please respond to hayden
I have chosen to discuss Dark UX Patterns, as I feel that’s a relatively prevalent issue with apps today. Dark patterns are essentially actions and design choices made by one or many people to guide users towards a preferred option, even if that wasn’t the user’s intent or first pick. I’d argue this infringes upon sections 1.3 and 3.1, but it’s a bit hard to pin it down given the variety in situations and context that are applicable. 1.3 is to be honest and trustworthy, which some UX is blatantly not as it opens links on it’s own, leads users down a false path, or selects the most expensive options by default. These same things also conflict with 3.1, which is simply the idea that public good should be the core of how it’s designed, which these patterns do not align with.
Let’s use Steam as an example platform. Steam, for those who don’t know, is an online digital retail platform providing a front to sell games, software tools, and in rare cases, gaming hardware. It also provides a swath of community tools such as forums, dedicated pages for exploring user-created modifications for software, and a library to explore what you’ve purchased. By default, when Steam is ran for the first time after a PC restart, shutdown, or just exiting the application, it loads into the storefront, dazzling the user with whatever big sale is currently going on, software recommended for them, and things that are being played by friends. It also pops up a separate window showing new releases, steep discounts, and upcoming things to pre-order. This, I feel, is a clear but subtle push to get the user to purchase something by displaying these, well, ads by default.
Ethically, as according to the previously mentioned principles, it’s not really for the public good. Sure, they’re merely informing users of new things they might like, or discounts on what they want, but they’re a retailer, they need to make that money. There’s also the issue of the store being the default page you get sent to, as there are actually setting for changing that to any other page, as well as turning off the pop-up window, but they’re buried in settings and poorly-labeled, which perhaps isn’t the most honest decision.
It’s privately-owned, not really stakeholders to impact. Gabe Newell, the owner of Valve, which is the company behind Steam, would maybe get a dent put in his income, but that’s the most that would happen as far as I understand.
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