Design Challenge

Learning Outcome: This design challenge will teach you to pick out and identify Dark UX strategies.

Definition: Deceptive UI/UX interactions that mislead or trick the users into performing specific actions they don’t intend to take

Directions: 

1. Set up the test. Open this link in a new tab: https://www.yahoo.com/
2. Explaining the Test. 
   1. Once on the website, explore the pages
   2. Make sure to be on the lookout for instances of Dark UX as you go, so of which are listed below
   3. Go through and click on various parts of the site, including News, Entertainment, and Shopping (Shopping in particular may be helpful for some of the examples)
   4. Write down or take a mental note of each strategy you believe to be a usage of Dark UX
   5. After searching for a bit, express whether you think Yahoo’s UX strategies are effective

Examples: 

Disguised ads: Ads which look like they are part of site’s regular content, but take you someplace else

Hidden costs: When additional costs are added on the final step of the checkout process

Misdirection: When certain parts of the site stand out more in hopes that you overlook important information

Preventing price comparison: When a site intentionally does not show more prices for a single item

Forced continuity: When your credit card is automatically charged after starting a free trial. Another way this is used is having a subscription that is a pain to manually cancel, leading people to simply stay subscribed

Confirmsharing: Making you sign up for something or buy something by making the alternative seem worse somehow

Bait and Switch: When you do something expecting one outcome but another happens. A common example is a red ‘x’ on an d actually taking you to the site instead of closing the ad.

Final Thoughts:

The most common form of Dark UX used by large companies nowadays is Forced Continuity. Are there any sites you can think of or you are subscribed to yourself that you think use this strategy?

Resource Links:

https://cmsw.mit.edu/gamergate-perturbed-twitters-user-experience/?utm_content=buffer8dc69&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11002-022-09629-4Links to an external site.

https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/dark-patterns-ux/#disguised-ads