The dark arts of UX design, or why we can’t wait for the end of cookies as we know them
Privacy and data sovereignty are becoming an ever-greater priority for internet users. Consequently, internet giants are largely ditching cookies. Finally, because agreeing or disagreeing to tracking on websites is a pain, using all sorts of nasty UX tricks. But what comes next?
A website visit in 2022 feels like an endless struggle through thick shrubbery. The easiest way through cookie settings, pop-up ads, and push message requests, however, inevitably leads to third-party providers tracking lots of data. If you don’t want that, you have to click through (often intentionally) confusing pages or set checkmarks in almost invisible places. If you can’t get enough of that feeling, this website allows you to experience maximum consent horror.
Let’s face it, cookies are like terms and conditions. We often agree to something without knowing exactly what it means.
Patterns of UX trickery
The fact that people so often agree to share their data is also due to the dark arts of UX design, or dark patterns as UX expert Harry Brignull calls them. He breaks down the tricks of website designers into twelve different patterns. One example? “Confirmshaming” — one of the more obvious tricks. The options presented are worded in such a way that the user is virtually urged to make the supposedly right decision. “Join Amazon Prime” or “No thanks, I don’t want Unlimited One-Day Delivery.” Your choice.
From “Hidden Costs” to “Disguised Ads” or “Misdirection”, Brignull lists numerous examples that don’t even include the clumsiest attempts. Like when the button for tracking consent is colored green, while rejection is displayed in red or even grayed out (remember the power of colors?), or the default setting of cookie options accepts full consent.
Many people do not want to be tracked
A business worth billions of dollars rests on such small checkmarks and involuntary voluntary consents, but it is getting under increasing pressure. Privacy on the internet is becoming increasingly important to people. When Apple gave a simple opt-out option for tracking by third-party providers in May 2021 with iOS version 14.5 in the USA, 96 percent of Apple users decided against sharing their data for advertising purposes.
Only a short time later, Google announced that it would disable third-party tracking in the Chrome browser, and Facebook also said it was working on a new solution to play ads without accessing users’ data. It was the beginning of the end of a small file that stores information about a visited website. The cookie.
How solving a problem with cookies led to a new problem
The cookie was developed back in 1994 by Lou Montulli, the 9th employee of a company that later became known as Netscape Communications. He solved the problem that every website visit started from scratch. In doing so, he unknowingly created a new problem — the loss of privacy on the Internet, as this New York Times article sums up as early as 2001. But more than 20 years later, something is changing. Or is it?
Google has pushed back the announced end of cookies to continue working on a successor technology after their first solution called Federated Learning of Cohors (FLoC) was discarded. Now, the Topics API is supposed to manage the balancing act of guaranteeing users privacy and at the same time continuing to flush a lot of advertising money into Google’s coffers. And even a third-party tracking ban will not stop Google from continuing to track users, as experts predict.
The end has no end
However, the problem does not only concern Google, but it is more fundamental than that: Who owns data? Who earns money from it? Most of the digital ecosystem is dominated by a few large companies that make a lot of money from their users’ data. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation imposes new requirements on the processing of personal data, yet the end of tracking seems to have no real end, does it? Even if we no longer have to click away misleading cookie banners in the future, we still don’t know exactly what advertising companies do with our data.
Can informational self-determination ever be achieved with operating systems built on other values? Wouldn’t it take a new system designed for a different understanding of data protection? The end of the cookie will come, finally, for the sake of website UX, but the fundamental problem remains in the system.
Good design should make people’s lives easier — at Incari we are convinced of this. We are a Berlin-based software provider that creates the HMI development platform Incari Studio. We create the required tools and technologies necessary for developing future-based HMI systems in various industries. InterFaces is a platform to explore what such systems can or will look like at some point in the future. Follow us on Twitter: Incari_HMI, Follow us on Instagram: Incari_HMI, Follow us on LinkedIn: Incari HMI Development.
