Dark patterns and design ethics

Mike Monteiro of Mule Design argues that designers are responsible for what they put into the world, and that the harms of tech products are design failures. This is the USI recording of a talk he has given at several conferences.

Tristan Harris's TEDxBrussels talk arguing that technology is designed to capture attention and should instead help people spend their time well. It sets out the argument for design that respects users' attention, the idea that grew into the Time Well Spent project.

Tristan Harris, former Google design ethicist, gives a TED talk on how a few tech companies shape the attention and choices of billions of people. He argues that product design built to capture attention should be reshaped around people's time and wellbeing.

Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology testifies before Congress about persuasive technology. He argues that platforms are designed to maximize engagement and attention, and what that does to users.

Nerdwriter1 explains dark patterns, interface tricks that steer users into choices that benefit the company, such as hard-to-cancel subscriptions and sneaky contact-list grabs. It draws on examples collected at darkpatterns.org, including the LinkedIn contact-list lawsuit.

Tantacrul, a designer and composer, looks at how Facebook went from a service people loved to one they distrust. He covers its engagement-driven feed and the product decisions behind that change.

A short video from the Norwegian Consumer Council on enshittification, the gradual decline of online services as companies put profit ahead of users. It follows the job of someone who makes products worse.

An Extra Credits animated explainer on the Skinner box and how games use reward schedules to condition players to keep playing. It also offers some design suggestions for engaging players without hooking them.

An Extra Credits video on Sesame Credit, a scoring system tied to Alibaba and the Chinese state, and what it shows about the power of gamification. It examines how points, ranks and social pressure can be used to steer people's behavior, based on the early announcements.

Jonathan Blow, creator of Braid, gives a talk at Rice University on what games do to the people who play them. He criticizes social games tuned by A/B testing for addictiveness and profit, and discusses the designer's responsibility to make games with real value.

A game industry conference talk on how free-to-play mobile games are built to monetize players, especially the small group of heavy spenders known as whales. The speaker explains the tactics openly from the developer side.

Jim Sterling's Jimquisition episode on predatory monetization in video games, such as loot boxes and microtransactions. It argues these systems are built to exploit players and includes testimonials from people who spent money they could not afford.

Josh Strife Hayes critiques the monetization design of Diablo Immortal, the mobile and PC game from Blizzard. He argues its progression and spending systems exploit players.

A talk by Chris Wilson on dark patterns in games. It goes through the manipulative design techniques that make games keep players spending time and money.

A GDC 2019 talk about a studio that churned out more than 1,500 slot-machine apps from the same Unity-based shovelware, generating the variants procedurally. A humorous account of quantity over quality in the app stores, including their joking anti-retention model.

Mrwhosetheboss looks at how mobile games are built to extract money from players, covering the psychological tricks and monetization schemes behind free-to-play games.

Raph Koster, lead designer of Ultima Online, gives a GDC talk on what AR and VR can learn from the history of online worlds. He covers the ethical problems, such as harassment, privacy and surveillance, and argues that every feature has to be considered as a possible weapon.

Keiichi Matsuda's 2016 short film imagines everyday life in a city where every surface is covered in augmented-reality overlays, ads and notifications. It is a concept film that treats AR as an interface design problem.

Kai Lentit's comedy sketch in which a newcomer uses the internet for the first time and tries to read a recipe online. It parodies the ads, popups and clutter of recipe websites and the modern web.