Part Three: The details · Words and feedback
A pre-ticked box, a hidden cost or a guilt-tripping button wins today's number. It loses the customer when they notice.
Every trick starts as a successful experiment. Someone pre-ticks the box for travel insurance and its sales go up. The chart goes the right way, and the change stays.
What the chart does not show is the person three weeks later, reading a bank statement. They did not choose the insurance. From then on they read every screen of that product like a contract from a stranger. They cancel when they can, and tell people why.
These designs have names. Harry Brignull collected them in 2010 under the label "dark patterns," now "deceptive patterns": the sneaked-in item, the hidden cost, the subscription that is easy to start and hard to stop, the button that shames you for saying no.
Some tricks are accidents. A team is judged by a number, the trick raises it, and nobody set out to deceive anyone. Others are chosen. The US Federal Trade Commission's complaint against Amazon said the company's internal name for the Prime cancellation process was "Iliad." Amazon settled in 2025.
Giving up a trick costs something. The number it propped up will fall, and its owner will object. The honest argument is that the sales a trick adds are the ones most likely to be refunded, disputed and complained about. Anyone on the team can put the refunds and complaints beside the sales chart.
The test: would the person have made this choice if they had fully understood it?
Flight to Lisbon, $212
Trip protection, $19. Covers cancellation and lost bags.
Add for $19 No thanksTherefore:
Never get a yes that a person would not give if they understood. Leave boxes unticked, show the full price before the last step, and make no as easy and as plain as yes.
In practice. Go through your sign-up, checkout and cancellation as a suspicious stranger. Note every default that favors the company and every place where no is harder to find than yes. Fix one this week.
Goes with. Tricks are what a product falls into when it ignores MEASURE PROGRESS, NOT ATTENTION (29). Defaults are powerful, which is why GOOD DEFAULTS (36) must favor the person, and the test for a subscription is EASY TO LEAVE (15).
Sources: Harry Brignull, deceptive.design (begun in 2010 as darkpatterns.org). Federal Trade Commission v. Amazon.com, complaint (2023).