This article shouldn't be addressed to designers, it should be addressed to product managers, or to leadership who sets OKRs. The issue is not designers not knowing this is wrong, or being able to think of alternatives. The issue is not that the designer, on their own initiative, decides to make a user-hostile product. The issue is that product teams are being strongly incentivized or even directly ordered to implement dark patterns like this. If it was just the designer calling for the use of dark patterns, and everybody else in the organization was against it, it wouldn't happen. Likewise, if the designer is the only one in the organization who advises against it, guess what? It's happening anyway.
I think dark patterns mostly work against the long-term interests of the companies that deploy them. But a big problem is that dark patterns drive <i>measurable</i> benefits but are associated with <i>unmeasurable</i> costs. So metrics-driven teams can end up deploying them to the long-term detriment of the company itself. Management needs to ensure that teams are not sacrificing intangible soft capital in order to meet measurable goals.<p>For example, a dark pattern might increase subscription conversion rate, time spent on a page, and so on -- which can be directly measured and appear in OKRs -- but may also result in people developing negative associations with your brand and gradually avoiding visiting your site in the first place, when they see it in a linked URL.<p>Think of a website that is relatively free of dark patterns -- maybe McMaster-Carr or something -- and notice how often you might find yourself looking there first. That's good-will, a valuable but ephemeral resource which is be very hard for a company to quantify, and therefore easy and tempting to spend down in pursuit of short-term gains.
LinkedIn deserves an entire article to list their each and every dark pattern.
Some of the few that come to my mind:<p>- Asking you to install app when browsing from mobile (which goes away when you use "Desktop Mode").<p>- Saying that you have a message in your inbox but not the very message itself.<p>BTW, Do we have an open source alternative to LinkedIn like there is Mastodon to Twitter? :(<p>Another teeth-biting favorite is Adobe's "free" online tools (like PDF pages splitter etc.) where you will be able to do everything and once you click "Download", Adobe asks you to create an account to continue. :/
It's the e-commerce equivalent of putting the finger on the scale. Maybe there should be some laws against it but can you imagine politicians understanding any of this? Every undo action such as un-subscribing should be equally as easy as the original action.<p>Neal.fun has an entire page of dark patterns in one demo: <a href="https://neal.fun/dark-patterns/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://neal.fun/dark-patterns/</a>
> Companies can find several reasons to avoid dark patterns. By following best design practices, they can build a positive brand image, maintain customer trust, and adhere to legal and ethical standards.<p>I don't think Amazon Prime or New York Times making it hard to cancel subscriptions is putting a dent in their brand image. Big companies can and will get away with it.
Kudos to the author <i>for actually pointing these out</i>. A lot of those are the patterns that everyone got used to: they can be seen universally across the Internet, and some have been used for so long that it is probable that many users (and developers, and designers) don't even realize they <i>are</i> the dark patterns. Some are of course used intentionally, but I would guess some of the new web sites and web apps use them "just because everyone else does it".<p>Unfortunately for us, there is no easy solution, though. I think that the suggested solutions are too lightweight to be convincing, although I agree with the general idea: do your research, get the real competitive advantage. But this is easier said than done, while the dark patterns are easier to use. Like the Dark Force. Not sure the Force wins in real life eventually, but I surely hope so.
I had a lovely one the other day when trying to contact FreshWorks support. I just want to cancel an account but as far as I can tell they’ve sunset the service so I’m forced to go through the support process.<p>I couldn’t even submit the form without ticking the following:<p>> I would like to receive marketing communications related to Freshworks' business, services, and events. I can unsubscribe from these communications at any time.<p>The only email I’ve received since has been a fake real sales email with no unsubscribe link.
It feels to me like the author compiled a list of 10 things that annoyed them the week prior, gave each of them an important sounding name and made an article of it.<p>Not that I support any of these patterns, but there’s a reason companies do them. Just telling someone to not do them will not stop companies from doing them.
The premise of this article makes no sense to me. It's suggesting that one needs to actively expend effort to avoid "accidentally" implementing dark patterns. You could just...not build them. If I click yes, I mean yes, if I click no, I mean no--it's <i>more</i> complex for developers and designers alike to add friction to that flow.
Murder weapons in daily life and how to avoid murdering people.<p>Step 1. Murder weapons allow to murder people. Murdering is bad.<p>Step 2. Avoid using murder weapons to murder people.<p>Next week: Manipulative techniques in psychology and how to avoid manipulating people.
Funny that this website has the ever-annoying scroll indicator. Why don't web designers understand we already have a scroll indicator? It's called the scroll bar. There is literally no function for these things.
If a newsletter subscription really has a "don't not opt in" checkbox, I can't imagine how horribly worded and confusing the actual crappy freaking newsletter must be.
Bumble's platform is a Dark Pattern.<p>OnlyFans is a Dark Pattern via Tools.<p>It needs a new name. It's not a Dark Pattern if so many firms are employing it successfully for profit.<p>Obviously the community isn't self policing. Cartels do a better job down in Mexico overall in my opinion. Rather it's clear the incentive in this sector in particular (new tech / apps) only leads to further development and twisting and bending into it becoming normalized somewhat or somehow.<p>See also: the success of microtransactions and who made money on them
Aside: I absolutely adore the design of this website. I’ve tried to do something like it in my personal projects, but I’m not a designer and it always comes out as the wish.com version. Props and respect.<p>Serious: I think this actually highlights the importance of ethics as a field of study for everyone going into computing/software/information work professionally.<p>I don’t think any of us want to live in a world where our computers are lying, tricking, deceiving, fooling, shaming, or manipulating us. Yet so many of us ignore the ethical implications of our work to make a quick buck.<p>It is clear as day to me that these things are wrong. It wasn’t always like that. In college I thought the idea of teaching ethics was stupid, and we should do whatever we can to fuck people over (I wouldn’t have used those terms). I don’t know why I grew out of that, but I did, and I think the world might be better off if the people who knew better intervened earlier in people’s careers.<p>This is your sign to reflect on how many times you have been an enemy to your fellow man through your work (and if your work scales, an enemy to thousands to billions of people), and start your job search if that number bothers you.