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Dark patterns are everywhere and I'm afraid not enough people are raising a ruckus about them. For example, the "Google Pay" app in India, which works via the U
by sriku 6y ago
Dark patterns are everywhere and I'm afraid not enough people are raising a ruckus about them. For example, the "Google Pay" app in India, which works via the UPI system, shows its own "scanner code" in the app as opposed to the standard UPI QR code. Furthermore, you can't discover where the UPI QR code is, if you want to pay using BHIM - an app that works directly with UPI payments. If you're using GPay too, then you can access the scanner code. If not, you used to be able to select the UPI QR code from a menu and scan that. However, later updates have hidden that - not eliminated it, mind you, deliberately hidden that. You have to "swipe left" when you see the GPay scanner code to get to the QR code - not at all a discoverble act. My wife discovered it by accident after we were puzzled a few times about where the QR code that used to be accessible went (both of us use BHIM). As a consequence, folks who use GPay do not know about UPI. This is, in my books, malicious design. Hanlon's razor would ask me to try "stupidity" first. But no. This isn't stupidity. It is downright malicious (the benign term being "dark pattern") to do this .. at least at Google's level.
- 867-5309 6y agoswiping became popular as smartphones matured. more than one monitor on a PC became popular around the same time. suddenly some cool genius transvented the concept of accessing a useless second desktop on a teeny tiny screen. his golf buddy thought it would be useful to hide ugly, pesky clutter there. hey presto! your grandma is using snapchat gestures to accidentally delete bridge club emails the three bar menu button is more intuitive than this hidden-yet-integral functionality swiping bullshit, and you can hide an infinite amount of submenus behind such a recognisable icon. why are we still swiping? don't get me started on phone gestures on laptop trackpads. they should come with CTRL-0 laser-etched on to their flimsy scratchplates
- matsemann 6y agoOn Gmail swiping from left to right can either open the sidebar or delete the email you hit, depending on how far from the edge you started. Fantastic.
- hda2 6y agoGoogle did the same with Google maps and GPS coordinates: at first you could easily get the coordinates but now I have no clue how to get them. I've given and started using google maps. I hope antitrust action destroys them.
- resonantjacket5 6y agoYou right click or hold on the map if on mobile to get the coordinates.
- toastal 6y agoThis is one of many reasons I moved to and started contributing to OpenStreetMap
- roopeshv 6y agohttps://support.google.com/maps/answer/18539?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en https://support.google.com/maps/answer/18539?co=GENIE.Platfo... Get the coordinates of a place On your Android phone or tablet, open the Google Maps app . Touch and hold an area of the map that isn't labeled. You'll see a red pin appear. You'll see the coordinates in the search box at the top.
- zootboy 6y agoWow, that's in the official docs? I do this all the time, but I always thought of it as a janky workaround.
- hulitu 6y agoAlmost all new legitimate uses of a GUI those days look like a workaround. Why is Edge and Chrome and Word and... stealing my windows titlebar ? Why can i not access the favorites menu with one click as it used to be ? Why do i need a big label which uses 30 % of the screen and does nothing ? Why everything looks like a label ?
- 6y ago
- sriku 6y agoOne could argue that removing the UPI QR code from the app would be the truly malicious act .. and at least they're keeping it in. If they could do that, they would. NPCI regulations require these payment services to interoperate via UPI. If they hadn't required that (I love NPCI and their work), you can be guaranteed that the UPI code will not feature in the app.
- mrjin 6y agoGoogle has gone rogue for a long time. But for UX, it's not necessarily dark pattern. IMO, there is a bad smell, started by Google, particularly Chrome if I remembered correctly, which tends to hide menus/actions by moving them under the burger/3 dots menu. Such behavior saves a little bit screen estates but adds one extra click to finish one particular operation and the bigger problem is that it hides the available options from the user and in turn makes applications less intuitive.
- sriku 6y agoNope. The presence of the burger icon still affords discoverability even if a little less convenient. I can still see it and go "oh here is an icon and let me see what comes up if I tap it". In the GPay case, you see nothing and so assume there is nothing beyond what you're seeing. The thing is, a menu that you can tap to get at the QR code used to be there to help get to it. It was removed.
- IggleSniggle 6y agoSame story in a lot of iOS design. There used to be a button where you could see all the options: now there’s some magic gesture for everything. Wtf, just show me a list, show me options I don’t yet know that I need or would know what to call, show me what you can do.
- hombre_fatal 6y agoA simple example is how you can slide some list items to expose a delete button. Yet only some lists support that. So you’re apparently expected to slide every list to see if it supports that paradigm. Instead of doing something like normalizing a small arrow on list items that support such a thing. Everything is hidden. Burger menus are great. You’d never be able to fit all those options on screen at once, nor would it make sense for rare actions. But the burger menu gives people a place to put actions on mobile UI where others, like Apple, would just remove them and gimp the mobile experience. It’s why all of Apple’s first party applications are so bad, like the podcast and news app. There are like zero options. Just add and remove and consume.
- harry8 6y agoWe need a better term than "dark pattern." Dark pattern sounds like a colorscheme. It really minimises what is going on. I like your use of "malicious" there. "Malicious design" It really captures the sense of what dark pattern was supposed to mean. But can we make it catch on?
- notagoodidea 6y agoWhen I want to really convey my point in a discussion, I call it "manipulative pattern". People feel more implicated when you point them their behviour or actions have been manipulated actively.
- amelius 6y agoWe need an objective way to tell which things are manipulative. And to whom. Also, ads are manipulative too (for many people), but do they belong to the same category?
- pferde 6y agoThe "manipulative" here refers to the UI actively or passively lying to you, and slightly nudging you towards doing something you do not want. Ads, or the way ads are presented can be manipulative too - e.g. articles which pose as informative, but in fact are written just to push a certain product. But if the ads are presented overtly, they are not manipulative in the sense that is discussed here.
- intended 6y agoAnti user design? Pro business design?
- oblio 6y agoIt needs to be negative. The same way I'd never call my opponents "pro-life supporters", I'd call them "anti-abortionists". You need to control the narrative.
- 6y ago
- nandhinianand 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13703054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13703054 ---- or this .. https://twitter.com/backus/status/993286393936805888?lang=en https://twitter.com/backus/status/993286393936805888?lang=en
- notsureaboutpg 6y agoReconsider using BHIM as its recently had a security breach, and check to make sure you were not affected. Best of luck https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/92495-indian-e-payments-app-exposes-more-than-7-million-users-in-massive-data-breach?v=preview https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/92495-indian-e-pay...