Dark Patterns: What influence do they have on products?
Written by: David Picarazzi, Product Designer, TribalScale
📫 Subscribe to receive our content here.
💬 Have any questions about our design capabilities? Click here to chat with one of our experts!
Receiving spam emails from a company’s newsletter you accidentally opted into years ago is annoying. What’s worse — trying to unsubscribe from it. Often you’ll find that the button for unsubscribing is buried beneath the footer, styled just the same as the rest of body copy. It just doesn’t seem to “pop”. The company in question has made it so easy to opt in, but not at all to opt out. This is likely one of the reasons your inbox has over 1000 emails. Enter: the Dark Pattern.
How have dark patterns emerged since the dawn of digital products?
The truth is — dark patterns have technically existed forever. They just haven’t existed digitally until the internet became a place to unlock your needs and wants. When you think of a car dealership, an enthusiastic car salesperson may appear in your mind, dressed to perfection in a white dress-shirt and tie. Normally what happens is you see the price of the vehicle online but the invoice says otherwise once you’re done with the salesperson.
Digital products at their core are no different. Many old sites still exist because they are a landscape of advertisements — and clicks mean money. New websites of course, have ads too. On most occasions you can spot these ads but there are times when you can’t and that’s what is called a “disguised ad”. It is disguised because the ad will take on the same colours and typography as the site it’s living on. You’ll most definitely see disguised ads when you’ve tried downloading a picture from a website only to click and be taken to a completely unrelated website.
That’s not to say it only happens at a low level. Take Amazon for example, one of the biggest enterprises in the world. Amazon has built such a reputation that their valuation is deserved. Have you ever tried closing your account on Amazon? You would think it’s as easy as navigating to your profile. Not on Amazon. The experience of closing your account entails you navigating so deep into their information architecture that the buttons at that level look original. It can get so confusing that you may have to speak to a representative via live chat to close your account. It doesn’t matter what lifecycle phase your product is in — startup, growth or enterprise — you may be asked to incorporate these dark patterns.
How do dark patterns tie into product design?
The evolution of a designer has changed along the years. At the core of product design, it’s about creating useful products that solve problems. There are many tenets of problem-solving products, one of the tenets is intuitiveness which boils down to ease of use. The unfortunate truth of digital products is that if you have a product that your customers love and find useful, that can all quickly change when incorporating deceptive dark patterns into your product.
There are numerous types of dark patterns worth pointing out such as:
- Disguised ads
- Hidden costs
- Sneaking an item into a customer’s cart upon checkout that’s hard to distinguish
- Confirmshaming (guilting a user when they try opting out of something)
- Trick questions
And much more.
The problem stems from the double-edged sword that is product design. As product designers, we always want to give our customers the best experience they can possibly have. However, that all changes on a client-by-client basis. Products need revenue to continue to exist and dark patterns deviously exploit that.
Client stakeholders have the power
Since product designers create the experiences, we are partly responsible for them. Product design is a healthy balance of intuitiveness while also supporting business goals. Business means money. Stakeholders may emphasize the need for the odd dark pattern here and there to bring in additional revenue— it is not to say you should “fight back”.
A worthy assumption is that feelings surrounding digital products are amplified. Say you’re planning to book a flight on one website and upon checkout notice travel insurance has automatically been added, leaving that website is easy, it just takes one click. You’ll take your business elsewhere while they’ve just lost a customer. By using dark patterns, you may see an improvement on paper in KPIs — but is it really worth it if it means tarnishing your product’s brand and losing customers in the long run? Putting conversions first by introducing dark patterns will breach the good ethics of design. What needs to happen behind the scenes is a discussion surrounding KPIs and how desperate your product is for attention.
In conclusion
Nir Eyal is the author of a book named “Hooked” that teaches designers how to assess product position and how to handle dark patterns. It all depends on if you, the designer, and/or the people behind the product use it too. Morally, products do or do not improve a user’s life. If there was a character associated with a product, they can be one of four things according to Nir Eyal: Dealer, Peddler, Entertainer and Facilitator. You can think of this spectrum as evil to good. Understanding where your product is as a team can help you make the judgment call on whether or not to incorporate dark patterns. There are some “pure” sites such as the Nielsen Norman Group that exist for good — however, in the reality of consumers and products, you will have to determine what makes sense for your team.
David Picarazzi is a Product Designer at TribalScale, he defends and represents target users by designing according to their needs. Keen on proving the value of UX to stakeholders, he leverages business needs and turns them into tangible solutions. A fun fact about David? He has red hair and black eyebrows.
TribalScale is a global innovation firm that helps enterprises adapt and thrive in the digital era. We transform teams and processes, build best-in-class digital products, and create disruptive startups. Learn more about us on our website. Connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn & Facebook!
