A Pecha Kucha presentation that I gave at Nest 20/20 on December 3, 2014 at Nest Coworking in Thornbury, Victoria.

1. Transgressions in
Digital Design
Matthew Magain
UX Mastery
@mattymcg

2. This isn’t a talk about bad design. When I talk about transgression, I’m
not referring to poor layout or choice of colour palette or typeface.
That’s just shit design.

3. And I won’t dwell on intrusive design either—pop-ups, pop-unders, and
interstitial ads that content sites use to get our attention can be
frustrating and annoying. But there are even more evil practices.

4. Dark Patterns
“A type of user interface that appears to have
been carefully crafted to trick users into
doing something they did not intend to do.”

5. Kogan is one of Australia’s largest online retailers. They sell everything
from fashion to sporting goods to gadgets and more. And they
know that the key to successful ecommerce is email marketing.

6. Which is why they make it really hard for you to opt out of their marketing
emails. It’s 5 clicks—first you’re given the choice between a 1-week and
a 2-week break. You have to continually find the “more options” link.

7. You’ve probably heard of GoDaddy. They’re the biggest domain registrar
in the world. And the cheapest—there are some great deals on offer for
your first 12 months …

8. So why, when I add a domain to my cart, is the default set to 5 years?
$143? That’s a lot different from the $9.99 per year that was advertised
when I clicked “add to cart”. Crazy!

9. The Pecha Kucha presentation format (20 slides, 20 seconds per slide)
is fast and furious. This is just a slide I added to remind myself to take a
drink and catch my breath. It got a few laughs :)

10. Let’s talk about Candy Crush. It’s a wildly popular puzzle game, with all
sorts of shiny visuals and sound effects that make it addictive.

11. But they take massive liberties when inviting your Facebook friends to
play, or informing them of your high score. Even worse, you can’t see
these posts on your timeline. A quick way to get de-friended!

12. How great is this concept car from Subaru? I was procrastisurfing the
other day, dreaming about winning the lotto and one day buying a new
car. I thought I’d download a brochure as part of my research …

13. Subaru asks for your name, your email address, phone number, post
code. And then they force you to answer the question “Are you planning
on purchasing in the next few months?” All just to download a brochure!

14. There were a few sheepish grins when I showed this website. It’s The
Pirate Bay, probably the most famous portal for illegal torrents of media.
We can expect there might be some ethical boundaries pushed here.

15. Can you see where to click to
download the movie that I
searched for? I’ll give you a hint
—it’s not any of the “Download”
buttons. Clicking them
will install some crap on your
machine that you don’t need!

16. And then when you finally click the right link, you’ll need a tool like Fuze
to download the torrent. Vuze tries really hard to convince you it’s a
legitimate tool, spruiking its ease of use and pushing indie content …

17. And yet, when you go to install the thing, it tries to trick you into installing
all of this other stuff on your machine—Searchme, Slick Savings, Ebay &
Amazon Shopping Assistant and a bunch of other malware crap.

18. When you realise what’s happened it’s too late, so you type “how do I
uninstall Savings Slider” and end up on a website like Experts
Exchange. Someone has published the answer—great!

19. Trying to be helpful, you copy and paste the link of this solution to send
to your mum, as she is having the same problem. But Experts Exchange
actually detect that she didn’t come from Google, and mask it!

20. darkpatterns.org
• Road Block
• Sneak into Basket
• Friend Spam
• Forced Disclosure
• Misdirection
• Disguised Ads
• Forced Continuity
That was a whirlwind tour of some of the dark patterns in use by
unscrupulous web designers. UK-based designer Harry Brignull has
documented more at his website, darkpatterns.org. Check it out!