The most common way for describing the concept of Dark UX, is; to define its unfair and tendentious design traps to delude and profit from the web users. Most of the times, the dark UX patterns, aims to direct and manipulate the users for the sake of the website or the business. This may mean asking for more information than is relevant to a transaction, eliminating important navigation elements to reduce site abandonment, or opting users into receive promotions by default. There are various methods that designers take advantage of the concept of dark UX. First one can be called misdirection; by canalizing the user attention on the desired thing purposefully in order to distract your attention from the real need. In this case designers use stress elements like borders, shadows, font sizes etc., to manipulate the user and direct them to make the wrong choice. Secondly, dictating hidden costs; by directing the user until the checkout process and then asking them to pay unexpected minor costs to complete payment. Additionally, it may sound extremely ridiculous but would you believe if I tell you that, there is even a method called confirm shaming where the designers or the businesses, making the website users feel guilty or lame by actually creating their choices as a button and write humiliating text on it? (https://careerfoundry.com/) And finally, fear of missing out or “FOMO”, is one of the strongest methods to manipulate the users. In this method, businesses, are playing with the numbers and demonstrating them as they are being sold very quickly and there is not enough of that product and they are already in other users’ basket etc. So, the users are getting nervous and feel the pressure to buy that product or service as soon as they can. The methods discussed in this post can seem like favorable, to the business’s operations but in long term, I don’t think that they can maintain a strong relationship with their users and a sustainable brand loyalty. From my experience, another point that I have to admit is that; many small design agencies and large corporate firms don’t tend to work with UX designers who have a past with the dark or evil UX patterns. So, they might have some career related problems in the future.
