This image has nothing to do with the topic of this post!
Photo by Mariana Vusiatytska on Unsplash
When opening a browser to the User Inyerface site, one’s visual senses are immediately under attack: the large, white “UI” letters that are presumably an acronym for the site’s name are presented as four offset replicas of increasing transparency which has the effect of being both visually confusing and cognitively demanding as our eyes try to discern the correct edge of the text characters. What follows is a “game” that subjects the user to, as proclaimed by the site itself, “a worst-practice UI experiment” of website design.
Cognitive Load
After reading (and re-reading) the game instructions, users are forced to decipher the location of the link that will take them to the next page; the light green instruction text colour contrast in relation to the blue page background ignores web accessibility guidelines (WCAG 2.0, 2025) making it difficult to read; the large green circle which appears to look like a button contains the confusing word “no”, rather than what we might more commonly think of as “go” – a verb intuitively associated with the action to follow a link. The actual link is hidden in the dark capitalized text “HERE”, and is an example of an “anti-pattern” that forces additional attention and focus in order to achieve the desired outcome: navigating to the next page.
Throughout the next set of pages, the forms, web components, and design elements assault our attention by changing state, using alarming colours, suddenly appearing, and “behaving” in ways that are unexpected or that cause confusion. For example, after attempting to complete a form to “prove that you are human” by selecting all images that are “light”, the page simply reloads despite what appears to be a correct validation. Entering what appears to be correct answers to any of the subsequent “captcha” forms generates an endless cycle of alternative “captchas”, which generates frustration and a negative emotional reaction. It is within this surreptitious dark-pattern environment, where we are so inundated with sensory input and confused by the results of our clicking actions, that we are most vulnerable to persuasion and behavioural engineering (Brignull, 2011).
Models for Business
Unfortunately, because businesses are often seeking to maximize profit and market share, they adopt design practices that exploit this confusion or “engineer” opinions and behaviours to the highest bidder (Harris, 2017; Tufekci, 2017). This is sometimes called-out by whistleblowers who reach a point where they can no longer stay silent (McNamee, 2019), but it is also sometimes a corrected as a strategic business decision because the company has decided that ethical, honest, and trustworthy practices are better for the brand (Brignull, 2011).
Game Completion Screen
Thankfully I am familiar enough with the “Inspect” developer interface to be able to navigate around and understand where the image selection form was failing. Upon adjusting the code and uncovering the hidden checkboxes, I was able to pass the final “captcha” and finish the “game”.
References:
- Bagaar. (2019). User Inyerface [web game].
- Brignull, H. (2011). Dark Patterns: Deception vs. Honesty in UI Design. A List Apart. https://alistapart.com/article/dark-patterns-deception-vs-honesty-in-ui-design/.
- Harris, T. (2017). How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day. [Video]. TED.
- McNamee, R. (2019, January 17). I mentored Mark Zuckerberg. I loved Facebook. But I can’t stay silent about what’s happening. Time Magazine.
- Tufekci, Z. (2017). We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads [Video]. TED.
- WCAG 2.0 – W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (2025). WCAG 2 Overview. Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Retrieved November 9, 2025, from https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/