Dark patterns 101
When we talk about SEO there are two terms: white hat SEO and black hat SEO. The first one uses best practices according to search engine instructions, while the second one tries to quickly get the best positions in the search engines using some techniques that we can identify as unethical.
The user experience field is no exception and, although the definition of UX clearly says that products must be useful, easy to use and meet user’s needs when using them, there is also a B side, the dark patterns.
What is a dark pattern?
Dark patterns are the shady side of user experience and were defined by Harry Brignull back in 2010. Designers use their extensive knowledge of the user and their behaviours to achieve purely commercial goals, regardless of usability and user satisfaction.
These dark patterns strategies use neuromarketing techniques and take advantage of how users perceive information, as well as the assumptions they make when navigating a website or application.
Dark pattern types
According to Harry Brignull, there are 12 main types of these patterns, with names that are truly eye-catching.
- Misleading questions. This is often the case when you register on a service with a form. When you look quickly at the boxes it may appear to ask one thing, but if you read more carefully it is a completely different question.
- Sneak into basket. This occurs when you go to buy something and at some point in the process another product enters your basket, without you being fully aware of it.
- Roach Motel. When you can sign up for a service very easily, but then it is very difficult to find out how to unsubscribe.
- Privacy Zuckering. When you are tricked into sharing more private information than you want to.
- Price Comparison Prevention. This makes it harder to make an informed decision, because it makes it harder to compare different options.
- Misdirection. Taking your attention from one item to another.
- Hidden costs. This is when you get to the last step of the buying process and realise that there are additional costs.
- Bait and switch. When you want to do a certain action but something else happens.
- Confirmshaming. In this case the user is blamed for choosing an option, such as not subscribing to a newsletter.
- Disguised ads. These are hidden adverts so that you click on them without being aware that it is really an ad.
- Forced continuity. When the free trial of a service ends, they automatically start charging for it without warning.
- Friend spam. This occurs when permissions are requested from the user justifying it for a specific purpose, but then spammed to all their contacts in a message claiming to be the user.
Some dark pattern examples
It may seem that dark patterns are not part of our daily lives, but unfortunately they are. These practices are even punishable by law.
A few years ago a platform was taken to court for using friend spamming. When registering on the platform, the user gave permission to share their contacts without being aware of it, and then all those contacts were receiving invitations to subscribe to the platform on behalf of the user. Platform was fined 13 million euros. You can read about the problem in detail in this link.
Another case that is more common than we imagine is when the position of navigation elements is changed, especially when users have automated the use of patterns. These changes must always be carefully evaluated, especially if they will lead to user frustration by taking them to unexpected sites or new services.
On social media, we often find quite a few dark patterns, especially when it comes to data protection and privacy settings, although lately there is one behaviour that has become far too common.
An example of bait and switch are some of the notifications that appear on our mobile. At first it may seem that we have been mentioned or that some interaction has occurred on our profile, but when we enter to see the notification it is simply that someone from our contacts has performed some action, without us having anything to do with the process. This makes us enter the application thinking that we have an interaction but it is simply a hook to enter and spend time on it.
The forced continuity and roach motel technique can be found in some subscription services, where the cancellation process is intentionally made very complex.
While it is good practice that cancellation does not require more than two actions by the user (action and confirmation), there are cases where processes are unnecessarily lengthy. Situations like this are already under the scrutiny of consumer authorities.
These are just a few examples of the dark patterns we face almost every day. We believe that the honest thing to do is promote the good practices on which the user experience is based and to reject all those that directly and ruthlessly harm them, even to the point of being illegal.
We encourage you to be aware of when and how these practices are applied and not to fall into their tricks.
This article is a translation of the following one published on our corporate website:
