Dark Patterns in UI/UX Design
mobilejazz.com
mobilejazz.com
Weird displays for exotic fluids are another good example...we have one where a customer turns a wheel to "feel" the viscosity of a motor oil versus a high-end brand. It doesnt translate into any substantial performance gains for the car frankly, as the engine is operating hundreds of degrees hotter than our shop, but the customer applies this experience to the car for some reason.
we also use an interactive display for steering fluid to show customers a performance fluid, but nobody stops to consider most steering systems these days are hydraulically assisted.
I've never considered that the tires in the waiting area were basically air "fresheners".
The only thing missing is the intention, which isn’t even specified in the story, so I think we lack the necessary information to say for sure.
For example, let’s say a graphics designer were asked by their boss to make a sign to inform visitors that the elevator was broken. Then, let’s say the graphics designer discovered the company was holding interviews that day for new graphics designers who would replace them. If the sign were made as such to make those applicants late for their interview, we would be looking at a case of a dark pattern. If it were made as decoration, we wouldn’t be.
From there, intuition of how users interact with UX builds.
The author is relating a personal story that illustrates the building of interactive components, the process of understanding users, and the differing motivations behind design.
The elevator story is not an example of a dark pattern, but it illustrates the problem that comes with developing an awareness of how people think and interact with an interface. People can't have hyperfocus all the time, see through all intentions, be all knowing and all aware of every circumstance and event. Sometimes people are on autopilot, sometimes people take advantage of that.
A lot of digital services today continue to be developed with this aesthetic in mind.
It’s confusing, because he literally says it’s a dark pattern. But it was really just better design for that particular problem.
It's like saying effective contrast is a dark pattern.
The long sentence likely would not have been ignored if it covered the elevator buttons, forcing you to recognize that the buttons are no longer visible where you expected them to be.
Temporary signage that fits into the environment will appear permanent, and thereby ignored by the public.
This is why graphic designers use the terms like "effective" rather than aesthetic terminology to describe their work. Sometimes ugly designs are the most effective.
I assume the janitor sign worked because people subconsciously will ignore things that have the appearance of being permanent while operating in the context of something familiar... the janitor sign appearance implied a recent and temporary change.
Conversely if the person has never been to that building/elevator before they would probably be equally likely to notice either sign.
The longer note looked like a notice, which people tend to ignore — particularly if they're in a rush or frustrated.
This drives me insane. I was recently about to purchase something from theMysterious Package Company, which is kind of a "story by mail" thing. They send you notes and letters and trinkets and such, which come together to tell a story.
The product I was interested in was like $85, which is steep but I really like the property it's based on, and I figured that since these were physical items that had to be physically mailed, the cost was probably justified.
Until I got to the last page and they threw in an additional $25 shipping fee. Fuck that noise. And they kept spamming me with "you forgot to finish checking out!" emails for the next week.
if you decided to assume that shipping would be free despite no evidence to suggest it would be, that's on you.
2. That doesn't contradict anything I said above.
The email thing is covered by the GDPR, but was covered by UK law already. John Lewis (a UK retailer) lost a test case for exactly what you described:
https://news.sky.com/story/spammer-to-pay-damages-after-cour...
When I worked at Zynga, I was very confused by their farming mechanics. Good UX meant users shouldn't need to wait hours to proceed with their game. But that annoying wait period created an itch that drove micro-transactions.
Was that a dark pattern? No. There was a decent understanding between user and service how it worked.
The distinction of dark pattern is when that understanding is broken by tricking the user into an unexpected obligation.
A slightly less, but more overtly, evil version of this is hiding everything behind an opaque div that is only cleared when JS on their domains is enabled. Reddit's new design is a prime example of this.
This behavior drives me nuts, and I leave anywhere I see it and I can. It is just so hostile and obnoxious. I don't mind people wanting money for things, but this sort of thing immediately gives me the feeling of interacting with an adversary, that I need to consider implications and watch for double-crosses.
It is really weird to me that people design their stores to feel untrustworthy and sneaky, but I guess it works well enough to keep them at it.
If so, then this seems the place to start the discussion. Until real loss happens, dark patterns will persist.
The video at the top of darkpatterns.org, linked by the article, discusses the LinkedIn lawsuit concerning linking to users' contact lists.¹
So they say "register a new account for my site and get $10", then trick you into dismissing the $10 award as a pop-up.
It greatly depends on a user type, it might be true for tech users but average Joe will read the pop up almost everytime.
A quick google brought me to this aritcle (https://sumo.com/stories/pop-up-statistics) which indicates a conversion rate of 3-9% for pop ups requesting info / sign-up. So you may be right!
I wasn’t commenting on the dark pattern though. I was surprised to hear that “common users” don’t just auto dismiss pop ups.
This may sound a little harsh, but you’ll see, when you do usability tests, that there are quite a few users who simply do not read words that you put on the screen. If you pop up an error box of any sort, they simply will not read it. This may be disconcerting to you as a programmer, because you imagine yourself as conducting a dialog with the user. Hey, user! You can’t open that file, we don’t support that file format! Still, experience shows that the more words you put on that dialog box, the fewer people will actually read it.”
User Interface Design For Programmers (https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/10/24/user-interface-des...)
So many engineer CEO’s really need to understand this. Engineers tend to skip over the first step in this process, defining the segment or demographic, and then end up just having their design team design to meet their esthetics. I’ve seen this at so many companies.
I just paid Pingdom $100 since my trial was done. Didn't need to confirm, the card was drawn since I added it on registration.
... Global Thermonuclear War