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Show HN: Interactive game teaching dark patterns in UX design

games.productartistry.com

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Re: Show HN: Interactive game teaching dark patterns in UX design

#61

Post by loloquwowndueo »

pointedAt wrote: post #56
csallen wrote: post #26

Cool idea, pretty good execution, but your UI is confusing. 1. There's so much happening on the screen between your app's UI and the fake UI with the dark patterns that it's confusing. IMO you should show the objective first, and then let the user click to reveal the fake UI and challenge. For example, simply show, "Challenge #1 — Find the button that actually lets you cancel the subscription." Then have a button tha…

addidition to 1. before it all begins, have a few modals do something like "Your are being fucked with. The economy has a secret system: A machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know that because I designed some really fancy parts of that machine. To abuse your gullibility, to exploit your cognitive fallacies. To prime you, to nudge your bias. All in favor of the portfolio, of enshittification. You don'…

Kudos on the Person of Interest intro references.

Re: Show HN: Interactive game teaching dark patterns in UX design

#63

Post by throwaway127482 »

rohandehal wrote: post #14
darcien wrote: post #7

Nice game! Seems like someone already gave the feedback about the lack of time to read the explanation before the game progressed automatically. BTW something on the game is making my CPU go 100%. I'm on Firefox, Linux and in the JS console I can see "Unexpected value translate(52.460687992082626%, 52.24894125700998%) scale(1.0398801892701597) parsing transform attribute." warning being printed nonstop.

Thanks for helping identify my first ever hotfix! There was bound to be an issue given this is my first real solo web development project - the background animation was causing the CPU issue as I immediately suspected. I've just pushed a fix that resolves this, along with extending the completion timer to 5 seconds for better readability. This timer adjustment is a temporary solution until I can implement a more conf…

Something is still not right for me. The scrolling is extremely janky. I'm on mobile so can't check devtools right now, but I would open up Chrome's Rendering tab in devtools and check for excessive layout recalculations and such. Maybe also do some performance profiling

Re: Show HN: Interactive game teaching dark patterns in UX design

#64

Post by rohandehal »

NotAnOtter wrote: post #25

Fantastic idea, the UI of the site is clean, I think the actual content itself could use some improvement. After opening the site I had to "fail" a couple just to understand what the user goal even was. I recognized the fake/misleading UI but still wasn't sure what to do with that information. I think you should take this exact concept, do some user studies, and come out with a V2. There's a market for this. My grand…

Thanks so much for the kind words about the UI and concept! I’ve gotten a lot of feedback about improving the gamification and making the user goals clearer, and it’s something I’m really targeting in the next iteration.

I really like the idea of turning this into an educational tool or test, especially for younger or older audiences who need help with tech literacy. It’s a great use case and definitely fits with where I want to take the project. Thanks again for sharing—it’s super valuable!

Re: Show HN: Interactive game teaching dark patterns in UX design

#65

Post by rohandehal »

gs17 wrote: post #19

It's a nice game but I have some feedback: The first two levels want you to click the non-misleading option and then the third requires you to click the misleading option, which then has a "Report as Deceptive Marketing" button. This feels counterproductive if you're trying to teach people to not fall for dark patterns, you've just rewarded them for falling for it and punished anyone who didn't!. Then, a later level…

Thanks for the detailed lesson feedback! Developing the game piece by piece made it harder to step back and see how the flow worked as a whole, and I can see where the gamification falls short.

For the next update, I’m planning to streamline the flow so that all patterns reinforce positive actions and avoid rewarding the wrong behaviors. I also want to separate the educational aspects more clearly to make the goals and outcomes easier to understand. Your insights will definitely help guide those changes—thank you again for sharing!

Re: Show HN: Interactive game teaching dark patterns in UX design

#66

Post by rohandehal »

magnat wrote: post #52

Similar vibes to https://userinyerface.com/ Also, for some reason, hogs 100% CPU recursing like hell between two methods: o0 [https://games.productartistry.com/_next/static/chunks/4bd1b696-98e9308c101e0794.js:1:90345] o2 [https://games.productartistry.com/_next/static/chunks/4bd1b696-98e9308c101e0794.js:1:90778]

That game really is the final boss. I’ll dig into the recursion issue and get it fixed - Appreciate you taking the time to flag it!

Re: Show HN: Interactive game teaching dark patterns in UX design

#67

Post by rohandehal »

csallen wrote: post #26

Cool idea, pretty good execution, but your UI is confusing. 1. There's so much happening on the screen between your app's UI and the fake UI with the dark patterns that it's confusing. IMO you should show the objective first, and then let the user click to reveal the fake UI and challenge. For example, simply show, "Challenge #1 — Find the button that actually lets you cancel the subscription." Then have a button tha…

This is fantastic feedback—thanks for taking the time to share it! I’m updating the flow so users see the objective first and can click to reveal the challenge and then the learning objectives. Leaning more into the simulation aspect and adding real-world context should help clear up much of the current confusion in the game design.

Auto-advance has already been removed in my WIP branch based on overwhelming feedback, and the new stage-wise approach works much better.

Re: Show HN: Interactive game teaching dark patterns in UX design

#68

Post by immibis »

rohandehal wrote: post #65
gs17 wrote: post #19

It's a nice game but I have some feedback: The first two levels want you to click the non-misleading option and then the third requires you to click the misleading option, which then has a "Report as Deceptive Marketing" button. This feels counterproductive if you're trying to teach people to not fall for dark patterns, you've just rewarded them for falling for it and punished anyone who didn't!. Then, a later level…

Thanks for the detailed lesson feedback! Developing the game piece by piece made it harder to step back and see how the flow worked as a whole, and I can see where the gamification falls short. For the next update, I’m planning to streamline the flow so that all patterns reinforce positive actions and avoid rewarding the wrong behaviors. I also want to separate the educational aspects more clearly to make the goals a…

If you want to make it a game about reading fine print instead of a game about clicking on "no", you could mix in some levels where the big obvious button is actually the correct one.
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