Dark patterns are design elements that deliberately obscure, mislead, coerce and/or deceive website visitors into making unintended and pos...
Dark patterns are design elements that deliberately obscure, mislead, coerce and/or deceive website visitors into making unintended and possibly harmful choices.
Dark patterns can be found in many kinds of sites and are used by several kinds of organisations. They take the form of deceptively labelled buttons, choices that are difficult to undo and graphical elements like colour and shading that direct users’ attention to or away from certain options.
Dark patterns in subscriptions are a common example of these kinds of design choices, given the ubiquity of online subscriptions and free trials for all kinds of products and services. This kind of dark pattern might make it difficult for a user to unsubscribe, or it might automatically convert a free trial into a paid subscription.
To demonstrate how common these kinds of design practices are, and to illustrate the various harms they can cause, designer and public interest technologist Stephanie Nguyen and I launched the zine I, Obscura.
The zine publishes case studies of different dark patterns and what can and should be done to protect users from these practices. I, Obscura was launched with help from student authors Ryan Tan, Kaylee Doty and Kally Zheng, and in collaboration with the Stanford University Digital Civil Society Lab and the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry.
