Dark Patterns Library

A Dark Pattern is a type of user interface that appears to have been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills.

Normally when you think of “bad design”, you think of the creator as being sloppy or lazy but with no ill intent. This type of bad design is known as a “UI anti-pattern” Dark Patterns are different – they are not mistakes, they are carefully crafted with a solid understanding of human psychology, and they do not have the user’s interests in mind.
Watch the slidecast below for details:

Are you interested in contributing to darkpatterns.org? We need help cleaning up the content (some of which is quite dated now), and adding new examples. If you’re interested email submissions@darkpatterns.org