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Dark Patterns Manipulating You Today
Roger Martin once said, “ Design isn’t just about making things beautiful; it’s also about making things work beautifully”. If things work beautifully in a way that they shouldn’t, is that still design?
There are many businesses who are using design to manipulate their users into making purchases or taking actions they don’t mean to take… this means that there are designers out there manipulating users, or looking the other way when such practices are suggested. How do we make it stop?
They’re called Dark Patterns. They’re user interfaces created to trick and manipulate you to do the things you don’t want to do for the benefit of the business.
As a term, Dark Patterns was first coined by the London –based UX designer Harry Brignull (PhD Cognitive Science) 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.”
There are many forms of Dark Patterns circulating today and they don’t yet face any consequences. They use psychological tricks and tactics to manipulate their potential victims and call it “design”.
I’ve listed some of the examples of Dark Patterns that you should be aware of
