order to distract your attention from another.

Hidden Costs

You get to the last step of the checkout process, only to discover some unexpected charges have appeared, e.g. delivery charges, tax, etc.
This is similar to ‘sneak into basket’ which I explained in Part 1, except that these are unskippable costs hidden until the last moment.

Bait & Switch

You set out to do one thing, but a different, undesirable thing happens instead.

In 2016 Windows decided to switch the “X” button at the top right to mean the opposite of what it would normally mean. The “X” button went from meaning closing the tab to “Yes, I want to upgrade my computer”.

Confirmshaming

The act of guilting the user into opting into something. The option to decline is worded in such a way as to shame the user into compliance.
You can find a lot of examples here: https://confirmshamingetumbhicom/

Disguised Ads

Adverts that are disguised as other kinds of content or navigation, in order to get you to click on them.

Forced Continuity

When your free trial with a service comes to an end and your credit card silently starts getting charged without any warning. In some cases, this is made even worse by making it difficult to cancel the membership.

Friend Spam

The product asks for your email or social media permissions under the pretense it will be used for a desirable outcome (e.g. finding friends), but then spams all your contacts in a message that claims to be from you.

The most famous example of this dark pattern was used by Linkedin, which resulted in them being fined $13 million dollars as part of a class action lawsuit in 2015.

Bonus — tools that may be useful in your designer way:

Flowkit — allows designers to create frighteningly fast user flows within Sketch and Figma.

Leadpages — lets you build beautiful, high-converting websites, unlimited landing pages, pop-up forms you can add to your other websites.

Crello — the simplest online image editor. A simple but powerful tool to create awesome designs for any social media format — posts, covers, graphics, and posters using the best software on the web. It’s easy! A lot of animated designs.

Designmodo — a timesaving tool that helps create websites and email builders designed for developers, designers, marketers, and non-tech users.

The Futur — is an online education platform loaded with content, courses, and tools to help you build better design skills and better creative businesses.

Webflow — all-in-one web design tool that allows users to design, build, and launch responsive websites visually.

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