Dark Patterns - User Interfaces Designed to Trick People

I think it was P.T. Barnum who can came up with the idea of making customers walk though the gift shop to exit his circus. I think of that every time I walk though an airport that does the same thing on entry or exit from its international flights area. That's an example of user interface design, isn't it?

And, what about the process of automobile sales? For nearly a century buyers have gone through the ritual of negotiating with a sales person who goes to the back room for 15 minutes at a time to "talk the manager" only to slurp on a coffee cup. That's a user interface as well.

I'm not defending the patterns in the presentation, but I don't see them as anything new. The medium is just different. Some businesses are just particularly shameless, and that's a problem.

Try to continue without insurance? Massive popup. "Last year X,000 people lost $$$... can you really take the risk?"

And two buttons. One big green one, "Continue with insurance" and one, tiny, non-button text link saying "No thanks, I'll take the risk."

That's one example. There are dozens.

A good example is 3rd party marketing opt-out dark pattern. It is already legislated in a number of countries; and if a local business puts in an opt-out checkbox instead of opt-in ? Blam; this contact info is considered obtained without consent, please delete it and here is the invoice for your fine, thank you very much.

Another pattern that can be eliminated is hidden costs - i.e., in EU, you have to advertise the full cost, including the tax and "mandatory convenience fees"; so for some costs you can't hide them away.

And of course, the most effective tool is legally mandated rights for returns and cancellations - it gives actual teeth to angry customers, since if you succeed in tricking them, they can just cancel the deal [not neccessarily through a process that the company prescribes] and get full returns.

Clearly this is done to prevent some abandonment that would occur upon seeing the SSN on the first step of the process. Their idea is that you are already so invested by the end that you are more likely to give up that sensitive info. But, whether it is technically a "dark pattern" or not, it feels really, really slimy.

So, most marketing isn't ethical at all.

But that doesn't stop most marketing.

Some evil UX patterns are:

* Opt-in: Prepopulating option with more expensive or recurring payment. (example was a donation, but Amazon does this when not defaulting to free 5-7 day ground shipping after promising free shipping prior to putting it in cart! which is much worse since they are bait and switching)

* Opt-in, part 2: Making changes subtle changes can be evil. By switching around buttons, etc. after having it work a certain way a long time and not changing the interface enough, you trigger muscle memory to do the wrong thing. Amazon has exploited this as well with the (not) free shipping option.

* Difficult to quit/cancel: also mentioned in the OP's linked presentation. In addition to more steps or having to email, etc. they don't even give you a documented option, e.g. you have to email them so they will delete your account and they say that nowhere in the site.

* Glossing over legal: Small text or less readable font to hide details is evil.

* Hiding legal: putting legal disclaimers in an area of the site that is hard to get to is evil.

* Unnecessary login: making the user login because they might want to retain info about something, when really the site owner is getting more benefit (selling email address or lead info, mining it themselves, etc.).

* Asking for more than is needed for user to accomplish what they want: asking the user for more info than they need to provide in order to get lead info when they are not aware you will contact them is evil.

* Unintended use of data: Worked for a telecom that had page to get phone# to look up service availability and then they would use that for lead info.

* Easy to determine security questions: this is just stupid. Many are easy to find out and they do little more than make the uninformed user feel more secure. Examples: birthday, street you grew up on, etc. that can be learned even without social engineering.

* Passwords: one of the most archaic and stupid constructs ever. Passwords encourage people to use the same password across sites, so if one is compromised, they all are. An autogenerated passkey and a more secure way to reset it with a new one if your passkey was lost or stolen would beat passwords anyday. SSO only compounds this idiotic UX we can't get rid of. (And we put abusable/hackable cameras in every laptop instead of adding retinal scanners or thumbprint readers in every laptop, which could be viable alternatives.)

(http://transition.fcc.gov/transaction/aol-tw/exparte/nationw...)

The things you've mentioned do help boosting income, for some companies only in short-term, for other companies even in long-term.

If your personal ethics are not OK with it, there are only two ethical things you can do about it. Either you design a UX that is equally efficient in terms of KPI, but conforms to your ethics, or you quit the job.

Remaining employed, receiving your paycheck, but working against the company and waving ethics codes around or quietly sabotaging boss' decisions is NOT ethical.

I was hard to connect the meaning between some of the videos and I feel like there was some dialog I was missing. I hope the trend of just releasing slide shows in lieu of articles or videos does not become a trend.