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Patterns, Dark and Light

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Let's be Fwends is a journal about technology, experiences and the media landscape. And most importantly the role of all of us in all of that. It's about culture and it is about design. It's about marketing and it is about tech.

If you're interested in the bigger picture of digital design, this journal is for you.

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Sometimes, you shouldn't do what you could
It's not as easy as you thought it would be.
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LET'S BE FWENDS ISSUE #32:

PATTERNS, DARK AND LIGHT
"That’s how the madness of the world tries to colonize you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality."

~ Jeff Vandermeer


Dark Patterns
I’ve written about dark patterns before - design techniques created to trick users into doing things they don’t want to do.
Often, these patterns are framed as “usability optimisation” or “design clarity”. For example, most e-commerce sites remove most if not all of the sites navigation once you start the checkout process. Officially, to remove distractions so you can concentrate on entering your personal details and shipping address correctly. But everyone involved knows it’s so that you don't navigate away from the form that is waiting for your credit card number.

Dark Patterns are mostly discussed as tactics, singular methods used to twist one experience into something that favours one side of the interaction.

The report “Decived by Design” by the norwegian bureau of consumer rights makes a compelling case to see Dark Patterns as a strategy, something deeply ingrained in how digital interactions work. You can download the report here, and I recommend reading it.

It would be a worthwhile endeavour to compile a list of digitally ethically responsible companies who refrain from the usage of dark patterns and treat their customers with respect and an open heart.


The missing building blocks of the web
Source: Archillect

What led to all the technical abuse we see today? And more importantly, is there some way out of it? Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, had that vision of the web as “small pieces, loosely joined”. But instead of that, we ended up with monolithic blocks of social media behemoths (has it ever occured to you that there are just two social media networks left? Facebook and Twitter (youtube is NOT social media, folks!)) and search tech giants (one: Google.) who control more or less all content discovery mechanisms in existence.

Anil talks about a lot of great stuff, and this short section resonated with me:

"Professionals have authoring tools or content management systems for maintaining big, serious websites. But these days, there are very few tools you could just use on your computer (or your tablet, or your phone) to create a web page or web site from scratch.”

What patterns do we need to develop in order to get this done?


Space Myths

Commander Chris Hadfield, famous for having his cover of David Bowies Space Oddity taken down from and then later reinstated on YouTube, talks about space myths.


“The sun is just an explosion” is a pretty understated thing to say about space.


A nice compendium of (optical) illusions
(Source: im-possible)

What could be a better way to close an edition of Let’s Be Fwends about patterns than with a website cataloguing all illusions ever conceived?

Thank you for reading this edition of Let’s Be Fwends.

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