We present you the dark patterns, this misleading design that plays against us
“We fall into the dark pattern when we use tools designed to improve the user experience, but at the wrong time. If you are not an expert in design in the Internet age, this sentence, pronounced by Célia Hodent, a true specialist in the subject with a doctorate in psychology having worked at Ubisoft, LucasArts and Epic Games, must seem damn obscure to you. Yet we have all, during our digital lives, been confronted with dark patterns, or misleading designs / manipulators in French.
We present you the dark patterns, this misleading design that plays against us
A pop-up window that opens to redirect you to a nebulous site, convoluted privacy settings, checkboxes already checked to subscribe to multiple content… These are some examples of misleading designs. For Estelle Hary, designer and member of the CNIL, the National Commission for Information Technology and Liberties, “the manipulation of individuals is recurrent on digital services and products, especially at the time of collection of personal data. Often these practices are based on dark patterns, aimed at influencing consent, confusing the individual, creating frictions of use or pushing the individual to share more data than necessary. “Let’s shed light on 4 dark patterns, more or less dark, that we encounter every day.
1 The autoplay
2 Luring of the emergency
3 Roach motel or cockroach hotel
4 Opt-in/opt-out
