Member-only story
Design against humanity
Design Thinking for Business: Dark Design.
Design thinking is a powerful tool for creating value. When used correctly, design thinking can create new value or ‘increase the size of the pie’ for organisations, their customers, users, employees, community, shareholders and other stakeholders to share in.
Sometimes, however, as design thinkers, we can stray from the straight and narrow path of user-first, human-centred design. In these times, we apply these same skills and techniques that allow us to create solutions for our end user and instead create solutions against our end user. This is dark design.
What is Dark Design?
The purpose of design thinking is to create solutions for our end users that solve their problems. Dark design subverts this purpose by creating solutions that redirect a user into behaviours that are against the user’s intent.
Dark designs default or direct the user into behaviours or choices that run contrary to the user’s interest — often to the benefit of others. Design thinkers will often find their pursuit of User-Problem Fit is fraught with the challenge of conflicting and competing needs. What makes dark design different is the intentional subversion of the user’s intention without the user’s informed consent.
Examples of Dark Design
Dark Patterns
Dark design can be created in any product or service. The pervasiveness of dark patterns in digital products and services for the purposes of growth hacking, data tracking, and targeting has lead to users sharing their examples on social media.
Here one user highlights how Microsoft Azure forces opt-in US users to accept marketing communications, while defaulting Swiss users to opt-out.
Do you tick the box or not tick the box?
