Nasty Choice Architecture-The prevalence of Dark Patterns

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NASTY CHOICE ARCHITECTURE -THE PREVALENCE OF DARK PATTERNS

RITA MCGRATH

ARCHITECTURE ERIC JOHSON

OUR CHOICE

We may think we exercise free choice when we are making decisions. But as my colleague Eric Johnson points out, the structure of our choice architecture actually has a huge influence on the eventual outcome. It isn’t surprising, therefore, that some e-commerce retailers tilt the odds in their own favor.

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RITA MCGRATH

CHOICE ARCHITECTURE – THE DESIGNS THAT INFLUENCE HOW WE CHOOSE My colleague, Eric Johnson, has written a terrific book called The Elements of Choice in which he points out that “choice eventually made. By understanding and influencing the path people go through to come to an eventual decision, choice architects have an outsized impact on the outcomes we experience.

“PEOPLE AREN’T PARTICULARLY RATIONAL WHEN IT COMES TO DECISION-MAKING” https://www.ritamcgrath.com/sparks/

HOICE

architects” have a huge impact on the decisions that are

Groundbreaking work on how decisions are actually made happened at places like Carnegie Mellon and Stanford. The big insight was that people use “simplified rules of thumb, or heuristics” to make decisions. In Eric’s words, “The classic demonstration involved people making inconsistent choices, caused by things that should not matter.” But, instead of the usual framing of the problem as imperfect humans making silly choices, he’s taken a different tack.

What if we recognized the existence of these biases and designed choice architectures to help us achieve better outcomes?

ECISIONS

HEURISTICS AND THE CREATION OF A PLAUSIBLE PATH

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PEOPLE MAKING CHOICES

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This is the interruption of an activity with an unrelated request.

2.OBSTRUCTION

PATTERNS

ARK

1.NAGGING

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This involves putting obstacles in the way of your getting to the result you want.

3.SNEAKING Concealing, masking, or delaying the disclosure of information.

4.NTERFACE INTERFERENCE

This brings me to what Harry Brignall has called “dark patterns” in web design. A dark

Deliberately confusing the user by

pattern in web design represents a choice architecture deliberately created to force

putting some actions above others.

users to select options that they didn’t mean to, or which are not in their best interests.

His web site features a “hall of shame” in which web sites that deploy such tactics are

5.FORCED ACTION Allowing you to access a function or a resource only in exchange for you performing a certain action.

called out.

Colin Gray, a human-computer interaction researcher at Purdue University, has identified five basic types of dark patterns

ARK PATTERNS

Leveling the playing field – toward regulation of dark patterns?

Dark patterns on the Internet are a form of bad behavior that didn’t exist before, and regulators are always slow to react to novel elements of that kind.

But, in 2018, the Norwegian Consumer Council (Forbrukerrådet) wrote a report, Deceived by Design, offering copious examples of how the leading Internet platforms took advantage of dark patterns to essentially trick consumers into

"INTERNET PLATFORMS TOOK ADVANTAGE OF DARK PATTERNS"

offering up far more data than they might have with a different design. By 2022, the topic was taken up by the OECD who began having serious discussions about how to legally define dark-pattern marketing (as opposed to more benign messaging) and to establish what consumer harm might be caused.

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DARK PATTERNS AS A SERVICE???

Piotr ?lusarski, a UX designer and critic of the widespread use of dark patterns, found that there are commercial companies offering us dark patterns as a service! Boostplugin.com brazenly offers completely fake “social proof” for those “just starting out” who don’t have enough real boosts to share – “Eva from Gotenberg just bought this!”.

See Boost's screenshot

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