3 Dark Patterns You Should Never Use (And What To Do Instead)

3 Dark Patterns You Should Never Use (And What To Do Instead)

First, what the heck is a “dark pattern”?

'Dark patterns' are flows or design created to mislead users—usually to take an action they didn’t want to take. NNGroup correlates some dark patterns with 'needy patterns' (that's a little nicer as far as intent) and describes them as "desperate attempts to influence user behavior." Sometimes dark patterns are not intentional, but the consequence of not empathizing with users.

You've seen these and likely fallen victim. It's possible you've even built one. I'm not judging you—even I’ve suggested dark patterns to hit goals and immediately regretted it. ‘Doh.

Top 5 Design, UX, and Research Tools I Use Everyday

Top 5 Design, UX, and Research Tools I Use Everyday

“What tools do you use to design better and be more productive? We don't have a UX researcher on our team, how do you get to know what your users want? How do you manage brand guidelines for a company as big as Keap?”

Nope, you won’t see Adobe products, Sketch, Invision, or Google Analytics on this list.

While those products are awesome in their own ways, they’re also industry incumbents. There are many tools on the scene that rank higher for the needs my team and I have right now. That’s the key: “right now”. Every 18 months to 2 years it’s worth it to check your creative processes and swap out tools. This was my exact scenario when I switched our team to our first product: