Criminal Design Patterns

Criminal design patterns, euphemistically called “dark patters” in the software industry are a scourge of internet. These are software interactions that dupe users into making deleterious choices in order to steal their data, money, attention, consent and much worse.

Logging in to a website, creating a new account, registering for a newsletter, unsubscribing from a mailing list, selecting a payment plan, forwarding a WhatsApp messages, doomscrolling on Instagram, and a tone of other everyday activities that we do online are what design professionals call design pattern. Over the years these patterns have been refined and optimized to a high degree and users expect them to work just so. These familiar patterns are what designers call “design patterns”.

Great people at UI Patterns have created an exhaustive list of such patterns here.

In 2010, Dr Harry Brignull launched a website darkpatterns.org (now deceptive.design) to address the growing issue of manipulative, deceptive and coercive design patterns all over the internet. His campaign let to the industry widely noticing and recognizing such patterns as dark patterns. Harry has updated the nomenclature to deceptive design patterns, however this is where we differ. As nomenclature, deceptive design doesn’t fully capture the inherent criminality of the companies that employ these patterns and tend to centre the responsibility on the designers.

Most of these practices in real life are considered criminal in nature and there are appropriate laws to prosecute offenders. In real life, if you are sold a fake or lower grade gold chain for the price of a 24 karat one, it will be considered a crime and law of the land can be invoked. In online world, the same technique (Sneaking) will be called deceptive and thats about it. As an industry we need to change this and thats why we, at Maya Studios, call such patterns as criminal design patterns.

• Addictive Design
• Sneaking: Bait and switch, entice users into a transaction by hiding information
• Forced Action: making users do what they don’t want
• Hard to cancel: Frustrate users when they want to cancel a subscription or service
• Hidden Costs
• Trick wording
• Fake social proof
• Fake urgency
• Comparison prevention
• Hidden subscription
• Currency Confusion
• Preselection: Shame users by selection options like 15% tip
• Obstruction
• Visual interference
• Nagging
• Confirmshaming
• Fake scarcity
• Disguised ads

Check out references section for links to websites and articles that enumerate these patterns, with examples, regularly.

• The name clearly identifies criminal intent
• The name assigns culpability of the business or organization instead of putting the onus on designers
• Gives vocabulary to designers/practitioners to protest against such work
• Encourages discussion of crime and criminal intent in the field of software design
• Shifts the blame from individual users (and human cognitive process of decision making) towards malafide business practices
• May eventually draw attention towards the economic loss suffered globally due to such patterns

We’ll cover this topic in detail in another article, but the biggest challenge with AI backed criminal design is that the face of deception has moved from few couple of screens (i.e. UI) to manipulation of a users entire digital ecosystems. With realtime user data, generative AI tools, lack of regulation etc., the role of design patterns (criminal or otherwise) in digital crime may not be central, but the internet is large and for the forseeable future most malpractices will still be done on standard issue websites and interfaces.

In conclusion, the scope and scale of internet based criminal practices is global and we from design community should do everything we can to reduce harm, defining design patterns that enable crime should be called out. Thats the least we can do.