Dark Patterns of Design

How the design of social media products re-shaped society.

While there’s been a relatively longstanding global culture of concern around digital addiction, we’ve now come to a point where people are looking at social media tools with an increasingly critical eye — even their architects. The time we spend with our faces glued to a computer or smartphone screen is ever worrying given its profoundly negative impact on how society functions. Today, humans are far less concerned with face-to-face interaction than they are with the thrills derived from the use of social media products.

But this is far from accidental. Rather, our compulsion to tweet, add “friends,” comment, and like — as well as anything else you can do on the most popular social media platforms — is the corollary of efforts designed to lead to these very actions. In essence, the addictive nature of social media is the intended result of manipulating behaviour to keep people online for longer.

Did anyone read my last blog post on the use of subconscious thought patterns to design digital systems? If yes, then you’ll remember I talked about a project my former agency worked on. This involved assessing human interaction with digital interfaces so their design could be improved to help users make better decisions. Our work was underpinned by nothing less…