This was absolute hell to endure! What an infuriating task. However, it is clear in making the point that “dark patterns” (Brignull, 2011) are manipulative and exploitative of our psychological tendencies. I nearly gave up multiple times, unsure of how to actually proceed while being bombarded with irrelevant or confounding information.

Notably, I found that high contrast colours, buttons, and pop ups were especially distracting and enticing to click on regardless of their text content. A useful exercise for building more self awareness about dark patterns used in web design and how manipulative they actually can be.

References