Dark patterns 3: exploiting careless users

Harry Brignull describes dark patterns as those website design patterns that use a "solid understanding of human psychology against users".  They're used on websites that are in some way deliberately designed to trick the users. Examples include sneaking products into the online basket, or knowingly obfuscating the intent of dropdowns in order to sell more (more insurance, in one of Harry's examples).

Dark patterns trade on knowledge of user's on-line habits. In an earlier article, I wrote about how dark patterns can be considered acceptable business practice, but that as usability professionals, we must ensure that customers are informed about them. In this article, I'm wondering whether dark patterns successfully exploit users because when online, people are simply more trusting than they ought to be.

Users are not cautious enough when shopping online

People approach shopping on the web quite differently than they do shopping in person; on the web shopping is quick, easy, impersonal.  This remove from the reality of traditional shopping is the great asset of e-commerce, and its great problem too. People turn to the web for convenience, speed, ease of access (and, often, better pricing and choice).  No one should, however, treat buying on the web any more lightly than they do buying person; in both transactions monies are exchanged and contracts are entered into.

Yet we're all guilty of it all; we all use the web for convenience, because we're in a hurry.  That haste inevitably means we're going to be less cautious about the things we do. And we tend to take it less seriously; because the web is a non-physical medium, we tend to think that it has fewer consequences than physically shopping (or signing a contract, or whatever). The fact is that shopping on the web is a non-physical interaction with the same physical consequences (that's the attraction!).  We cannot take e-commerce any more lightly than we would going into a physical store and buying something.

Taking the web seriously; treating it with more respect

In fact, we should all take the web more seriously. We all need to be more cautious with online shopping, not laissez-faire about it. Having purchased goods or services online, it's often harder to get out of our sales contract or return faulty goods. Not because the legal structures are particularly different, but because internet shoppers are several steps removed from the stores that supply the items we buy.  If we want to return goods, we have to use a postal or delivery service (once removed) to get them back to the seller and then - if necessary - chase the returns by email or telephone (twice removed).

There are no fewer consequences to buying online than there are to buying offline. So we all need to read before we click; we need to make the effort to check the question we're answering, what's in our basket, exactly what we're paying for. Those times when we don't - which is often - are what dark patterns capitalise upon.

The phrase caveat emptor - let the buyer beware - has never been more relevant.

Help users to recognise and avoid dark patterns

Good user experience goes beyond avoiding anti-patterns and dark patterns; it actively supports users in areas we know them to be susceptible to manipulation. Educating users about the tricks that might be played upon them is a part of the whole. In addition, we need to consider safeguards that our websites do not accidentally manipulate our users. We need to be cognizant of our users' vulnerabilities and design our websites to limit the effect of those vulnerabilities.

Is any of the website's wording less clear than it could be? Does our helpfulness with suggestions of related products (and our natural drive for upsell) ever cross the line? In providing great online experience, are there off-line processes that, while necessary, are more difficult to use than they might be?

Knowing that users are susceptible to these situations, our job as interaction designers and usability professionals is not to exploit. Rather than using these traits of e-commerce against our users we should be helping them to deal with the consequences.

Understanding our users makes us better equipped to serve them. And that doesn't just mean giving them what they want; it's also about saving them from themselves. We have to ensure that our designs help prevent users falling foul of the various pitfalls that dark patterns exploit. Because we don't want our website to appear on the Dark Patterns website, even if it's by accident rather than design.

Dark Patterns and Customer Awareness

In website design, the term anti-patterns is used to describe those foot-in-mouth practices that result from laziness, ineptitude or simple mistakes on the part of the designers. They create a bad user experience for no other reason than the designers got it wrong. Anti-patterns serve neither users nor usability practitioners.

By contrast, Harry Brignull describes dark patterns as those website design patterns that use a "solid understanding of human psychology against users".  They're used on websites that are in some way deliberately designed to trick the users. Examples include sneaking products into the online basket, or knowingly obfuscating the intent of dropdowns in order to sell more (more insurance, in Harry's example of Trick Questions).

Dark patterns seem to deliberately mislead, or trade on knowledge of user's on-line habits.

What's so wrong with dark patterns?

From one perspective, nothing.

There's no mystery to the concept of upsell; that companies want to sell more of their products. That's simple business. That's good business.

Over at Usability Post, Dmitry Fadeyev has written two articles on the motives for bad design, citing the example of webpages so cluttered with ads and popups that their usability is reduced.  The point he makes is that those webpages are that way not through ineptitude, but through design; knowing that there is revenue to be made from advertising clicks, the website designers have made conscious decisions to include the elements that increase business at the cost of the user's experience.

