On April 1st I attended Brighton SEO - the brilliant Brighton Based SEO conference arranged by Kelvin Newman of SiteVisibility. One of my favourite presentations of the day was given by Dr Harry Brignull (who many years ago actually delivered a couple of Director courses at Silicon Beach Training!). Harry is a User Interface designer, who has created a brilliant Wiki called Dark Patterns, which highlights ‘Black Hat’ design techniques in website User Interfaces (or UIs).

Many people are familiar with the term Black Hat in the context of SEO (i.e. SEO techniques that go against Google’s guidelines) – however this is the first time I’d heard the term used in the context of User Interface Design.

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What are Dark Patterns?

“Dark Patterns” are UIs that are deliberately designed to confuse, dupe and exploit users in to parting with more cash than they were expecting, or to sign up for additional services they didn’t want.

Have you ever been shopping online and got to a page where you’ve really had to look hard to opt-out of a service you didn’t want, or noticed a check-box that had been ticked by default that you had to un-check. These are examples of fairly simple Dark Patterns – user interface features that are designed to make users who are in a hurry (i.e. most of us, most of the time) sign up for options that they didn’t necessarily want.

It’s one thing to end up on a mailing list you didn’t want to be on – but Dark Patterns can be much more devious than the simple ‘box checked by default’ trick – and some of the really nasty ones can lead to you paying more money without realising. This is the sort of thing that companies can only get away with online – the equivalent, in Harry’s words, of someone “slipping an organic chicken in to your trolley in Tesco’s without you realising”!

In his presentation – Harry gave examples of some fairly high-profile companies that are using Dark Patterns, including Comet, who automatically put a £30 iPad case in to your basket when you buy an iPad, and Wired Magazine, who use a deliberately confusing interface to make it hard for users to unsubscribe from all of their services.

However he awarded the Evil Genius Award to RyanAir (well known for scamming their customers), who have a really devious trick question to dupe passengers in to signing up for travel insurance. See Harry’s explanation below – a description of this devious piece of design can also be found on the Dark Patterns website here

Implications of Dark Patterns for your Brand

So why do UI designers use Dark Patterns? Well – unfortunately, the reason is that they work. Building in these kind of tricks will inevitably catch out a certain percentage of users, making more money for the company – so why not put them in?

Well – getting a few extra quid out of some customers is one thing – but how you want your brand to be perceived online is another. RyanAir are well known for squeezing every last penny out of their passengers, and to an extent people have grown to expect that from budget airlines – so RyanAir probably don’t care that these tricks in their websites make them look cheap.

However before you go ahead and put a Dark Pattern in to your own site – think about the implications for the user experience, how people will perceive your brand, and if they are likely to criticise you to their friends as a result (in the age of Social Media, bad news travels fast!). At worst your customers will take their future business elsewhere.

To give a direct personal example – this week I tried to upgrade some web hosting that I have with 123-reg. The first screen in the upgrade process showed price of £3.75 per month. However when I clicked through to give my card details, the price had mysteriously gone up to £59.88 per year – that’s £4.99 per month when you do the maths. When I asked 123-reg for an explanation no-one could really tell me why this was happening, so I added the 123-reg upgrade price scam to the Dark Patterns Wiki, and tweeted the link to 123-reg on twitter.

Lo and behold - 2 days later the page had been updated displaying the correct price!!

Thankfully – users are getting wise to deceptive web design, and the Dark Patterns Wiki gives you a brilliant opportunity to expose companies who are trying it on. If you notice Dark Patterns in any sites you use – I’d encourage you to add them to the Wiki, and share the site on Facebook and Twitter with your friends. The more these sort of tricks are made public, the less companies will feel they can get away with them, and fewer people will get conned!

The full Presentation Slides with Audio from Harry’s presentation can be found HERE

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Tags

123-reg, Bad User Interface Design, black hat user interface, brightonseo, Dark Patterns, Dr Harry Brignull, RyanAir, search engine optimisation training, seo training, Social Media Training, UI, UI Design, Web Design, Web Design Training, web design training brighton, What are Dark Patterns, Wired Magazine

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