Designing for Behavior Change, 2nd Edition

Chapter 4. Ethics of Behavioral Science

Researchers at Princeton developed an automated tool for searching websites for dark patterns: “user interface design choices that benefit an online service by coercing, steering, or deceiving users into making unintended and potentially harmful decisions.” In analyzing 11,000 websites, they found 1,841 dark patterns. They even found 22 third-party companies who offer “dark patterns as a turnkey solution”; in other words, digital manipulation as a service.¹

The term dark pattern was coined by UX specialist Harry Brignull, who categorizes 11 different types, from confirmshaming (guilting the user into opting in) to privacy Zuckering (you can probably guess). He hosts a “Wall of Shame” of companies clearly trying to trick their users and demonstrates how Amazon makes it nearly impossible that someone will discover how to cancel their account, which Brignull nicely calls a “roach motel”: you can enter, but you can never leave.

Sadly, cases of such deceptive techniques aren’t hard to find in practice. A recent New York Times exposé, for example, detailed how the company thredUP generated fake users to make it look like other people had recently purchased a product and saved money to encourage real customers to make a purchase themselves.²

There’s a rightful backlash against the application of psychology and behavioral techniques in the design of products and marketing campaigns. Products that seek to manipulate users—to make them buy, get them ...