Deceptive Designs / Dark Patterns
Dark patterns are malicious design strategies that try to influence people into making decisions that may go against their best interests. We investigate User Awareness and possible Countermeasures to help people deal with these tricky and manipulative designs. We presented some of our very first findings in the publications below.
CHI'24 Workshop
We are co-organizing a workshop on Dark Patterns at ACM CHI'24. The submission deadline is Feb 24, 2024. You can find more details at the list of accepted workshops at CHI'24 and in our workshop proposal paper below.
Posters
CHI'23 Interactivity
Contact
If you have any questions about our research on dark patterns, please contact René Schäfer.
Publications
- Colin M Gray, Johanna Gunawan, René Schäfer, Nataliia Bielova, Lorena Sánchez Chamorro, Katie Seaborn, Thomas Mildner and Hauke Sandhaus. Mobilizing Research and Regulatory Action on Dark Patterns and Deceptive Design Practices. In Extended Abstracts of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA '24 (Forthcoming), pages 6, Association for Computing Machinery, May 2024.
- René Schäfer, Paul Preuschoff, René Röpke, Sarah Sahabi and Jan Borchers. Fighting Malicious Designs: Towards Visual Countermeasures Against Dark Patterns. In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI '24 (Forthcoming), pages 13, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, May 2024.
- Kevin Fiedler. Exploring Game Mechanics for the Design of Dark Pattern Learning Games. Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, March 2024.
- Kerem Ubeyd Yavuz. Digital Natives' Dilemma: How Gen Z Perceives Deceptive Designs. Bachelor's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, March 2024.
- Nele Zielke. Exploring Dark Pattern Research within CHI: A Systematic Literature Review and Meta-Analysis. Bachelor's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, March 2024.
- Florian Plümäkers. Developing a Tool for the Systematic Recording of Dark Patterns in the Web. Bachelor's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, February 2024.
- René Schäfer, Paul Miles Preuschoff and Jan Borchers. Investigating Visual Countermeasures Against Dark Patterns in User Interfaces. In Mensch Und Computer 2023, MuC '23, pages 161–172, Association for Computing Machinery, September 2023.
- Paul Miles Preuschoff. Designing Countermeasures Against Dark Patterns in User Interfaces. Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, August 2023.
- Sarah Sahabi. Prevalent Dark Patterns: Investigating Children's Mental Models of Malicious Designs. Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, July 2023.