What are “dark patterns” and why I won’t use them

Have you ever found yourself wanting to get out of a subscription, but found it difficult to find the option? That’s what we call dark patterns. It’s a deliberate design choice to make you consider a specific pathway in the app or website you’re using.

It could be as simple as a pop-up when you exit a site, which is mildly annoying! Or a dark pattern can be as complicated as showing you “consequences” if you decide to cancel a paid plan. Like, “look at these wonderful features you’re missing out on! Ooo!”

What prompted me to write this, is that I found a specific case study while trying to cancel my paid Dropbox subscription. Let me take you through it:

First pattern: A subtle hint

Take a look here: Along every step of the way, we are reminded of what Dropbox wants us to do, “Upgrade your plan”.

Barrier 2: It’s the last option, and we don’t want you to choose it

Here’s the first thing you see when you click on “Manage account”:

We need to scroll all the way down on the “Manage account” page to find the cancellation option.

Here we can see our first explicit nudge of where Dropbox wants us to go. “If you cancel your plan, you’ll lose access to all paid features.”

Okay.

Barrier 3: The many, many warnings before the cancellation actually occurs

Here’s what happens when you select “Cancel plan”:

You get some reminders about functionality you will lose. Fair enough if you are relying on these! But you wanted to cancel, right? And what’s that? The first and most prominent button says “Keep Plan”. Let’s keep scrolling!

Okay! That’s more like it! So if I click “Continue cancelling”, my plan will be cancelled, right?

Barrier 4: The “cancel” button that isn’t a cancel button

Wrong! “Continue cancelling” was in fact, not the button that made the cancellation happen. And the dark pattern strikes again! Here’s another web page we must pass through before finding the real cancel button. Oh dear!

Clearly Dropbox want to avoid me unsubscribing if it can he helped. So this page shows a bunch of different reasons why I shouldn’t.

But my mind’s been made up. I’m not getting as much use out of it as I thought.

I mostly signed up so that my web design clients could transfer files to me, but most people simply send their files in an email.

So why couldn’t I cancel with one simple click? Well, Dropbox seem to have their reasons. I’ll speculate on that next…

So… What’s the problem with dark patterns?

Well, a great degree of analysis is done on web interfaces like this. When a certain design or word choice is proven, by data, to achieve a desired outcome — it gets perpetuated. For some entities, it doesn’t matter how customers are made to feel if a design choice is proven to achieve a financial goal. For me, these kinds of decisions put data and greed ahead of ethics and kindness.

While Dropbox hasn’t given us the most egregious example here, they’ve got some true dark pattern elements going. This has allowed me to go through the process as I experienced it, without being overcome by too much grief. Heh. But they do show a couple of “tricks” as described in this article by Ravneet Sing at Net Solutions: 10 Common Dark Patterns in UX and How to Avoid Them. When cancelling my Dropbox plan, I’ve experienced The Roach Motel, and Social Proof techniques.

So, I hope I’ve done alright at explaining what dark patterns are. Perhaps now you’ll be aware when you’re experiencing one.

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