Dark Patterns in Your Everyday Apps

Do not confuse it with Dark Mode

Author: rawpixel.com

The hype of “The Social Dilemma” made many viewers become aware of the power of technology and its influence on all of us. For UX Designers, the use of dishonest tricks in digital platforms is not a new topic. We call them dark patterns.

Dark Patterns are tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you didn’t mean to, like buying or signing up for something. The purpose of this site is to spread awareness and to shame companies that use them.

Evil design patterns, unfortunately, are very common. To demonstrate, I created a compilation of dark patterns we can find every day.

Youtube Disguised Ads

Disguised Ads: Adverts that are disguised as other kinds of content or navigation, in order to get you to click on them.

Author/Copyright holder: Youtube. Copyright terms and license: Fair Use.

The very first thing Youtube displays when the app is open is not a video, but an ad that really looks like a video. When a user scrolls down the app, he comes across many of these ads disguised as videos, which the user can easily click by mistake.

Spotify Roach Motel

Roach Motel: The design makes it very easy for you to get into a certain situation, but then makes it hard for you to get out of it (e.g. a subscription).

Remember when you created your Spotify account? Probably not. Maybe you only used OAuth and immediately got logged in with your Facebook account. If not, you simply filled a small survey with your registration data and you were in. What about deleting your Spotify account? If you ever tried to do it, you probably remember how painful it was.

Spotify’s webpage makes it easy for the user to find where to Log in or to Sign up. There are clear options in the navbar, as well as a highlighted button in the center of the screen for it.

Author/Copyright holder: Spotify. Copyright terms and license: Fair Use.