{"id":4011,"date":"2021-10-22T15:36:58","date_gmt":"2021-10-22T19:36:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.daed.com\/?p=4011"},"modified":"2024-07-11T10:59:10","modified_gmt":"2024-07-11T14:59:10","slug":"recognizing-and-defeating-dark-ux-designs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.daed.com\/?p=4011","title":{"rendered":"Recognizing and Defeating Deceptive UX Designs"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Deceptive UX”, or “Dark UX”, as it has also been called, is a concept that has gotten a bit of news coverage lately. So much in fact that earlier this year the Federal Trade Commission hosted a workshop on the topic, called \u201c<\/span>Bringing Dark Patterns to Light<\/a>\u201d and the AARP recently issued a cautionary article<\/a> to their members about deceptive UX designs leading to unexpected monthly credit card charges.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I gave a talk about deceptive UX designs at Pittsburgh World AI Day 2018, titled \u201c<\/span>Designing with Wicked Intent<\/span><\/a>\u201d and given the recent kerfuffle, it seemed like a good time to revisit the topic.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

What exactly are \u201cdeceptive UX\u201d designs?<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n

Before we talk about what deceptive UX designs are, let\u2019s talk about what deceptive UX designs <\/span>aren\u2019t<\/span><\/i>. While deceptive UX designs are certainly unethical, they aren’t necessarily <\/span>bad designs<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Bad designs fail to take into account the way that humans process information and as a result, they can cause us to make mistakes or it might take us longer to complete our task. These design shortcomings can be frustrating but are usually unintentional.\"An<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

For example, to the right is a screen capture from a conferencing app that was used by one of our clients. Th<\/span>e phone numbers that I was supposed to dial were each displayed as a single long string of numbers without the parsing typically<\/span>\u00a0seen for phone numbers.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

That small bad design made it so much harder for me to remember the numbers as I was dialing in, and every time I did, it probably took me twice as long to dial the numbers as it should have. Not a big deal, and certainly not intended to confuse me or to cause me problems, but it was annoying all the same.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Deceptive<\/span><\/span> UX designs are far more insidious. Deceptive designs use a keen<\/em> understanding of human information processing and psychology to <\/span>deliberately<\/span><\/i> mislead you or to pressure you into making mistakes or choices that you normally wouldn’t make. Far from accidental, deceptive<\/span><\/span> UX designs are skillfully crafted and carefully thought out.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Here are some examples of deceptive<\/span><\/span><\/span> UX designs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t miss out! Act now!\u201d<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

When booking a hotel for travel, at some point one of my preferred sites started popping up messages like, \u201cThis hotel has been booked 4 times in the last hour\u201d and \u201c3 other people are looking at this hotel right now\u201d.\u00a0 I must have seen 3-4 variations in one visit to the site.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Pop-up<\/a><\/p>\n

You could argue that they were trying to give me valuable information about how popular that hotel is, but in reality, they were trying to create a <\/span>false sense of urgency<\/span><\/i>. They wanted me to think that if I didn\u2019t book <\/span>right at that moment<\/span><\/i>, I was going to miss out. Ticket sales sites that prominently display a countdown timer and shopping sites that tell you \u201c5 other people have this in their cart right now!\u201d are applying the same technique.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

No Math, Please<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

Then there are the sites that use our innate distaste for doing math against us.\u00a0Any subscription-based site that charges <\/span>yearly<\/span><\/i> subscription fees but shows you the <\/span>monthly<\/span><\/i> rate is guilty of this. For example, looking at the screen below, $23.99 per month doesn\u2019t sound like a lot of money, does it? But when a charge of $287.88 hits your credit card, you might be a bit more upset.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Deliberately Opposite<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

