”I am Definitely Manipulated, Even When I am Aware of it. It’s Ridiculous!” - Dark Patterns from the End-User Perspective (original) (raw)
Related papers
Dark Patterns and the Emerging Threats of Deceptive Design Practices
Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Growth hacking, particularly within the spectre of surveillance capitalism, has led to the widespread use of deceptive, manipulative, and coercive design techniques in the last decade. These challenges exist at the intersection of many diferent technology professions that are rapidly evolving and "shapeshifting" their design practices to confront emerging regulation. A wide range of scholars have increasingly addressed these challenges through the label "dark patterns, " describing the content of deceptive and coercive design practices, the ubiquity of these patterns in contemporary digital systems, and the impact of emerging regulatory and legislative action on the presence of dark patterns. Building on this convergent and trans-disciplinary research area, the aims of this SIG are to: 1) Provide an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to address methodologies for detecting, characterizing, and regulating dark patterns; 2) Identify opportunities for additional empirical work to characterize and demonstrate harms related to dark patterns; and 3) Aid in convergence among HCI, design, computational, regulatory, and legal perspectives on dark patterns. These goals will enable an internationally-diverse, engaged, and impactful research community to address the threats of dark patterns on digital systems. CCS CONCEPTS • Social and professional topics → Computing education; Codes of ethics; • Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction (HCI); Empirical studies in HCI.
Uncovering Dark Patterns in Persuasive Technology
2018
Dark patterns are interactive design patterns that influence technology users through deception or trickery, and which represent unethical applications of persuasive technology. However, our ability to identify dark patterns is limited , creating a situation where it is difficult to manage abuses of persuasive psychology , because it is difficult to even identify them. Although there are numerous practitioner taxonomies of dark patterns, there is no scientifically-based tax-onomy available. This workshop provides an introduction to dark patterns and an overview of the psychological mechanisms that drive them. Through participa-tory exercises, participants will help to identify the theoretical underpinnings that drive dark patterns, and contribute to the development of a taxonomy of dark patterns, based on consensus within the scientific community. In the workshops, we will form working teams who will review the dark pattern taxonomy, looking for alternative theoretical explanations. Each working team will participate in a group sorting exercise, designed to inform the development of a theoretically-framed taxonomy of dark patterns. All outputs of the workshop will be captured, and used to advance this study towards validation of the taxonomy. After the workshops, the authors of this paper will incorporate all the advancements into the next stage of the research, which will feed into a subsequent paper on a tax-onomy of dark patterns, addressing the identified research questions.
Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference
HCI researchers are increasingly concerned about the prevalence of manipulative design strategies in user interfaces, commonly referred to as "dark patterns". The line between manipulation and persuasion strategies is often blurred, leading to legal and ethical concerns. This paper examines the tension between persuasive UX practices and manipulative designs. UX/UI design professionals (n=22), split into eight focus groups, conducted design activities on two fctitious scenarios. We qualitatively analysed their discussions regarding strategies for infuencing user behaviours and their underlying reasoning. Our fndings reveal a combination of classical UI design strategies like sticky interfaces and incentives as their most common practice to infuence user behaviour. We also unveil that trust, transparency, and user autonomy act as guiding principles for the professionals in assessing their ideas. However, a thorough approach is missing; despite a general user-frst attitude, they feel constrained by contextual factors. We explain how the tensions between principles and context contribute to manipulative designs online. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → User interface design; • Social and professional topics → Codes of ethics.
Evil design in the Dark Patterns tunnel: where we came from and where we are (heading) now
2023
In this paper we highlight certain notions on Dark Patterns from a user's perspective. Dark Patterns are elements in interfaces designed to misdirect, confuse, and lure users into unintended, involuntary actions. They are omnipresent in web and game-interfaces and highly effective. There is agreement that awareness and better understanding is needed. We present some current Dark Patterns research projects carried out by the Human-Centered Computing group at Utrecht University, dedicating attention to a set of insights and findings we think should be shared. These stem from research on contextual issue of device choice and experiencing Dark Patterns, the "Dark Pattern Darkness Score" (DPDS), the "System darkness scale" (SDS), and the use of Muscle Memory as a Dark Pattern. The latter we propose as an addition to existing Dark Patters taxonomies.
Digital Dark Nudge: An Exploration of When Digital Nudges Unethically Depart
Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2022
Digital nudging in information systems has become widely prevalent to guide consumers during online decision-making. However, while nudging is about improving the decisions and behaviors in various domains, limited research has explored when digital nudges unethically depart from their intended purpose, whereby opt-in favors profit motives over the user's best interests. In e-commerce, we defined this as a digital dark nudge (DDN) and explored its use in multiple scenarios against a typical shopping experience. Using an online experiment, we study the economic intentions and emotional perceptions of DDNs, while also accounting for impulsiveness as a moderating personality trait. This study first attempts to use priming and status quo bias as a theoretical lens. Empirical results show increasing evidence of the perverse effects of using DDNs in online ecommerce whereby consumers revert to their status quo, less likelihood of purchase. Our results provide further warning to practitioners about their use of ethical practices such as digital nudging.
