Responsible Design Part 4 of 14: False Urgency

Manipulative urgency: Recognizing deceptive tactics in messaging.

This dark pattern works on the idea of scarcity and how a user’s decision making is impacted under the pretext of scarce resources. False urgency works on the basis of loss aversion which is the notion that users prefer to avoid losses over acquiring gains. Stuti Mazumdar & Symran Bhue –   April 2022 How […]

Responsible Design Part 3 of 14: Confirm Shaming or Guilt Shaming

Confirm Shaming vs Guilt Shaming Discussion.

This dark pattern uses manipulative language and emotionally-charged design tactics to shame or guilt users from cancelling or unsubscribing a service. How this pattern gets its name? The pattern gets its name from the kind of feeling it leaves the users with after they’ve read a message or statement. This dark pattern tries to make […]

Responsible Design Part 2 of 14: Friend Spam or Contact Harvesting

Deceptive Friend Spam and Contact Harvesting.

Friend spam or contact harvesting is when a company manipulates a user to give access to their private information, especially their contact list making it seem to the user that it would be beneficial for them but which the company later uses for its own benefit. It gets worse when the user finds out that […]

Responsible Design Part 1 of 14: When design patterns go dark

User manipulation: Dark patterns emerge when companies prioritize metrics over user well-being.

We all know that when users visit a website or download an app, they do so with an intent in mind. The design community designs on the premise that every user has a certain goal in mind when they interact with a user interface, and the role of the designer is to devise a user […]

UX in the times of AI: Trusting Intelligence

This post is a sequel to an earlier one titled ‘UX in the times of AI: Designing with Bots’. In this post, we will look at a few philosophical aspects of cyber consciousness, collective intelligence or machine intelligence and the design considerations that must be looked at in conjunction with trusting this technology. Hari Nallan […]

UX in the times of AI: Designing with Bots

This is Part 1 of my series on How AI would impact UX and vice versa. This write up covers different facets of chat bots and the resulting experiences. Hari Nallan & Symran Bhue – July 2017 In an Artificially Intelligent world, pairing future-tech and design will result in incredibly innovative products which will transform […]