Dark Patterns and the impact of Ethical Design

Published in

NanoGiants

7 min readJul 16, 2021

In this article we will be exploring what ethical design is, the benefits of ethical design for your product and company, as well as how you in your role can contribute to it.

The rise of Dark Patterns

In the past years it has become more common to manipulate users by applying dark patterns. Dark patterns are features in a user interface, designed to trick users into doing things they might not want to do, but which benefit the business goals. It is common practice in e-commerce and social media and is anticipated by most users now. When this practice is used for something as simple and seemingly harmless as a cookie consent form, the users trust is harmed, which in turn causes a huge drop out rate and backlash.

With the German GDPR shift in 2018, websites have had to ask users for consent to be able to use their data. Restricting sites from third-party income, has lead to unethical design practices. How often have you gone onto a new website and were greeted by something like this?

Example of a cookie consent form where the modal gives two options of consent — Example of a cookie consent form using a dark pattern

The dark pattern here being that the primary (more prominent) button is being used for a destructive function. Sadly, this is still a good example. Some websites have gone further by re-directing users to a separate page, to be able to individually deselect the non-necessary cookies. Making it more appealing to just consent to everything.

It is easy as a product developer* to bow to the pressure of business goals, but exactly in times like these (COVID-19) we should be looking out for one another. This starts with taking a stance, educating yourself and your fellow colleagues on ethical design as well as the benefits of it.

*Product developer in this case is everyone that is involved in the process of building a digital product, such as UX/UI Designers, Product Owners, Backend/Frontend Developers, etc.

So, what is Ethical Design?

Ethical Design is a design practice based on the respect of human rights, human efforts and human experience. It is the concept derived from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

*The Ethical Hierarchy of Needs* (original: ind.ie)

Human Rights

The foundation of ethical product design is the respect of human rights. This means the product must respect and protect civil liberties, as well as aim to reduce inequalities.

Human Effort

To reach the next level in the ethical hierarchy, the product must respect human effort by being functional, convenient and reliable.

Human Experience

A product has reached the pinnacle of the hierarchy when it is intuitive and enjoyable for the user to interact with. A product or technology is deemed ethical or “good” if it covers all of these points.

The three sections of the pyramid are often interlinked in a product that is being developed with human centered design (HCD). They are reflected in: usability, sustainability, privacy and user involvement. The framework can be used to evaluate the morality of our work at each stage of the product development.

In short: an ethical product is comprehensive and honest to the user.

The Business Benefits of Ethical Design

The most immediate impact of an ethical product is the heightened loyalty of its users. If the users feel like they are treated fairly and aren’t being hoodwinked. They immediately feel more comfortable using the product. This tends to lead to an excellent NPS and an overall better long term business development.

…companies listed World’s Most Ethical Companies outperform large-cap sector over five years by 14.4% and over three years by 10.5%.
– Being Ethical Has Its Perks: World’s Most Ethical Companies, Industry Week

To paraphrase from the research paper “Ethical Design in the Internet of Things” by Gianmarco Baldini, Maarten Botterman, Ricardo Neisse and Mariachiara Tallacchini, ethical design can bring a number of advantages including but not reduced to:

reducing business risks from a legal perspective
building long standing customer relationships
building a society where trust is freely given by customers, leading to little to no drive to “opt out” of data access

The impact of unethical design is also important to note. In particular in our fast paced digital environment and “cancel culture”. There are countless technology reporters at the ready, microblogging, blogging, writing news features, and likely to pounce on any story that shows negligence or harm. And make it very, very public. It’s not that the blowback will be existential in every case. But corrective measures tend to be more expensive, disruptive, and time-consuming than building an ethical product from the get-go.

What can you do, in your role?

In almost every role in a product development team or as a client, you are in an position to influence the ethics of the product. So let’s go through some of the roles and I’ll explain what they specifically can do in their position to support ethical design:

UX/UI Designers

A UX/UI Designer is responsible for the way the product looks and feels. As a part of most designers daily routine, they “hack” into the thought patterns of the users. When done correctly, it probably results in the success of the product. If the “hacking” is used to make a user addicted to the product, or to have the user “accidentally” give way to all their personal information, the ethical line is crossed.

A UX/UI Designer can support ethical design by becoming aquatinted with dark patterns, to be able to identify them in already existing products or avoid them in future products. If existing dark patterns are found— they should be brought to the attention of the product owner or product manager. Explaining why such patterns are detrimental, not just to the user but to the business, is a useful tactic to make others understand the importance, as well as suggesting ways on how to alleviate the issue.

Developer

A developer is responsible for the way data, as well as what data, gets stored. They may sometimes also have control over which technologies are used for the product. This gives the developer the power to ensure the ethics of a product in a number of ways. Such as using the safest way to store the users data, not allowing data mining or selecting certain open source ethical technologies.

Over the years there have been multiple versions of committing to coding ethics through oaths or code of conducts, such as The Pledge of The Computing Professional. Pledging to such an oath could be a fun bonding activity for a scrum team while sharpening the awareness for this topic.

Product Owner

A product owner is mainly responsible for the product roadmap. They are usually in the most influential position of a product team, where they can set the direction of a product. Even if it is the team’s job to make the product owner aware of trade-offs (business v.s. user) it is incredibly important for them to understand what is ethical design.

The main thing they can do in their role is to make sure the business needs are not placed above the ethics of a product through stakeholder and expectation management. Just having the ethical hierarchy of needs in the back of their mind when discussing a new product or feature could already make the world of difference.

Conclusion

This article is meant to give everyone involved in the development of a product some food for thought. Regardless in which role you find yourself in, it’s important to remind yourself and others of the importance of ethical design. Educate your colleagues and clients! Most don’t realize what a dark pattern is anymore as we are continuously exposed to them, but just because everyone else is doing it, doesn’t mean you should too.

Did you take some new ideas with? I’d love to hear your opinions or how you have integrated ethical design in your company. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or leave a comment :)