Dark patterns Hall of Shame

User experience design has been around for a while. At some point, people began confusing good user experience design with metrics. Companies began to use any tricks to increase all possible metrics.

I bet somebody during the A/B test discovered drastic metrics changes if they make, for example, the "Cancel Subscription" button a secondary and "Keep Subscription" as primary.

In other tests, they probably found that adding hidden costs at the last step of your checkout process will make your business more sustainable and trustworthy.

Nowadays, we know the name of all these tricks - dark patterns, and many companies are still actively using them, including big companies like Microsoft, The New York Times, Papa John's, Dropbox, etc.

That's why we built a website Hallofshame.design where you can track companies and dark patterns used all over the internet and trick people for the company's benefit. We will keep adding information about dark patterns and companies to spread awareness and shame companies that use them.

Posted on Jul 11, 2022

More by Taras Savytskyi

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