Interest in critical scholarship that engages with the complexity of user experience (UX) practice is rapidly expanding, yet the vocabulary for describing and assessing criticality in practice is currently lacking. In this paper, we outline and explore the limits of a specific ethical phenomenon known as "dark patterns," where user value is supplanted in favor of shareholder value. We assembled a corpus of examples of practitioner-identified dark patterns and performed a content analysis to determine the ethical concerns contained in these examples. This analysis revealed a wide range of ethical issues raised by practitioners that were frequently conflated under the umbrella term of dark patterns, while also underscoring a shared concern that UX designers could easily become complicit in manipulative or unreasonably persuasive practices. We conclude with implications for the education and practice of UX designers, and a proposal for broadening research on the ethics of user experience.

1. COLIN M. GRAY, YUBO KOU,
BRYAN BATTLES, JOSEPH HOGGATT,
& AUSTIN L. TOOMBS
PURDUE UNIVERSITY
The Dark (Patterns) Side
OF UX DESIGN

2. Increasing interest in critical/
ethical aspects of HCI & UX

3. Our Concern
Ethics-focused methods are frequently bound to
academia, making practitioner access to these
conversations difficult, and activation of their
implications problematic.

4. https://medium.com/shanghaiist/chinese-shoe-company-tricks-people-
into-swiping-instagram-ad-with-fake-strand-of-hair-54d8a2d8ec1d

5. Harry Brignull
UX practitioner
“A user interface that has been carefully
crafted to trick users into doing things…they are
not mistakes, they are carefully crafted with a
solid understanding of human psychology, and
they do not have the user’s interests in mind”

6. BRIGNULL’STYPOLOGY

7. EXPANDINGUPONBRIGNULL
Which user or stakeholder interests are or
should be kept in mind?
What is the user being “tricked” into doing,
and with what motivation?
Are there instances where being tricked into
doing something is desired by the user?
Can interactions not designed to trick the user later become
dark patterns through tech infrastructure changes?

8. EXPANDINGUPONBRIGNULL
Which user or stakeholder interests are or
should be kept in mind?
What is the user being “tricked” into doing,
and with what motivation?
Are there instances where being tricked into
doing something is desired by the user?
Can interactions not designed to trick the user later become
dark patterns through tech infrastructure changes?

9. EXPANDINGUPONBRIGNULL
Which user or stakeholder interests are or
should be kept in mind?
What is the user being “tricked” into doing,
and with what motivation?
Are there instances where being tricked into
doing something is desired by the user?
Can interactions not designed to trick the user later become
dark patterns through tech infrastructure changes?

10. EXPANDINGUPONBRIGNULL
Which user or stakeholder interests are or
should be kept in mind?
What is the user being “tricked” into doing,
and with what motivation?
Are there instances where being tricked into
doing something is desired by the user?
Can interactions not designed to trick the user later become
dark patterns through tech infrastructure changes?

11. Aims
Connect Brignull’s typology
more strongly to existing
literature on ethics and values
Create more tractable
dark pattern categories for
practitioner use & interrogation
1
2

12. Aims
Connect Brignull’s typology
more strongly to existing
literature on ethics and values
Create more tractable
dark pattern categories for
practitioner use & interrogation
1
2

13. Corpus Generation
Collecting dark patterns exemplars.

14. CORPUS GENERATION
Search Process
Researcher 2
CS Background
API Bot
Crawling #darkpatterns
Researcher 1
UX Background
Commercial Sites BlogsSearch Engines Social Media
Corpus of “dark patterns” related artifacts

15. 118 artifacts collected
from social media outlets
CORPUS GENERATION
45
from practitioner blogs40
from news outlets19
from personal product interactions10
from darkpatterns.org4

16. Corpus Analysis
Coding and categorizing the collected artifacts.

17. CORPUS ANALYSIS
Open Coding Approach
Brignull’s
Categories + Context
Interaction
Quality
Intended
User Group
=
Hierarchical
Themes
Reflecting
Designer
Strateg(ies)

18. Five Dark Strategies
Appearing to serve as strategic motivators in practice.
NAGGING OBSTRUCTION SNEAKING
INTERFACE
INTERFERENCE FORCED ACTION

19. 1 Nagging
A minor redirection of expected functionality that
may persist over one or more interactions.
DARK STRATEGIES

20. 1 Apple: iCloud Storage
NAGGING EXAMPLE

21. 2 Obstruction
Impeding a task flow, making an interaction more difficult
than it needs to be, with intent to dissuade an action.
Brignull’s “Roach Motel”SUBTYPES
Brignull’s “Price Comparison Prevention”
Intermediate Currency
DARK STRATEGIES

22. 2 Zynga: Unsubscribe
OBSTRUCTION EXAMPLE

23. 3 Sneaking
Hiding, disguising, or delaying the divulging of relevant
information. Often intended to force uninformed decisions.
Brignull’s “Bait and Switch”
Brignull’s “Forced Continuity”SUBTYPES
Brignull’s “Hidden Costs”
Brignull’s “Sneak into Basket”
DARK STRATEGIES

24. 3 Sleep Cycle:
“Free Trial”
SNEAKING EXAMPLE

25. 4 Interface Interference
Privileging specific actions over others, thereby confusing
the user or limiting discoverability of important actions.
Brignull’s “Trick Questions”
Toying with EmotionSUBTYPES
False Hierarchy
Brignull’s “Disguised Ad”
Preselection
Aesthetic Manipulation
Hidden Information
DARK STRATEGIES

26. 4 Two Dots: Muscle Memory
INTERFACE INTERFERENCE EXAMPLE

27. 5 Forced Action
Requiring users to perform a specific action to access
(or continue to access) specific functionality.
Social PyramidSUBTYPES
Brignull’s “Privacy Zuckering”
Gamification
DARK STRATEGIES

28. 5 Instagram: No
Option for “No”
FORCED ACTION EXAMPLE

29. darkpatterns.uxp2.com
CORPUS OF ARTIFACTS

30. Qualities & Breadth of Potential “Dark”ness
Reduction in user agency or
action possibilities
Persuasion or dark patterns?
How to balance user and
shareholder value?

31. Design Responsibility & Design Character
When does a pattern become dark?
Ethics codes generally conflate
designer intent and eventual use
Opportunities for ethical
design leadership

32. Implications & Future Work
Moving forward.

33. UX Pedagogy & Practice
Increased ethical awareness in
design and UX education
Documentation of practice-based
ethical dilemmas

34. Criticality & HCI
Further integration and expansion
of value-centered methods in UX
Focus on applied, pragmatist
views of ethics in HCI research
and practice

35. THANK YOU
COLIN M. GRAY
colingray.me | uxp2.com
gray42@purdue.edu
This research was funded in part by National
Science Foundation Grant No. #1657310