Isn't part of the problem that "conversion rates" and "engagement" now trump just about every other metric? Anyone know good ways to quantify annoyance rate and off-puttedness?
Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]
251–260 of 321 posts
Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]
#252Here is another unsubscribe dark pattern: http://imgur.com/a/lLZAE * Do I check the item if I want to unsubscribe from it? * Or do I uncheck the items I don't wish to receive? 50-50 chance -- which I'm sure they love. Clicking "Update" gives no feedback either, just reloads the page.
To me it looks like the checked ones are the ones to unsubscribe from.
The button text should read "unsubscribe" in that case, not "update", and the header text "Subscriptions". It could be a lot clearer.
Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not just Amazon, I am constantly clicking through those unsubscribe links but just get auto-signed up for new lists. Fuck you Amazon and anyone else that does this. I'll buy your junk when and if I need to. Leave me alone and stop wasting my life.
Never click a spammer's "unsubscribe" links -- that just tells them they have a valid account. If you use a big email provider like gmail, flag them as spam. Otherwise, make a rule in your mail client to automatically file anything from their domain to the trash.
I've had good success with unsubscribing from legitimate mailing lists using the links at the bottom of an email. It's not the company's fault if I unthinkingly subscribed to their newsletters - they shouldn't have all their emails forever tagged as spam for my mistake.
Real spam however, rarely makes it into my inbox - it gets filtered out and deleted without ever being opened.
Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Use 1111 2222 3333 4444, the credit card test number. This is valid at the check digit level, but known to all banks as a test number to be rejected.
I suspect there are many interfaces that would reject this number, as it's not a visa, master card or amex (which start with a 4, 5 and 3 respectively). 5105105105105100 and 4111111111111111 might be better alternatives (other test numbers that also pass the luhn check).
And when using email addresses to test your software always use [something]@test.com instead of [whatevs]@example.com because the people at test.com love getting your random test data.
/sarcasm Don't do this. http://contactx.test.com/contactX/contact-spam.cfm
Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]
#255One pattern that I consider "dark", but don't see in this list, is using loaded options on a dialog box. One that I often see in apps is like: Rate our app! Those really get under my skin because the developer is clearly trying to play a psychological trick on me, but it's so brazen and obvious that it just pisses me off. And bigger companies do it too (e.g. Google).
There's a tumblr for that! They call it "confirm shaming". http://confirmshaming.tumblr.com/ And yeah, it's UX cancer.
I don't get how this practice gets to live on anything other than uninstall screens. If I'm presented with an option like that, my first response is to close the window (whether app or webpage), then uninstall everything from that vendor.
Heck, I even uninstalled every jwz package from my Debian systems after the xscreensaver fiasco.
Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a grey area, it's a dark pattern, and you're basically intentionally breaking Apple's app policies, and screwing your users over just to get more permissions than you would get if you followed the rules. Fuck you.
No need to throw shade without knowing specifics.
You already threw shade when you declared yourself "guilty", and you readily admit it is against Apple's policies.
Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
In general, I'm disappointed how Amazon went from being a store to a "marketplace". Sometimes I want to buy somebody who'll actually curate their list of products and has a reputation to stand behind that they don't want to sully by selling garbage or price-gouging on items they don't normally stock. But maybe that's just me.
I buy a lot of used, old, obscure things (mostly books). Very often, Amazon is the only place I can find it reliably; my other options would probably be asking my Japanese/German/etc friends to dig through second hand shops and mail it to me. I love the Amazon marketplace. (I also hate the 3rd party seller feedback emails but I have strict email filters so who cares)
The marketplace works out very poorly if one doesn't have Amazon in their country. The info about shipping abroad is very much buried into whatever, and Amazon IIRC mandates that purchases can't be combined: if I buy two $0.01 books, FROM THE SAME SELLER, they will be shipped separately at $4-6 shipping & handling each.
Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
In general, I'm disappointed how Amazon went from being a store to a "marketplace". Sometimes I want to buy somebody who'll actually curate their list of products and has a reputation to stand behind that they don't want to sully by selling garbage or price-gouging on items they don't normally stock. But maybe that's just me.
I buy a lot of used, old, obscure things (mostly books). Very often, Amazon is the only place I can find it reliably; my other options would probably be asking my Japanese/German/etc friends to dig through second hand shops and mail it to me. I love the Amazon marketplace. (I also hate the 3rd party seller feedback emails but I have strict email filters so who cares)
> I buy a lot of used, old, obscure things (mostly books).
I find AbeBooks to be very good for that. Ironically, they were acquired by Amazon, but they are still a separate system.
Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]
#259Maybe it's not an issue about the designers. Maybe the problem is that most marketing people are "black hat" by design.
Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Going forward, you can append "+whatever" to the username portion of your email address, e.g. You+spam@gmail.com, and gmail and most other providers I've used will ignore that part. Use it to trace the sharing of that address. I used that when signing up for a particular mailing list and found that my address was shared with about a dozen other marketers.
The shady places will just trim everything after the + anyways
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