Dmitry argues that design principles are often deliberately broken (by including attention-grabbing ads, cluttering up the page, for instance), because there are business reasons or benefits to do so. In the second part of his article, he considers a comment from Don Norman's classic Psychology of Everyday Things, where Don cites the example of chairs in a cafeteria made deliberately uncomfortable in order to discourage people from lingering in the cafeteria. Don considers this successful design, as the design criteria - of throughput, essentially, preventing people from staying over long in a space when they ere - were met.

We're familiar with this practice in our physical world. The chairs in MacDonalds are uncomfortable because the business model relies on high volume, rapid turnaround; they don't want people to stay. We're also familiar with marketing practices of opt-out boxes in the small print of application forms, often following opt-in boxes to confuse scan readers.  And yet these practices are tolerated - are in some way acceptable, in their way - because they're known, familiar.

These and other upsell practices, possibly because they are known, are not mysterious; they're in the public domain. We know about them; we're wise to the practices.  Publicising these tactics; informing and educating users about them has made the tactics less sneaky. Or perhaps no less sneaky, but somehow more palatable because they're known, expected, understandable.

Awareness of dark patterns demystifies them

We can achieve the same results for dark patterns. We can defuse dark patterns by revealing them; demystifying them. Once we know what to look for, we can neutralise their more poisonous effects.

This demystification is one of the things that Harry seeks to achieve through his website; to inform users of the practices out there. Because sneaky tactics need to be revealed.  Perhaps that's the only way to do this; to inform people of the tricks that can be got up to on the web.

I'm not advocating these practices. I'm not saying that usability professionals should embrace these principles; in another article, I'll have some things to say about professional ethics. And I'm not saying that we should expect little from our users; but it is, I think, our responsibility as ethical professionals to educate our users to some level.

Because awareness is a good thing. When a user's experience jars because of these bad practices, we should expect them to realise it, and to acknowledge it for what it is: simple business. And it becomes the user's choice to do business with the companies that use these practices.

But let's do our part as usability professionals to ensure that it is an informed decision.

Dark Patterns and Professional Ethics

In some industries, professional organisations award a chartered status that recognises an individual's professional competence and credentials. This status is typically awarded on the basis of a number of years of experience, and an assessment of professionalism. Many contain some ethical element; a formal code of conduct, for instance. For some industries, in particular the older professions such as accountancy and surveying, achieving chartered status is not just a significant milestone in one's career, it is a requirement for progression in the industry; an expected component of career progression.

BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT (formerly known as British Computer Society), recognises chartered IT professionals on a similar basis, but in our industry it is less of a requirement for career progression than in other professions. Although I know of a few friends and colleagues that have achieved their charter (and jolly well done them), my experience is that becoming chartered is the exception rather than the rule. In some senses, this reflects the relatively young nature of our industry, as much as the rapidly changing disciplines that form our profession. But I think it's a shame that we don't - not yet, at any rate - formally expect such high standards of our profession.

It hardly needs to be said that this situation doesn't preclude us from conducting ourselves in a professional manner, of course, and I have worked with a great number of colleagues that have tremendous integrity. Indeed,  I think there's certain levels of professionalism required or expected from us, including sometimes standing up to our clients.

At the UX Brighton 2010 conference on Monday, Harry Brignull gave a presentation on Dark Patterns, where he identified the kind of dirty tricks sometimes seen on websites, such as:

• "helpfully" selecting default options on radio groups that may not be beneficial to the user
• sneak into basket - adding items to a user's basket unasked
• anti-scan trick questions - deliberately obscuring the meaning and intent of an input field, such as disguising an opt-out as a nationality question.

You can read more about Harry's expanding collection of Dark Patterns on the http://darkpatterns.org/ website.

At the end of his talk, Harry discussed whether the designers of these pages knowingly and deliberately used these techniques, and raised the question of whether they should have exercised some code of ethics to avoid this behaviour. In other words, should the designers and usability professionals have said No to their client, and declined to participate in such unethical behaviour?

I've been thinking about this question, and trying to put myself into the situation of the designers and developers in these cases. On the one hand, I hope that I would stand up for what I consider to be right; champion the ethical course, according to my own personal code of conduct. I would certainly like to believe that if I were in the situation of being employed to use these dirty tricks, I would have argued against them with my employer or client.

Am I being naive? In the current economic climate, a job is a job, and it would take a strong, self-confident (not to say financially solvent) individual to walk away from a project that required them to work in a manner that didn't sit right with their ethics. I'm sure that many people, perhaps the more junior members of the team, or those with families and dependants, would find it more prudent to put their ethical concerns to one side in preference to losing their income. It comes down to an individual's personal situation.

Would membership of a professional body help in this scenario; would chartered status pull any weight with the client? Or would it take something as heavy-handed as regulation to prevent these techniques from being used, and so avoid putting our professionals in the difficult position of choosing ethics over income?

What Dark Patterns have you seen on the web? And, as a UX professional, what ethical stance would you take on this subject? How would you balance your financial needs with your professional ethics? Leave your comments below.