Responsible Design Part 6 of 14: Bait and Switch
Bait and switch is a dark pattern where the user sets out to do one thing but a completely different undesirable thing happens instead. Stuti Mazumdar & Symran Bhue – April 2022 How this pattern gets its name? Bait and switch have been a very common practice in the retail sector. It gets its […]
Responsible Design Part 5 of 14: Forced Continuity
Forced continuity is when your credit card continues to get billed and charged for a subscription service past the initial subscription duration. Stuti Mazumdar & Symran Bhue – April 2022 How this pattern gets its name? This dark pattern gets its name when we look at the discretionary point of view of the user. […]
Responsible Design Part 4 of 14: False Urgency
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
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
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
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 […]