Dark Patterns with CPHUX & IDA Design and Innovation

A dark pattern (also known as a "deceptive design pattern") is a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying overpriced insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills.

Surprisingly many UX professionals aren’t familiar with this term and might have a hard time standing up to managers asking for borderline dark patterns in their designs because they don’t know better.

Come and get smarter about Dark Patterns from other industry professionals. 

AGENDA

18.00-18.30: Welcome, food & networking

18.30-18.45: Presentation of CPHUX and IDA 

18.45-19.05: Uncover the deep behavioral roots of dark patterns
by Lizette Kristiansen Taguchi, Independent innovation consultant 

User experience can be thought of as an iceberg: the visual layer above the water, and the nudging layer hiding just beneath the water. But the vast bulk of the iceberg lies deep beneath the water and is made up of human behavioral patterns and the strong emotions they engender: shame, aspiration, and fear to name a few. At the core of this is a question of identity - who am I, and how do I wish other people would perceive me? Dark patterns exploit these emotional drivers to maximize user engagement and ultimately profit. This talk takes you on a turbo-charged tour of decades of academic research to show you the deep behavioral roots of the human buttons you can push. But we all know that with great power comes great responsibility - so the talk concludes by flipping the script and showing you how you can harness this knowledge for good.

19.05-19.25: Making it worse with words: How to turn deceptive copy into useful experiences
Stefani Vujic, Freelance UX writer & content strategist at The Peckish Pen

Adding words to dark patterns and deceptive design is like adding fuel to the fire. The result? A bigger fire! But you need words to make the user experience work, so how do you go about them without creating a hot mess?
Whether you're a content writer, designer, PM or like-minded, the answer is the same: stop caring so much about confirm shaming and start using tone, framing and the truth to convey your message. Zero risk of fire hazard – heaps of opportunities to help your users do what they came here to do.

​19:25-19:40: BREAK 😉 Go stretch those legs and get a drink 🚰

19.40-20.00: UX design in online shopping - persuading the user to buy more stuff
Anna Ratkai, UX Researcher at Recorded Future

We all love a great online shopping experience. We love to design one. Making it super easy for our users to find the specific purple sweater they have been looking for, what a rewarding job we have! 

But unfortunately  the story doesn’t end there. 

While we just want to design the smoothest, easiest shopping experience for the users, our boss and boss’ boss care about busines metrics like sales conversion rate, average order value, inventory sold per day etc. The more the user busys the better. To achieve these business goals, we use the tools and platforms available to us: nudging, dark patterns, and psychology applied on digital shopping interfaces to ‘help’ the user fill up their cart with more stuff.

Ultimately this impacts one of the biggest stakeholder in the process, who we tend to forget about: the planet. Our current speed and scale of consumption of resources is unsustainable and as UX designers we must be aware of the impact we have around us. 

After this talk you will have a better understanding of what persuasive UX design tools and tactics are used to encourage consumerism, and (hopefully) start questioning the ethicality of established e-commerce design patterns. 

20.00-20.40: Gamification the new disguise to dark patterns
Amit Aggarwal, Senior UX Designer at Maersk

The incorporation of gamification into contemporary user experiences is intended to elicit feelings of addiction and compulsivity, generating an attachment to the service from which users may find it exceedingly challenging to break free. 

Although it goes by the names "habit building applications" and "hooked," the negative consequences can occasionally also be accompanied with unpleasant stimuli. I want to delve into the psychological side of creating these gamified patterns, muscle memory, and masking one motivation with another.

The presentation would have several examples of such patterns and I want to conclude with an open question about responsibility of masking the motivations to transparency as a design principle.

20.40-21.00: Panel with community questions from Slido

21.00-21.30: Thank you for tonight & networking 

SLIDO:

You can use the app slido to ask and upvote questions for the speaker.

Go here https://app.sli.do/event/mUqNpwHT9nLtdMXvgh4VC5

Or use the code 3610150

MEET UX PASSIONISTS:

Lizette Kristiansen Taguchi
Independent innovation consultant 

I am an Ivy League PhD dropout who left Princeton to build products and services that have a positive social impact. I've done that as a senior social innovator at the ROCKWOOL Foundation specializing in education and mental health, and by building digital products in the startup world. I've created DEVELOP toolkit that in two short hours walks you and your team through the process of applying behavioral science to (re)design products and services for or with young people.

Stefani Vujic
Freelance UX writer & content strategist at The Peckish Pen

Hello, I’m Stefani aka The Peckish Pen. Since 2014, I’ve been adding words to experiences and bringing stories to life. I’m a strategist and a creator, and you’ll find me planning and implementing copy or campaigns one day and creating voice and tone the next.

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