Design Details

302: Designing Dark Patterns

Episode Summary

This week, inspired by a tweet from Daniel Burka, we tackle the thorny but important question of who is ultimately accountable for the implementation of a product's dark patterns. Is Design responsible? Engineering? Leadership? All of the above? In Listener Questions, we answer how to design on an iPad and how to apply an even grid to an odd screen. And as always, we share a couple cool things like some SVG icons and a modded Apple TV remote.

Episode Notes

This week, inspired by a tweet from Daniel Burka, we tackle the thorny but important question of who is ultimately accountable for the implementation of a product's dark patterns. Is Design responsible? Engineering? Leadership? All of the above? In Listener Questions, we answer how to design on an iPad and how to apply an even grid to an odd screen. And as always, we share a couple cool things like some SVG icons and a modded Apple TV remote.

Follow-up:

• Our apologies for butchering the name of Alexis Collado, host of Roots, "a podcast about the stories of Filipino designers"
• Vincent shared his strange dream of creating a recommendation database for Design Details episodes
• Press F to pay respects for Herr Lindner, who had been saving Design Details until retirement, but just recently started listening at Episode 1

Listener Questions:

• Anonymous asks how to design on an iPad
  • Answer: Check out this (hilarious) video of Rafa, co-host of the Layout podcast, running Figma on an iPad using a keyboard and trackpad
• Kevin Haag asks how to apply the 8pt grid when a device's screen width doesn't fit the grid exactly
  • Answer: Just measure from the screen edges :)

Industry Talk:

• Daniel Burka admonished designers for using dark patterns to obfuscate account deletion
  • A dark pattern is "a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing something"
  • You can read the story behind the Dropbox downgrade illustration near the end of this article: "Illustrating a more human brand (part 1)"
  • Back in 2010, Facebook interrupted the account deletion flow with pictures of your friends who "will miss you"
  • In the Saturday Night Massacre, the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General resigned in protest rather than fire the independent special prosecutor at Nixon's request
  • Article: "What to Know About Obeying an Unlawful Military Order"
  • Video: "Wendy Releases the Chickens"
  • The GDPR's Right to Erasure is also known as the "right to be forgotten"

One Cool Thing:

• Brian shared Cole Bemis's Feather icons, which were used by Gaddafi Rusli to make ICONSVG, which provides "quick customizable SVG icons for your project"
• Marshall shared his modded Apple TV remote, which features a Tile, two 3M strips, and two drawer bumpers to increase usability (and decrease beauty, but whatever)
  • Video: Here's proof Marshall isn't crazy about Apple making a Tile killer
  • Note: For the record, that video was released two days after we recorded this episode, so yeah

Design Details on the Web:

• We are @designdetailsfm
  • Brian is @brian_lovin and hi@brianlovin.com
  • Marshall is @marshallbock
  • @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are
• Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes

BYEEEEE!