“User Inyerface – a bagaar frustration” 

At the onset of this task, I was prepared to be confused. After simply reading the title and tagline, I knew the intention of this game was to manipulate my mind and purposely cause confusion throughout the game. I am always up for a challenge, so I removed all distractions and began to focus on the task. I think that lowering expectations is the first part of attempting success in a task such as this where we have prior knowledge of the potential challenges we might face moving forward. We generally expect things to work and function at their best. We live in a society where everything is instant and curated to be the most user-friendly, that we expect all digital interactions to work efficiently and effectively. And when they don’t, we are easily frustrated, annoyed and are likely to either abandon the task, or find a new task that is less challenging. It makes me think about the time I moved to Italy and had to go to the post office. I spent 40 minutes in line, in a poorly ventilated room, on a scorching hot summer day, everyone sweaty with papers fanning themselves, only to be told they were closing for lunch and I had to return after lunch. Coming from a country where we didn’t spend much time waiting for service (granted this was over 15 years ago, pre-covid), have the privilege of air-conditioned buildings, and where services didn’t close down for lunch breaks, it was all new and frustrating to me.  Once I understood the way their system worked, I adapted my ways of acting in order to feel less frustrated and have a positive experience. The ability to adapt – a necessary life skill and tech skill.

As I began going through the steps of the game, I knew I was going to have to adapt my thinking, read each detail very carefully and maintain a positive attitude in order to complete the task. Instead of the logical UI I expected from other media platforms, I would require more attention to detail on this task. The term “The ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) Generation” has been given to Millennials because of how they have been “debilitated by the availability of hyper stimulating new media.” (Senk, 2014). Senk further suggests that students have come to think of “extended processes like reading solely in terms of an endpoint: to have the answer, and to have it now.” The game “User Inyerface” is an example of our need to have the answer now. It challenges our ability to focus on the extended process of reading, rather than the visual cues that is typically offered through intelligent UI design. 

Although maintaining the positive attitude was a bit of a challenge after repeated failures with some of the tasks,  I did manage to complete the task in 10 minutes and 53 seconds. Some of the areas that were most problematic for me included the following :

• Site Cookies: the use of large button to attract the user, even though it was the incorrect response.
• I Immediately noticed the NO button. Again, use of correct buttons with incorrect answers purposely used to confuse the user.  
• Age – the months were all out of order which caused the user to slow down and go through each month rather than  
• Help box – when I started getting frustrated I thought I’d elicit the use of the Help box. Only to receive a response  for me to wait as there were 471 people ahead of me, yikes! This part did make me laugh though.
• Speed of movement – When I sent the help box to the bottom, it took a very long time for the box to disappear, and then it kept popping back up. Frustration continues!

• Timer Popping Up every so often reminding me to Hurry! 
• Personal Information: I didn’t trust this site, so I purposely chose not to input any factual information, until it told me my age and birthday didn’t match. How was I to know that my personal information would not be used to sell to other platforms? How was it going to be secured? Lack of important information. 
• Once I clicked in a box, you had to delete the words there instead of just type the response and couldn’t use a tab function to move to the next box. Poor design feature that was purposely created to take up more time to complete the task. 
• Gender – was told gender didn’t match. Huh? 

Although I was not familiar with the term “dark patterns”, after reading Brignull’s (2010) article, and understanding that it is a deceptive tactic that humans use to “manipulate, control and profit from each other,” I now understand what the term is referring to. I experience this type of UI deception regularly when searching for free images to use for my work or personal designs. The webpages for ‘free’ are now inundated with a variety of ‘download here’, ‘download now’, ‘click here’ buttons and it is a game of Whac-a-Mole in order to actually access the free download file. By that point, we as consumers have clicked on numerous ads that have allowed the site to profit on our frustration or lack of attention. We witness the use of dark patterns on a daily basis on the world wide web and the depth of artificial intelligence that manipulates our interaction with web and app-based media. Much of the latest versions of Social Media platforms that were originally intended for friends to keep in contact, are now filled with curated ads, page suggestions and influencers ready to profit from the users. All it takes is a quick slip of attention to accidentally click and find yourself visiting the page of someone you never met or a company ready to sell you products. The never-ending ‘sign up for free’, followed by credit card information and incessant emails or the added fees as pointed out by Brignull, are just some of the clickbate we are inundated with in this digital age.

Although this game was entertaining, it was also educational in how UI design is being used to manipulate users. Large corporations are out for profit, and although they may ‘unintentionally’ create dark patterns, it is up to the users to be educated about these patterns, avoid falling victim to them and call them out in the hopes of creating necessary change. 

References:

​​Brignull, H. (2011). Dark Patterns: Deception vs. Honesty in UI Design. Interaction Design, Usability, 338.

Senk, S. (2014). Attention to the text: Delay and the “ADD generation” The Project. doi:10.1353/tnf.2014.0022