rohandehal (u/rohandehal)

rohandehal commented on Show HN: Interactive game teaching dark patterns in UX design games.productartistry.com... · Posted by u/rohandehal

csallen · a year ago

Cool idea, pretty good execution, but your UI is confusing.

1. There's so much happening on the screen between your app's UI and the fake UI with the dark patterns that it's confusing. IMO you should show the objective first, and then let the user click to reveal the fake UI and challenge. For example, simply show, "Challenge #1 — Find the button that actually lets you cancel the subscription." Then have a button that says, "Start Challenge." When that button is clicked, then reveal the UI.

2. Give me some context. If you just say, "Find the button that actually lets you cancel the subscription," that's not really enough. You should set the scenario. "Imagine you're subscribed to an app, but you don't want to be subscribed anymore. So you sign into the app and click the cancel button. It loads a new screen. How do proceed from here to finalize your cancelation?"

3. Don't tell me the answer in advance. Naming the first challenge "Color Confusion" tells me the answer.

4. Don't auto-advance steps. I had no idea that I auto advanced. I changed tabs, then came back, then was scrolling down looking for the next step button. Just let me manually click to the next step as a user. Preferably at the bottom, near the pattern explanation.

rohandehal · a year ago

This is fantastic feedback—thanks for taking the time to share it! I’m updating the flow so users see the objective first and can click to reveal the challenge and then the learning objectives. Leaning more into the simulation aspect and adding real-world context should help clear up much of the current confusion in the game design.

Auto-advance has already been removed in my WIP branch based on overwhelming feedback, and the new stage-wise approach works much better.

rohandehal commented on Show HN: Interactive game teaching dark patterns in UX design games.productartistry.com... · Posted by u/rohandehal

magnat · a year ago

Similar vibes to https://userinyerface.com/

Also, for some reason, hogs 100% CPU recursing like hell between two methods:

    o0 [https://games.productartistry.com/_next/static/chunks/4bd1b696-98e9308c101e0794.js:1:90345]
    o2 [https://games.productartistry.com/_next/static/chunks/4bd1b696-98e9308c101e0794.js:1:90778]

rohandehal · a year ago

That game really is the final boss. I’ll dig into the recursion issue and get it fixed - Appreciate you taking the time to flag it!

rohandehal commented on Show HN: Interactive game teaching dark patterns in UX design games.productartistry.com... · Posted by u/rohandehal

gs17 · a year ago

It's a nice game but I have some feedback:

The first two levels want you to click the non-misleading option and then the third requires you to click the misleading option, which then has a "Report as Deceptive Marketing" button. This feels counterproductive if you're trying to teach people to not fall for dark patterns, you've just rewarded them for falling for it and punished anyone who didn't!. Then, a later level has the opposite, you see (almost) the same dialog from level 3, but you need to click the other option.

The instructions for Level 3 do say you're supposed to "find the hidden truth", but that's not necessarily what clicking the "Activate Premium Features" button would do in real life. I think it would work better if it stuck to one side of things, probably having players always try to avoid getting misled. At the end it says one of the outcomes should be "Improved muscle memory", so the goal should probably be no clicking on bad things.

This also makes it confusing what it's supposed to be simulating to me. I've never had a site offer to let me report their own promotions as deceptive (or as a later level has, "Report Bait and Switch Tactic" when you go to check out).

The "Trick Questions" level had only pre-checked checkboxes that you should uncheck (and the button tells you to uncheck all of them, there's no thought required here), I think it would work better if some needed to remain checked. It ties in to the same "muscle memory" issue, unchecking isn't guaranteed to be a good action. Similarly, it might make sense to have Basket Sneaking include a coupon code or something that you shouldn't remove from your cart, so players learn to read closely.

rohandehal · a year ago

Thanks for the detailed lesson feedback! Developing the game piece by piece made it harder to step back and see how the flow worked as a whole, and I can see where the gamification falls short.

For the next update, I’m planning to streamline the flow so that all patterns reinforce positive actions and avoid rewarding the wrong behaviors. I also want to separate the educational aspects more clearly to make the goals and outcomes easier to understand. Your insights will definitely help guide those changes—thank you again for sharing!

rohandehal commented on Show HN: Interactive game teaching dark patterns in UX design games.productartistry.com... · Posted by u/rohandehal

NotAnOtter · a year ago

Fantastic idea, the UI of the site is clean, I think the actual content itself could use some improvement.