One of the most common deceptive<\/span><\/span> UX designs is the misuse of web consistency standards to trick you into an unintended action. A few years ago I bought some wallpaper online for my daughter\u2019s bedroom, and soon after, I started getting tons of emails from the site, even though I <\/span>knew<\/span><\/i> I hadn\u2019t signed up for their newsletter \u2014- but it turns out that I had. This was their newsletter signup option:\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\"A<\/a>Wording something in a negative way, or opposite the pattern that people have come to expect is a deceptive<\/span><\/span><\/span> UX design and one that is very easy to get caught in (like I did). Another variant that you\u2019ve probably seen is to use standard wording (e.g. check the box to sign up) with a pre-checked box, but this one was more insidious \u2014<\/span><\/span>\u00a0the box was unchecked, making me think that I wasn\u2019t opted in and that I didn\u2019t need to do anything. When I realized what happened, I immediately unsubscribed and vowed never to do business with that site again.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Clutter, Clutter Everywhere!<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

Here\u2019s another one related to newsletters, which uses a deliberately busy design to hide the unsubscribe option. You want to unsubscribe? Go ahead! The option is there\u2026 somewhere.\u00a0<\/span>\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

UX designers know that every single onscreen element competes for your attention. So, why is there so much stuff on this unsubscribe page? The designers are deliberately making it harder for you to find the option you want because even though they are legally obligated to have it available, they don\u2019t actually want you to find it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Passive Aggressive Copy<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

Here\u2019s a relatively new deceptive<\/span><\/span><\/span> UX design that I have been seeing a lot recently:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Passive<\/a><\/p>\n

The button to decline the newsletter sign-up says something like, \u201cNo thanks, I hate fun\u201d or \u201cI don\u2019t want ideas”. I\u2019ve seen so many variations of this, and it is rather annoying. Yes, I want great ideas, but no I don\u2019t want to be bombarded with emails or to be subtly (or not so subtly) shamed for opting out.<\/span><\/p>\n

Paid Version as Default<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

Defaulting to more expensive options or adding extra charges by default is also a deceptive<\/span><\/span> UX design. Over the summer, I was planning to buy bars of shampoo and conditioner from the Grove Collaborative, but when I went to my cart, I discovered that over a <\/span>dozen<\/span><\/i> other items had been automatically added to my cart and they pushed my total from $23 to over $60!\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Needless to say, I abandoned that cart and won\u2019t ever be shopping there! But interestingly, a few hours later, their customer service actually reached out to me via email to encourage me to make the purchase. When I emailed back to tell them that they had added several items to my cart without my permission and explained that this was an unethical design, this was their response:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Email<\/a><\/p>\n

When a company wants to suggest items to you, that\u2019s exactly what they should do\u00a0 \u2014 <\/span>here are some things that we think you might be interested in, add them to your cart if you\u2019d like.<\/span><\/i> They should never be automatically added to your cart, forcing you to take an action (or several actions) to remove them. That would be like some random employee at Target walking up to your shopping cart and dumping a whole bunch of items into it as you were heading to the checkout line!<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Future of Deceptive UX<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

Unfortunately, these types of unscrupulous designs are getting more creative and harder to spot. The government is taking notice and some companies have had to pay a price for these unethical practices. In 2015, <\/span>LinkedIn was sued over the use of a deceptive UX design<\/span><\/a> that collected users\u2019 email contacts and ended up settling for $13 million.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But despite these measures, I don\u2019t see the situation getting better\u2014there are simply too many sites to monitor and there will always be unscrupulous people (yes, even unscrupulous designers).<\/span><\/p>\n

That means that we\u2019re going to have to go on the defensive: making sure that we carefully read everything on the page, rather than assuming we know what those checkbox options say (checked or unchecked); double checking that the only things in the cart are the things that we put there; learning to be a bit more thick-skinned about passive-aggressive text; and watching for other (not-yet-designed) gotchas.<\/span><\/p>\n

Keep in mind that the best way to discourage these designs is to take your business elsewhere. If you spot a deceptive UX design, just click that little X in the top corner, close the window, and never go back.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Deceptive UX”, or “Dark UX”, as it has also been called, is a concept that has gotten a bit of news coverage lately. 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