{"id":11659,"date":"2024-04-01T08:33:09","date_gmt":"2024-03-31T22:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/?p=11659"},"modified":"2024-04-01T08:33:11","modified_gmt":"2024-03-31T22:33:11","slug":"dark-patterns-and-creepy-user-experiences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/2024\/04\/01\/dark-patterns-and-creepy-user-experiences\/","title":{"rendered":"Dark Patterns and Creepy User Experiences"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In User Experience, a <em>dark pattern<\/em> refers to a UX workflow that effectively urges the user to either perform an action, or accept a condition they would not have wished to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dark patterns aren\u2019t exclusive to what we think of as software UX. For instance, back in my system integrator days, when I wrote and ran training courses, I quickly came to the conclusion that exam questions featuring double-negatives were appallingly unfair to people for whom English was not their first language. (Once I realised this, I started doing whatever I could to stamp out the use of double-negatives in the quizzes we wrote for our training courses, and lo and behold, the quiz results started to equalise.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019ve mentioned before that one of the side-effects of moving into a product management role that has such a heavy emphasis on UX is that I start to look at everything I use from that perspective. This leads to questions like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Who at Miele thought it would be a good idea to have a washing machine beep every 20 seconds for 10 minutes after a load finishes?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Who at LG thought it would be a good idea to have a microwave do a little satisfied chirpy trill every 30 seconds after it finishes cooking until the end of time, or the user opens the door, whichever comes first?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Who at Russell Hobbes thought a kettle with 6 different temperature setting buttons would be optimised by having the different temperature settings marked with removable ink that disappears the first time you wipe it down?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Much as these are annoying, they\u2019re not dark patterns. The first two are nagUX (i.e., UX that is optimised to nag you) and the third is just a low quality build problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dark patterns are worse than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019ll give you an example of the dark pattern that currently fills me with rage every time I see it: <strong>FauxNo<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>FauxNo appears in software and websites, and works like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/FauxNo1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"527\" src=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/FauxNo1-1024x527.jpg\" alt=\"Fake popup dialog from &quot;Random Website You'll Only Visit Once&quot;. It asks whether you want to turn on notifications, and only gives you options of Maybe Later, or Yes.\" class=\"wp-image-11660\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/FauxNo1-1024x527.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/FauxNo1-300x154.jpg 300w, https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/FauxNo1-768x395.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/FauxNo1.jpg 1218w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>For me, FauxNo is one of the more regularly used dark patterns, and it\u2019s also one of the <strong>creepiest<\/strong>. I&#8217;m sorry, but FauxNo tells me that the decision makers in your team are not listening to <strong>diverse<\/strong> voices. They&#8217;re not listening to marginalised people and they&#8217;re certainly not listening to women. The UX is smacks of an unwanted advance at a bar, or door knockers who take \u201cNo\u201d as \u201cWell I\u2019ll come back later to see if you\u2019ve changed your mind\u201d. To me this is an outright gaslighting of your user. \u201cI don\u2019t believe in no so the best you\u2019ve got is to delay the inevitable\u201d is not \u2013 ever \u2013 a way to ingratiate yourself to your user base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This sort of behaviour is manifesting in too many places. What might have once been the province of slightly dodgy websites is now so ingrained in common UX practices in some companies that we&#8217;re now seeing it embedded in <em>operating systems<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s not even as if it\u2019s difficult to fix the problem:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/FauxNo2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"526\" src=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/FauxNo2-1024x526.jpg\" alt=\"Updated push notifications dialog from a fake &quot;Random Website You'll Only Visit Once&quot; asking you if you want push notifications, but this time in addition to the &quot;Maybe Later&quot; and &quot;Yes&quot; buttons, a &quot;No&quot; button is added.\" class=\"wp-image-11661\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/FauxNo2-1024x526.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/FauxNo2-300x154.jpg 300w, https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/FauxNo2-768x395.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/FauxNo2.jpg 1220w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Even if the user answers no, you can still check and see if they want other options. Let\u2019s say the user answers \u201cNo\u201d, you could still mention to them how they might enable the option later if they wanted to. Hell, you could even make one final (polite) stab at it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/FauxNo3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2502\" height=\"783\" src=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/FauxNo3.jpg\" alt=\"Prior mocked up dialog showing push notification response buttons of &quot;Maybe Later&quot;, &quot;No&quot; and &quot;Yes&quot;. When the user clicks &quot;No&quot; they get another dialog box asking them if they'd like to be reminded in a month of the option for push notifications, and that dialog box only has options of &quot;No&quot; and &quot;Yes&quot;.\" class=\"wp-image-11662\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/FauxNo3.jpg 2502w, https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/FauxNo3-300x94.jpg 300w, https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/FauxNo3-1024x320.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/FauxNo3-768x240.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/FauxNo3-1536x481.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/FauxNo3-2048x641.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/FauxNo3-1600x501.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2502px) 100vw, 2502px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>But what happens if the user answers No?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s easy. <strong>No means no.<\/strong> I&#8217;m not joking. No. Means. No.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that\u2019s why this particular dark pattern of not giving the user an option to say <strong>No <\/strong>is outright creepy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In User Experience, a dark pattern refers to a UX workflow that effectively urges the user to either perform an&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1699],"tags":[1690,1654],"class_list":["post-11659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ux","tag-user-experience","tag-ux"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/bigStock-Sleazy.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pKpIN-323","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11659"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11667,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11659\/revisions\/11667"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}