I attempted the game more than ten times but the timer kept “locking” and “unlocking” the screen. I became frustrated very quickly after several tries.  In the end, I was not able to finish the game. 

When I first opened the game, the round animated green “No” button captured my attention so I immediately hovered my cursor over the word, which changed the cursor into a pointer. I thought that was where the game would start. To my surprise, the “no” button was just a distraction. I did not even read the instructions in green. Then it said, “please click here”. I expected the cursor to change to a pointer finger when I hovered over the word “click”. I quickly realized that the “start” button was actually the word “here”. On the next page, the green numbers one to four kept flashing continuously and it gave me even more pressure to fill the form. The form itself was confusing because I was not sure which part I had to put “gibberish” and which part I had to put real information. The wording on the form did not reflect the intended meaning. For example, I immediately clicked on “I do not accept the terms and conditions” when the instruction was to please accept the terms and conditions. As well, it was the “cancel” button that was colored, bolded and had a pointer icon. My brain is so accustomed to filling out forms and the layout of forms that I did not even read the words on the page. This exercise reminds me of my experience looking for a teaching position several years ago. I remember filling out more than twenty application forms for teaching positions. I spent my days filling out form after form. Most schools require applicants to fill out a long application form even after submitting the resume and cover letter. I was so tempted to simply scan the forms as my mind was in a state of information overload. 

Most consumers today, including myself, only read the first part of a piece of text. This is called the inverted pyramid (Brignull, 2011). When I was attempting to complete the “User Inyerface” game, I only scanned the texts and read the top part of the page and the colored and bolded sections. The deception was very subtle. The designers use bright colors, bold and underline texts to capture the user’s attention and take advantage of the user’s laziness.

Over the past few months of completing the tasks for this course, there were several instances where I almost fell into the “forced continuity” (Brignull, 2011). Vimeo and other educational technology platforms require users to enter their credit card information first before beginning a month of free trial. I think it is important for more consumers to be aware of dark patterns in user interfaces. These patterns will evolve continuously as consumers’ behaviours change.  

Reference

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