Dark Pattern: A Serious Game for Learning About the Dangers of Sharing Data
European Conference on Games Based Learning
Dark patterns refer to tricks built into websites and apps to manipulate users into acting unintentionally and detrimentally. An important issue is how such patterns might affect behaviour when actors are manoeuvred towards the sharing of their personal data, as exemplified in choices we face when downloading Apps or signing up for services provided on the internet. This paper presents our exploratory research into understanding the intention and subsequent actions of older teenagers responding to issues of personal data collection and (mis)use. The research is based on the competitive board-game Dark Pattern, in which players install apps, draw dark pattern cards, and make choices about the sharing of personal data. To win the game, a player must share as little data as possible and play cards that punish other players. We were interested to find out the extent to which the game was able to convey types of dark patterns to the players. Additionally, we wanted to explore how players...
Dark Patterns and the Legal Requirements of Consent Banners: An Interaction Criticism Perspective
Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
User engagement with data privacy and security through consent banners has become a ubiquitous part of interacting with internet services. While previous work has addressed consent banners from either interaction design, legal, and ethics-focused perspectives, little research addresses the connections among multiple disciplinary approaches, including tensions and opportunities that transcend disciplinary boundaries. In this paper, we draw together perspectives and commentary from HCI, design, privacy and data protection, and legal research communities, using the language and strategies of "dark patterns" to perform an interaction criticism reading of three different types of consent banners. Our analysis builds upon designer, interface, user, and social context lenses to raise tensions and synergies that arise together in complex, contingent, and conflicting ways in the act of designing consent banners. We conclude with opportunities for transdisciplinary dialogue across legal, ethical, computer science, and interactive systems scholarship to translate matters of ethical concern into public policy. CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → User interface design; • Social and professional topics → Governmental regulations; Codes of ethics; • Security and privacy → Social aspects of security and privacy.
Deceptive Design: Cookie Consent and Manipulative Patterns
34th Bled eConference Digital Support from Crisis to Progressive Change: Conference Proceedings, 2021
As a larger proportion of our lives moves onto the web, so does important and valuable information. This has led to an increase in different kinds of manipulative patterns (dark patterns) in web design with the sole purpose of being deceptive and tricking users. This paper discusses the comprehensive suite of deceptive design patterns on Internet services where the users are expected to comply with the use of cookies. This was done by analyzing 50 different home cooking recipe websites, regarding their appliance to GDPR and how they use different dark patterns in their design. Even though legislation tries to move the choices from the website to the user, it is clear that by using deceptive design patterns it is possible to “bypass” the legislation and trick the user into making a favorable choice for the owners behind the website. The results show that out of the websites that were GDPR approved, a majority still use two types of deceptive design patterns - misdirection and sneak i...
Dark User Experience: From Manipulation to Deception
Ethics in Design and Communication, 2020
Hassenzahl (2008) defines User Experience (UX) as "the momentary feeling (good or bad) while interacting with a product or service” (p. 2). Even though this definition, or any other UX definition for that matter, do not mention that users’ experiences need to be positive, the importance of experiencing positive emotions while interacting with a device is widely acknowledged. The equation "better UX = more business"1 is the motto that determined the industry to embrace this field, and at the same time, opened the path for the UX to go beyond usability guidelines and the human factors studies. It is clear that, by facilitating tasks to the users and by addressing their needs, they will be more satisfied, more engaged, and eventually, it will have positive consequences on the business. Nonetheless, some companies are willing to reach their economic goals at any cost, regardless of whether the customer's feels satisfied after obtaining what she needed. They wonder: how can we design the user interface in order to increase the possibilities of reaching our objectives in a much more effective way? Metrics related to purchase conversions, user retention and engagement become the main focus of design, and any UX research conducted is aimed at understanding the user's needs or preferences is used for this purpose. In these cases, design is mainly aimed at increasing the company’s revenue, and companies sometimes cross the ethical line with this goal in mind. Such a phenomenon is called Dark UX. (5) (PDF) Dark User Experience: From Manipulation to Deception.
Managing Potentially Intrusive Practices in the Browser: A User-Centered Perspective
Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, 2021
Browser users encounter a broad array of potentially intrusive practices: from behavioral profiling, to crypto-mining, fingerprinting, and more. We study people’s perception, awareness, understanding, and preferences to opt out of those practices. We conducted a mixed-methods study that included qualitative (n=186) and quantitative (n=888) surveys covering 8 neutrally presented practices, equally highlighting both their benefits and risks. Consistent with prior research focusing on specific practices and mitigation techniques, we observe that most people are unaware of how to effectively identify or control the practices we surveyed. However, our user-centered approach reveals diverse views about the perceived risks and benefits, and that the majority of our participants wished to both restrict and be explicitly notified about the surveyed practices. Though prior research shows that meaningful controls are rarely available, we found that many participants mistakenly assume opt-out s...