A company I worked for put the bonus acceptance tick box into an automated pop up after successful registration. Peoples reflex reaction to a pop up is to close it straight away when one appears. Most bonuses were never accepted so never awarded. Lots of money saved for the company advertising ‘register now’ bonuses.
Sorry, bonus acceptance messages? Like, call now to claim your prize, but for your own employee? I've never heard of anything so absurd. I would love to see the fallout of that tactic in employee retention.
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!
Yeah, so you register on the site, press next, your registration is successful, meanwhile a pop up was initiated which contains t&cs and acceptance confirmation. Using your estimate, 3-9% of bonuses were accepted, and needed to be paid to the new customer. It’s a dark pattern
Dark patterns only need to work some of the time. However putting important terms, conditions and acceptance into an unreliable pop up certainly works if you don’t really want your customer to see it or accept it
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.”
I don't understand how the elevator story is an example of a dark pattern. I see that the sign did not effectively accomplish its goal, but that doesn't fit the definition given: the intent to trick users into doing something undesirable.
I see what you mean, but I liked this example because it speaks to how innocent dark patterns can appear. I’ll try to explain.
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.
The original design was flawed. The new design understands the problem (people did not see the sign). The design is fixed.
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.
She (the author) jumped from what first sparked the understanding to the outcome of understanding how these things happen. It's not a bad thing in journalism. Sometimes, going step by step doesn't reveal the awareness to the audience that reads the literature.
It's not, it's just a pretty standard and well understood UX principle; A couple of simple words is far more likely to be read than a long fluffy sentence. It's just a UX pattern.
It's like saying effective contrast is a dark pattern.
A couple of simple words are far less likely to be read if they do not interrupt your automatic muscle memory.
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.
I think it goes beyond that. "Well designed" temporary signage needs to look out-of-place and basically intentionally ugly.
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.
Yeah, the irony... that completely mislead me as to the tone of this blog. I assumed it was going to be about psychology of better UI/UX, not disdain for bad UX and trickery.
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.
A hasty "Out of service" works instantly because we (as Americans?) are conditioned to expect to see that when something is broken, just like a stop sign.
The longer note looked like a notice, which people tend to ignore — particularly if they're in a rush or frustrated.
>You’re not designing for the company, but rather for the users who will interact with the product.
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 recently registered as a user on Twitch, and was surprised by the amount of dark patterns there. It seems like every other action costs money, which isn't necessarily bad, but it makes me wary of clicking on anything because it seems half of them lead to a payment screen. It's just that there's no indication of what's a premium feature and what's not, and that's clearly intended to get users to want to perform an action and emphasizes what they're missing out on.
> It's just that there's no indication of what's a premium feature and what's not
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.
Right, and I think it's bad in the long run. If Twitch wants to become a bluechip brand, they're going to have to do a lot to make me at least sorta believe that they have my best interests in mind.
Speaking as an automotive mechanic, This works well in the front-of-shop according to our manager. Tires, while a staple of the garage area, are for some reason kept on proud display in the windows and in the customer area of the shop. This isnt because customers like to look at tires, its because the smell apparently is found to be reassuring by the customer.
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.
> Imagine you want to buy something: You pick it, add it to your cart, and go through the entire check out process. In the final step, you see that the company has added an extra cost that was not mentioned on previous web pages.
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.
You may be interested to know that both of those are illegal in the EU. Shipping costs are a special case unless the price is clearly disproportionate. But under the CCR in the UK (I forget the EU directive it's based on) if things are automatically added to your basket, you are entitled to a refund and to keep the item.
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:
I would never be comfortable getting a refund and keeping the item. Cause the cost just gets passed onto the next person. I would return the item if I got a refund. I either agree to all of your terms and do business with you or I don't agree to all of them and you lose my business.
Omaha Steaks is the king of hidden shipping fees. Cause they have these $49.99 and $99.99 packages, but shipping costs can easily exceed $20. I cut them a little slack because they ship frozen goods, but man!
Unfortunately, the author doesn't really address how dark patterns apply to design. It seems to be more about his discovering that dark patterns is a thing, and that other designers should be aware of it.
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.
I already have an email filter for the word "unsubscribe". it goes straight to my trash as well as "preferences" for people who think I should "manage my preferences"
The darkest of these patterns of simple and becoming ubiquitous: nothing displays unless you have javascript enabled, not even text, images, or other static content. NASA.gov is a prime example of this. So the user leaves JS on and then the site does a whole bunch of bullshit unrelated to the site service using JS.
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.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 95.5 ms ] threadIf 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
¹https://youtu.be/kxkrdLI6e6M
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...)
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.