After opening the site I had to "fail" a couple just to understand what the user goal even was. I recognized the fake/misleading UI but still wasn't sure what to do with that information.

I think you should take this exact concept, do some user studies, and come out with a V2. There's a market for this. My grandparents are getting to the age where I don't really trust them with access to their own credit cards / operating the web, I frequently come over to fix their computer and it's just extensions they've unintentionally installed. If this was iterated on & repackaged as either a educational course or a "test" to see if they are "safe on the internet", I would pay money for it.

And on the other end, it's well-proven at this point that tech literacy for the average person peaked somewhere around people born in 1985-2000. Before then, people grew up without as much access to tech. After that, people grew up in an environment where common tech problems were already solved. (A 10 yearold in 2012 wasn't dealing with corrupted disks, they were playing on an iPad). Offering this concept as a course targetted at the age range could be good.

rohandehal · a year ago

Thanks so much for the kind words about the UI and concept! I’ve gotten a lot of feedback about improving the gamification and making the user goals clearer, and it’s something I’m really targeting in the next iteration.

I really like the idea of turning this into an educational tool or test, especially for younger or older audiences who need help with tech literacy. It’s a great use case and definitely fits with where I want to take the project. Thanks again for sharing—it’s super valuable!

rohandehal commented on Show HN: Interactive game teaching dark patterns in UX design games.productartistry.com... · Posted by u/rohandehal

maupin · a year ago

I think your UI could use some work, funny enough. But I like the concept, it's just that the way the page and "game" works is not exactly clear.

rohandehal · a year ago

Appreciate this! It’s clear there’s a lot of room to make things more intuitive. I’ll definitely focus on improving the clarity and flow in the next iteration.

rohandehal commented on Show HN: Interactive game teaching dark patterns in UX design games.productartistry.com... · Posted by u/rohandehal

immibis · a year ago

The gamification of the "levels" starting with "Misdirection" doesn't really make sense to me. After the first few "levels" you've established how the game works: the player has to click on the button that opts out of the bad stuff, and gets a green box (success). Opting into the bad stuff gives a red box (fail).

But then suddenly you switch it up: the player is forced to opt into the bad stuff, so you can give a guided tour through the bad stuff. You still give red failure feedback for all of this, but you also give red failure feedback if the player opts out of the bad stuff, since you were trying to get them to see it.

Even after this point, some levels work the original way where you have to opt out of bad stuff.

Again on "Basket Sneaking", the goal is to remove items from the cart, but when removing items from the cart, you give red failure-like feedback.

On "Privacy Zuckering" the "Show details" are not anything you'd see on a real website. Here the idea that you're giving a guided tour clashes with the idea that you're showing us a mockup of a real app.

This reply was delayed by a few hours due to HN rate limiting.

rohandehal · a year ago

Thank you for the super detailed feedback—this is incredibly helpful!

Other comments have highlighted similar issues, and I definitely see the need to re-work the lessons to maintain a more consistent positive action pattern.

Balancing guided exploration with clear player expectations has been tricky, but your input gives me a lot to think about.

Thanks again-really appreciate you taking the time to share this.

rohandehal commented on Show HN: Interactive game teaching dark patterns in UX design games.productartistry.com... · Posted by u/rohandehal

pmontra · a year ago

Well done.

From a technical point of view the page scrolls a little slowly. I'm on Firefox for Android and it's usually faster than that. However for those scammy sites slowness is par for the course. It adds to the realism of the experience.

rohandehal · a year ago

Haha, thanks for the heads-up about scrolling! Definitely not intentional realism, but hey, I’ll take the happy accident.

rohandehal commented on Show HN: Interactive game teaching dark patterns in UX design games.productartistry.com... · Posted by u/rohandehal

kittikitti · a year ago

Thank you so much for this! I think this is informative and relevant.

rohandehal · a year ago

Thank you! Glad you liked it.

rohandehal commented on Show HN: Interactive game teaching dark patterns in UX design games.productartistry.com... · Posted by u/rohandehal

nelblu · a year ago

Very cool! I interacted with the first few pages and I am going to share this with my friends so they can learn how to avoid the dark patterns.

rohandehal · a year ago

Glad you enjoyed it! Hearing this means a lot and motivates me to keep improving it.