Week 4 Session: Dark Pattern Detective

Naming the dark arts — confirmshaming, forced continuity, bait-and-switch — and what behaviour each one is actually trying to produce

15 March 2027

Before the session#

Have a handful of everyday apps or sites open and ready to click through — a shopping cart, a subscription sign-up, a cookie banner. You are hunting, not shopping.

In the session#

Dark Pattern Detective: as a class, you browse real interfaces looking for confirmshaming, hidden costs, forced continuity, bait-and-switch, trick questions, disguised ads, difficult cancellation, privacy manipulation, and sneaked-in basket items. For each one found, you build the case file in four questions: what does the user want, what does the organisation want, what behaviour is the interface actually encouraging, and which specific design decision creates that behaviour?

Afterwards#

You now have a name for the technique behind last week’s mechanisms. Week 5 asks you to build with them, not just spot them.