What Are Dark Patterns and How Do I Avoid Them?

Learn to recognise dark patterns through these examples

If you browse the internet regularly, you’ve certainly come across at least one dark pattern in UX design. These are sneaky interface tricks designed to influence your behaviour — often without your realising.

Dark patterns are everywhere, and even some of the biggest brands use them to steer users in directions that suit their business, not the customer. In this article we’ll discover some of these patterns and how they affect us.

Behavioural Design

Before we can talk about dark patterns we must first learn where dark patterns originate. Within UX design there is a branch called Behavioural design, which focusses on analysing human behaviour, and planning a design accordingly. In behavioural design, we shape human behaviour by changing how things look and where we place them.

Behavioural design is the foundation of User Experience design in general; we need to understand human behaviour and plan our designs accordingly. For example, knowing where to place the one button you want people to click can help you achieve a lot more engagement.

When creating a website, it’s good to keep in mind what you want the main goal for your users to be. This way we can define what actions we need to highlight and how to incorporate subtle clues to point the user in the right direction. We nudge users towards a desired outcome without forcing them or using unethical design practices — a topic we’ll explore next.

Exploring Some Dark Patterns in UX Design.

Let’s have a look at some dark patterns in UX design. Before we continue however, I should stress that these are highly unethical and not to be used in practice. Dark patterns take behavioural design principles and twist them for immoral purposes. Examples include manipulating users to make a decision before they can fully make up their mind by promising limited time discounts that are about to expire.

Fear of Missing Out

This pattern taps into our natural fear of missing out, a powerful motivator. It’s common on ecommerce and travel booking sites, where countdown timers displayed in bold red scream that an offer is ending soon.

Online travel agencies are notorious for this — often pairing timers with scarcity cues like “Only 1 room left!” Whether true or not, the effect is urgency: you feel compelled to book now “before it’s gone.”

Distract from a Cheaper Option

Another unethical tactic is hiding or downplaying cheaper alternatives in favour of pricier products. While it’s reasonable not to push the absolute cheapest option, constantly steering users towards expensive upgrades — especially when they’re browsing a budget item — creates a frustrating experience.

Forced Continuity

Another tactic you might stumble across is forced continuity, which means that a free trial goes into a subscription with no clear warning. This also happens when they don’t make it clear how you can unsubscribe from the trial before it’s too late. It’s something we used to see a lot in streaming services, they wouldn’t notify you when your trial was about to end, and before you knew it, you would’ve paid for the first month.

Confirm Shaming

Confirm shaming is a tactic used to make you feel guilty or foolish for opting out of something. Instead of offering a neutral “No thanks,” the website presents a dismissive or sarcastic copy designed to nudge you back in.

For example, you might see a popup offering a discount if you sign up to the newsletter. The decline button doesn’t just say “No thanks” — it says, “I don’t like saving money” or “I prefer paying full price”. The intent is to make you doubt your choice and pressure you into agreeing.

Roach Motel

This happens when it’s incredibly easy to get into a service — signing up, subscribing, or joining — but incredibly difficult to get out.

For example, you’ve subscribed to a service that promises free shipping for the low fee of 10 euro a year. You’ve used this service quite often in the past but your online spending habits have decreased since, so you’d like to cancel the subscription. You go to the subscription provider and look through your account settings, it’s not there, “Maybe I’ll find it in settings?” you think. The answer remains no. After looking for quite some time and even resorting to Google, you just had to go through 5 – 10 pages before the option appears and you can cancel your subscription.

So now not only are you quite irate, but you’ve also wasted about 30 minutes to just cancel a service.

This is a tactic we still see used by some websites, especially with regards to data and privacy settings. For example, when I wrote this article, a social media platform had just added a policy that would allow them to use your images to train generative AI. Many people were either not aware of this policy change, or they couldn’t find the opt out option, until a news organisation shared a link to the website where you could opt out.

So Why Should We Avoid these Dark Patterns?

While engaging in dark patterns might seem beneficial in the short term, it will no doubt hurt your brand in the long run. People will be less likely to trust you going forward and will find alternatives to your website. They might even write a negative review about your company, which will only hurt your reputation more. When we design websites, we want users to build a positive relationship with your company. A happy customer is far more likely to return than an unhappy one.

Final Thoughts

When we create websites, our goal should be to make them enjoyable and easy to navigate. Dark patterns and unethical design create barriers, frustrating users and pushing them away. Ethical use of behavioural and UX design breaks down those barriers, helping users find what they need while leaving them with a positive experience. A good user experience builds trust and improves how people see your brand — so it helps both your customers and your own long-term success.