How Companies Manipulate You With “Dark UX” Every Day
Have you ever tried:
- To log out of a website, but can’t find out…how?
- Unsubscribe from an email feed?
- Turn down a special deal?
- Find the policy of a product or service?
Enter “Dark UX”, the Evil, Yet Common Method of Persuasion
A great article that brought this idea to the mainstream was featured at The Verge. It states:
Harry Brignull is a London, UK-based independent user experience designer with a PhD in cognitive science. He is also the founder of Dark Patterns, which is dedicated to, in his words, “naming and shaming websites that use deceptive user interfaces.”
These “Dark Patterns” or “Dark UX’s” are flows in a product or service that implicitly trick you. It’s very common to shame companies that do this, however it has become such common practice that you can see this being done by Google, Amazon, Apple, and nearly every major for-profit company, well, because it can generate profit.
Why is this a Thing?
People love to take the “path of least resistance”. If it takes 10 steps to logout, but 1 step to log in, of course people will stay more engaged with your app. Wikipedia says it pretty clearly,
In physics, the “path of least resistance” is a heuristic from folk physics that can sometimes, in very simple situations, describe approximately what happens […] The path of least resistance is also used to describe certain human behaviors, although with much less specificity than in the strict physical sense. In these cases, resistance is often used as a metaphor for personal effort or confrontation; a person taking the path of least resistance avoids these. In library science and technical writing, information is ideally arranged for users according to the principle of least effort, or the “path of least resistance”. Recursive navigation systems are an example of this.
The principle, “path of least resistance” was in the book by George Kingsley Zipf titled Human Behaviour and the Principle of Least Effort: An Introduction to Human Ecology, published in 1949. He theorised that the distribution of word use was due to tendency to communicate efficiently with least effort and this theory is known as Zipf’s Law (but this is a connection for another day).
Instead of funnelling our minds and time and energy into building products that are so useful that users will want to return to our sites, we’re wearing people down until they say “oh well” and stay subscribed. — SARAH DRASNER, Spooky UX Patterns
Use these “dark patterns” at your own peril from a PR standpoint, but keep in mind that both companies and users are quickly adapting to this UX battle.
Making it Visually Hard to “Offboard”
Companies make it very difficult to turn down offers, log out, unsubscribe, and find unfavourable
Try to find the unsubscribe link in the following pictures (I highlighted them to make it easy):
Hungry for more? Try to find the unsubscribe button here in these countless examples: http://spottheunsubscribe.tumblr.com/
Logging out has also become a chore. I.E., take Quora for instance. Finding the log out button much harder than finding the “Answer” button for instance:
Another example is Airbnb making it extremely hard to understand the full cost of a booking. After looking deep in the FAQs, I found:
What are guest service fees?
To help cover the costs of running Airbnb, we charge guests a service fee every time a reservation is confirmed. The amount of this service fee varies and is based on a percentage of the reservation subtotal (before fees and taxes).
The exact amount of the service fee is displayed before guests confirm a booking. Guest service fees are typically 6–12% but can be higher or lower depending on the specifics of the reservation. The higher the subtotal, the lower the percentage so you can save money when booking large reservations.
We also charge hosts a host service fee to cover the cost of processing payments.
Find the service fee
After entering the exact dates and number of guests for a reservation, you’ll see the service fee included as part of the booking details.
The exact amount of the service fee is also located on:
The checkout page before submitting a reservation request
Cheaper Options Harder to find than Expensive Options
Have you ever pumped gas and wondered why the most expensive type of gas is closest to the pump?
Harry Brignull of The Verge stated:
At present, Quora doesn’t mess around with opt-ins or questions of any kind. They just opt you in as part of the terms of service. This is what you see when you’re registered — if you take the time to go to the email notifications page.
Currently, there are 35 email notifications. You’re automatically opted in to most of them.
Another example is when you download software and you have to do a “custom install” just to avoid downloading shovelware to your computer. They have money to gain by promoting their affiliates with an “express install” but is as a user, you will download things you didn’t want. They did the job in making it easier to click the option that makes them the most money, but puts you at a disadvantage by you, having to click on an intimidating “custom install” option just to avoid downloading shovelware.
As Sitepoint pointed out:
The problem? These companies make unsubscribing as difficult as possible. You’re not given any reminders your trial is about to expire, and if you do manage to remember, you’re often forced through a confusing, frustrating cancellation process.
This pattern is often seen as trammel netting. Trammel nets are a specific kind of fishing net that has two layers of netting. The fish can get stuck in the first layer, second layer, or between the two. Due to their aggressive nature, they’re widely panned and banned throughout many commercial fishing settings.
The equivalence of this is automatically making users opt-in for services without telling them and using the terms of service as a means to hide this.
Unfortunately, this is a common practice in web and app UI’s.
Here’s a great video on the world of Dark UX to close off:
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Author: Natu Myers (Website: Natumyers.com)
Natu is a cryptocurrency investor and software engineer who is experienced in building large scale applications. He built Innovator.Supply, an HR recruiting software for VR, AR, and chatbot enthusiasts. This was followed his other service, Hypetroop Market. He has a fitness page on Instagram. Stemming from his time at Queen’s, he was a defensive lineman on the Queen’s Gaels football team. Being a multipotentialite, he finished a business incubator program after graduating, launched his own album on iTunes, and he stays up to date industry-penetrating software startups and crytocurrency investment methods while gaining IT experience.
