Why bosses need to wake up to dark patterns

DIGITAL design sounds innocuous enough. Dark patterns, less so. That’s the term for user interfaces which nudge or manipulate consumers into making choices they otherwise wouldn’t.

You will recognise many of them. The button to turn down an offer that says something like: “Yes, I would like to miss out on the bargain of the century.” The “Enrol now for rewards” option which is three times bigger and much brighter than the one saying, “I’d just like the thing I came here for.” The cancellation journey so byzantine that people forget what it was they were trying to do. The message that implies 300 people are looking at the same hotel room as you.

Such practices can be very effective, at least in the short term. A study published in 2021 by Jamie Luguri and Lior Strahilevitz of the University of Chicago Law School exposed samples of American consumers to dark patterns when promoting a free trial of a service.