Go back to publications

Evaluating Problem Awareness Regarding the Use of Dark Patterns: A Qualitative Analysis

5 August 2019 C. Brockmann, M. Golombeck, T. Neumann, C. Raske, S. Tübben Technical Report 10.13140/RG.2.2.27326.23362 University of Applied Sciences and Arts Dortmund German
#Dark Patterns#Usability#Qualitative Research#Human-Computer Interaction
PDFResearchGate

A dark pattern is an interface decision that steers a user toward an outcome favouring the operator rather than the user. They are not bugs, and they are not accidents. They appear throughout software systems and websites, and they work precisely because most people do not notice them happening.

This paper asks a narrower and more answerable question than whether dark patterns are wrong: how well do people actually recognise them, and does knowing about them help?

Poster

The work was also presented as a poster, which organises the patterns around the seven deadly sins: each case example hangs off the vice it exploits, with the interview results set out beneath them.

Poster titled Evaluation von Dark Patterns. A bare tree carries coloured speech bubbles naming the seven deadly sins in German and English, from Stolz and Faulheit through Neid, Gier, Wut, Lust and Voellerei. Numbered case examples with interface screenshots surround the tree, and panels along the edges cover the basics, the method and the results comparing laypeople with experts.
Conference poster, in German. Open the full version (PDF, 5 MB).

Method

The study is an interview-based qualitative cross-sectional analysis. An exploratory phase first defined five case examples, each containing either a single dark pattern or a combination of several.

Those cases were then shown to two groups:

  • A lay group of master’s students with no prior knowledge of dark patterns.
  • An expert group familiar with them.

The interviews were analysed for both recognition rate and the degree of problem awareness the participants displayed.

Finding

Only a small difference emerged between the two groups. Expertise, in other words, did considerably less to protect participants than one might reasonably assume, which is the uncomfortable part of the result and the reason the patterns remain effective.

Cite this work

@techreport{brockmann2019darkpatterns,
  author      = {Brockmann, Christian and Golombeck, Marius and Neumann,
                 Thorben and Raske, Christian and Tübben, Stefan},
  title       = {{Evaluation des Problembewusstseins in Bezug auf den Einsatz
                 von Dark Patterns: Eine qualitative Analyse}},
  institution = {University of Applied Sciences and Arts Dortmund},
  address     = {Dortmund, Germany},
  year        = {2019},
  month       = aug,
  language    = {german},
  doi         = {10.13140/RG.2.2.27326.23362},
  url         = {https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335110906}
}