Dark UX - If you don't want something done to you, don't do it to your customer.

Dark UX - are you guilty of this as a brand owner or brand marketer?

As a term, Dark Patterns was first coined by UX designer Harry Brignull in August 2010. He defined it as, “a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills.” He's also categorised them as below on his website.

Trick Questions While filling in a form you respond to a question that tricks you into giving an answer you didn't intend. When glanced upon quickly the question appears to ask one thing, but when read carefully it asks another thing entirely.

Sneak into Basket You attempt to purchase something, but somewhere in the purchasing journey the site sneaks an additional item into your basket, often through the use of an opt-out radio button or checkbox on a prior page.

Roach Motel You get into a situation very easily, but then you find it is hard to get out of it (e.g. a premium subscription).

Privacy Zuckering You are tricked into publicly sharing more information about yourself than you really intended to. Named after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Price Comparison Prevention The retailer makes it hard for you to compare the price of an item with another item, so you cannot make an informed decision.

Misdirection The design purposefully focuses your attention on one thing in order to distract you attention from another.

Hidden Costs You get to the last step of the checkout process, only to discover some unexpected charges have appeared, e.g. delivery charges, tax, etc.

Bait and Switch You set out to do one thing, but a different, undesirable thing happens instead.

Confirmshaming The act of guilting the user into opting into something. The option to decline is worded in such a way as to shame the user into compliance.

Disguised Ads Adverts that are disguised as other kinds of content or navigation, in order to get you to click on them.

Forced Continuity When your free trial with a service comes to an end and your credit card silently starts getting charged without any warning. In some cases this is made even worse by making it difficult to cancel the membership.

Friend Spam The product asks for your email or social media permissions under the pretence it will be used for a desirable outcome (e.g. finding friends), but then spams all your contacts in a message that claims to be from you.

There are some examples like this one below from ClassPass - while you can easily sign up to a membership online, to cancel, you go through a 4 page process and then you need to message their support. If you do that but leave without waiting for an agent, the cancellation is not processed.

Another typical one is New York Times that says "You can cancel anytime." But in the fine print: "Your payment method will automatically be charged in advance every 4 weeks." To cancel, you need make a phone call to customer care or send an email with a subject line. You can't cancel online.

The UX UK Awards even have an award dedicated to this: The Dark UX Award.

This is not new. But it's short sighted to treat your customer as stupid. In the age of scale and hacking growth, it's easy to fall into this but a brand that treats customers with empathy and respect is the one that will win in the long term.

This conference paper The Dark (Patterns) Side of UX Design by Colin M. Gray, Yubo Kou, Bryan Battles, Joseph Hoggatt, and Austin L. Toombs of Purdue University asks some pertinent questions after analysing Dark UX examples:

“First, it is important to explore the guarantor of design—in what ways is the designer responsible for the success of design interventions, and to what degree?

Second, we consider which dimensions of design responsibility the designer has an obligation to assess, and at what level of granularity.

Third, we contend that a focus on design character and responsibility represents an opportunity for practitioners to engage in design leadership—raising and addressing ethical issues in everyday practice.”

They suggest looking at applied ethics: “What is lacking, perhaps, is a more explicit discussion of applied ethics in the pragmatist tradition. This is the mode that van Wynsberghe [69] suggests as a path forward, where ethics become embedded in the everyday activities of practitioners through the actions of practitioners-as-everyday-ethicists and professional ethicists with domain expertise.“

It should be simple: If you don't want something done to you, don't do it to your customer.

Listen to this podcast with Harry Brignull for more on Dark UX.