Monthly Archives: August 2016Blog

Dark Patterns

Have you ever been victimized by deceptive marketing? Once someone has your credit card, there are many ways you can be tricked into agreeing to unwanted auto-shipments, subscriptions, additional purchases, and many other things — all to separate you from your money. These are behavioral hacks that typically depend on users not reading terms of service, overlooking pre-checked boxes on order forms, giving up on reaching customer service, or being forced to complete ridiculously long refund processes.

This also includes burdensome privacy settings, such as social media sites with important features that are difficult to find or use. Unfortunately, these tactics, known as “Dark Patterns,” are becoming standard practice in many businesses. This article provides insight to help consumers recognize these deceitful but common tricks: http://bit.ly/2aMIwSE

More on Dark Patterns

dark patterns are short-sighted, says Hoa Loranger, vice president of the prestigious UX consulting firm Nielsen Norman Group. “Any short-term gains a company gets from a dark pattern is lost in the long term,” she says.

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3060553/why-dark-patterns-wont-go-away

Dark Patterns Website

A currated collection of dark pattern techniques discovered on real websites.
http://darkpatterns.org

NPR Axes User Comments, Shines Light on User Behavior

NPR’s axing of comments on its articles provides a few take-aways:

  • Readers are commenting on articles less and less and preferring to participate in discussions on social media more and more.
  • Commenters are becoming more vile and difficult to police.
  • Commenting systems are expensive to maintain, which becomes more of a problem with decreasing numbers.
  • The news world, and the web in general, continues to observe and adjust as people utilize technologies in new or unexpected ways.

As has been said, ‘there’s no there there,’ and this applies to the internet as well. There are few online absolutes. Behaviors, patterns, and standards are all subject to change in today’s high-speed tech society. That’s why modern business must be lean, agile, and quick to make changes.

Read full article: http://n.pr/2bzBC3n

Type, and Digital Design

Designing for digital requires efficiency, consistency, and clarity to make it easier for people to do things. Consider that digital interfaces need to work at the ‘speed of thought.’ That’s why people prefer clicking to scrolling. It’s also why movie cuts work since cuts mimic eye movements. Designers should create digital interfaces that allow people to glance, scan, feel for hierarchy, and find things in expected ways. It’s what we mean when we say a digital experience is ‘intuitive.’

Typography is a big part of visual communication. And an essential aspect of typography is ‘letter case,’ which uses capital and small letters to convey meaning. This article looks at Title Case vs. Sentence Case and provides some insights on the use of each.

Read full article: http://bit.ly/2aGLV4b