Deceptive dark patterns

When I was braindumping my thoughts prompted by last week���s UX Fest conference, I wrote about dark patterns.

Well, actually I wrote about deceptive dark patterns. That was a deliberate choice.

The phrase ���dark pattern��� is …problematic. We really don���t need to be associating darkness with negativity any more than we already do in our language and culture.

This is something I discussed with Melissa Smith after her talk on this topic. The consensus in general seems to be that the terminology is far from ideal, but it���s a bit late to change it now (I���m sure if Harry were coining the term today, he would choose a different phrase).

The defining characteristic of a ���dark��� pattern is that intentionally deceptive. How about we shift the terminology to talk about deceptive patterns?

Now, I get that inertia is a powerful force and it would be confusing to try do to a find-and-replace on all the resources that already exist on documenting ���dark��� patterns. So here���s a compromise:

From here on out, let���s start using the adjective ���deceptive��� in addition to the existing adjective ���dark.��� That���s what I did in my blog post. I only used the phrase ���deceptive dark patterns.���

If we do that consistently, then after a while we���ll be able to drop one of those adjectives������dark������and refer to ���deceptive patterns.���

Personally I���d love it if we could change the terminology overnight���and I���m quite heartened by the speed at which we changed our Github branches from ���master��� to ���main������but being pragmatic, I think this approach stands a greater chance of success.

Who���s with me?