Shedding light on assessing Dark Patterns: Introducing the System Darkness Scale (SDS)

Dark Patterns are elements in interfaces designed to misdirect, confuse, and lure users into unintended, involuntary actions. These are not just “sloppy” or “inelegant” designs without ill intent but are rather carefully crafted with an understanding of human psychology. Dark patterns are omnipresent as part of web and game-interfaces and highly effective. Hence, there is agreement that awareness and a better understanding is needed. The current study focuses on dark patterns from a user’s perspective in order to develop the ‘System Darkness Scale’ (SDS). The SDS is a set of questionnaire items which can be used to evaluate the darkness of a system and assign a score to it. Just as the SUS proved to be a quick and reliable tool to measure usability, the SDS aims to act as a validated tool to identify in how far a system or service has incorporated “dark mechanisms”.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Christof van Nimwegen

Kristi Bergman

Almila Akdag

Conference

Publication date: July 2022

Publication date (Print): July 2022

Pages: 1-10

Affiliations

[0001]Information and Computing Sciences

Interaction Technology, Utrecht University

Princetonplein 5, 3584CC

Utrecht, The Netherlands

[0002]Kaartje2go

Emmawijk 11

8011 CM, Zwolle

The Netherlands

[0003]Information and Computing Sciences

Interaction Technology, Utrecht University

Princetonplein 5, 3584CC

Utrecht University, the Netherlands

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/HCI2022.7

SO-VID: 8eb22955-8b66-4805-bde1-e5b977a3372e

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: 35th International BCS Human-Computer Interaction Conference

Conference acronym: HCI2022

Conference number: 35

Conference location: Keele, Staffordshire

Conference date: July 11th to 13th, 2022

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Towards a Human-Centred Digital Society

History

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1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/HCI2022.7

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

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Comments

Comment on this article

[1] Berezhnoi, R. (2019). What is UI Design and why is it important? Available from: https://f5-studio.com/articles/what-is-user-interface-design-and-why-is-it-important/ (29 March 2022).

[2] Bösch, C., Erb, B., Kargl, F., Kopp, H. and Pfattheicher, S. (2016). Tales from the dark side: Privacy dark strategies and privacy dark patterns. In Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies. Darmstadt, Germany, July 19-22, 2016. (4): 237–254.

[3] Brignull, H. (2011). Dark Patterns: Deception vs. Honesty in UI Design. Available from https://alistapart.com/article/dark-patterns-deception-vs.-honesty-in-ui-design (29 March 2022).

[4] Brignull, H., (2013). Dark Patterns-User Interfaces Designed to Trick People. Available from https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/29/4640308/dark-patterns-inside-the-interfaces-designed-to-trick-you (29 March 2022)

[5] Brooke, J. (1996). Sus: a “quick and dirty” usability scale. In: Jordan, P.W., Thomas, B. and Ian Lyall McClelland. Usability Evaluation In Industry. CRC Press. 189–194.

[6] Di Geronimo, L., Braz, L., Fregnan, E., Palomba, F. and Alberto Bacchelli (2020). UI dark patterns and where to find them: a study on mobile applications and user perception. In: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–14.

[7] Fogg, B.J. (2002). Persuasive technology: using computers to change what we think and do. In: Ubiquity 2002, 7.

[8] Gray, C.M., Kou, Y., Battles, B., Hoggatt, J. and Toombs, A.L. (2018). The dark (patterns) side of UX design. In: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.1–14.

[9] Greenberg, S., Boring, S., Vermeulen, J. and Dostal, J. (2014). Dark patterns in proxemic interactions: a critical perspective. In: Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems. 523–532.

[10] Gubaidulin, I. (2016). Designing for Persuasion, Emotion and Trust. Available from https://uxdesign.cc/designing-for-persuasion-emotion-and-trust-cdac44c61d53 (29 March 2022).

[11] Gunnarsson, E. (2020). Log In or Sign Up. Available from https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1442280/FULLTEXT02 (29 March 2022).

[12] Láng, L., and Pudane, P.D. (2019). Deceptive Interfaces: A case study on Amazon’s account deletion navigation and its effects on user experience. Available at https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1315156/FULLTEXT01.pdf (29 March 2022).

[13] Luguri, J. and Strahilevitz, L. (2019). Shining a light on dark patterns. Journal of Legal Analysis 13.1 (2021): 43-109.

[14] Maier. M. (2019). Dark patterns - An end user perspective. Available at https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1330920/FULLTEXT01.pdf (29 March 2022).

[15] Mathur, A., Acar, G., Friedman, M.J., Lucherini, E., Mayer, J., Chetty, M. and Narayanan, A. (2019). Dark patterns at scale: Findings from a crawl of 11K shopping websites. In: Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 3, CSCW (2019), 1–32.

[16] Mathur, A., Acar, G., Friedman, M.J., Lucherini, E., Mayer, J., Chetty, M. and Narayanan, A. (2019). Dark patterns at scale: Findings from a crawl of 11K shopping websites. In: Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 3, CSCW (2019), 1–32

[17] Meske, C. and Potthoff, T. (2017). The DINU-model–a process model for the design of nudges. In: Proceedings of the 25th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) pp. 2587—2597.

[18] Nodder, C. (2013). Evil by design: Interaction design to lead us into temptation. John Wiley & Sons.

[19] Nouwens, M., Liccardi, I., Veale, M., Karger, D. and Kagal, L. (2020). Dark patterns after the GDPR: Scraping consent pop-ups and demonstrating their influence. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1–13.

[20] Schaffer, E. (2009). Beyond Usability: Designing Web Sites for Persuasion, Emotion, and Trust. https://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2009/01/beyond-usability-designing-web-sites-for-persuasion emotion-and-trust.php (29 March 2022).

[21] Sommerer, C. and Mignonneau, L. (2008). The Art and Science of Interface and Interaction Design (Vol. 1). Vol. 141. Springer

[22] Sunstein, C.R. (2018). Better off, as judged by themselves”: a comment on evaluating nudges. International Review of Economics 65, 1, 1–8.

[23] Thaler, R.H. and Sunstein, C.R. (2009). Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. Yale University Press.

[24] Trochim, W.M.K. (2021). Likert Scaling. Available at https://conjointly.com/kb/likert-scaling/ (29 March 2022).

[25] Utz, C., Degeling, M., Fahl, S, Schaub, F. and Holz. T. (2019). (Un) informed Consent: Studying GDPR Consent Notices in the Field. In: Proceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security. 973–990.

[26] UX Booth (2018). The Power and Danger of Persuasive Design. Available at https://www.uxbooth.com/articles/the-power-and-danger-of-persuasive-design/ (29 March 2022).

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