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Deceptive Patterns: Exposing the Tricks Tech Companies Use to Control You
Step into the shadowy world of deceptive patterns and learn how online businesses exploit consumers through carefully designed tricks and traps. In this eye-opening book, Harry Brignull unveils how these techniques work and why they’re used, naming and shaming many well-known brands along the way. Regulations are changing rapidly, and we're seeing a big rise in legal enforcement. But is it enough to protect consumers?
272 pages, Paperback
Published July 30, 2023
10 people are currently reading
286 people want to read
About the author
Harry Brignull
3 books7 followersSince 2010, Harry Brignull has dedicated his career to understanding and exposing the manipulative and deceptive techniques that are employed to exploit users online. He is credited with coining a number of the terms that are now popularly used in this research area, and is the founder of the website deceptive.design (formerly darkpatterns.org). He has worked as an expert witness on a number of cases about deceptive patterns, including Nichols v. Noom Inc. (Case 1:20-cv-03677), Arena v. Intuit Inc. (Case 3:19-cv-02546) and FTC v. Publishers Clearing House LLC (Case 2:23-cv-04735). Harry is also an accomplished user experience director, having worked for organisations that include Smart Pension, Spotify, Pearson, HMRC, and the Telegraph newspaper.
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December 19, 2025maybe things were bad before ai ...
July 30, 2023
Dr. Harry Brignull writes with the clarity and knowledge that only someone with his expertise could. "Deceptive Patterns: Exposing the tricks tech companies use to control you" is a book everyone should read to be better informed about the harsh reality of the usage of deceptive patterns in website building, as it not only comprises an exhaustive, yet very straightforward, list of the existent patterns but also gives insight into the legal problems that will undoubtedly keep arising.
The book is very informative, packed with practical examples (or better put, evidence) of the usage of deceptive patterns, and is structured in a very logical way. Dr. Brignull has an astounding ability to swiftly carry the reader through his reasoning and to turn something as complex as this topic into something that anyone interested can read and understand.
The author also highlights the (very) important aspect of vulnerability and exploitation of said vulnerability, which is a crucial point nowadays; and one that is so often ignored or left behind due to the existence of bigger problems.
This is a must-read if you are curious about the "world" of deceptive patterns!
The book is very informative, packed with practical examples (or better put, evidence) of the usage of deceptive patterns, and is structured in a very logical way. Dr. Brignull has an astounding ability to swiftly carry the reader through his reasoning and to turn something as complex as this topic into something that anyone interested can read and understand.
The author also highlights the (very) important aspect of vulnerability and exploitation of said vulnerability, which is a crucial point nowadays; and one that is so often ignored or left behind due to the existence of bigger problems.
This is a must-read if you are curious about the "world" of deceptive patterns!
August 13, 2023
It is great to see the field being created and analysed at such speed. Seeing the original authors return to it and reclarify their ideas is great. I loved this book and would recommend it if you are interested in (dark) deceptive patterns.
November 6, 2023
I would whole-heartedly recommend Harry Brignull's Deceptive Patterns to all my UX and design and product management friends and colleagues, as well as anyone else working in tech who's responsible for building user experiences. It dovetails nicely with the topic of designing for privacy, which I've been presenting on for several years now, so I'll be updating my presentations to include a prompt to read it and recommending it to my students, as well.
November 27, 2024
A short introduction to deceptive design. A worthwhile read for those not yet acquainted with dark patterns and their ilk. Lots of examples—that’s the highlight of the text. Those in the know may not benefit much from this one but definitely grab a copy for the people in your life who may not realize they need it and remain susceptible …
January 15, 2024
Trapped by Design: Deceptive Patterns Book Review by Harry Brignull
Deceptive design patterns are all around us. As customers, we daily encounter them in the physical and digital world. They are put in place by organisations to deprive us of our attention, time, energy and (of course) money.
Deceptive Patterns by Harry Brignull is an exhaustive review of the psychological principles and strategies used by companies to manipulate their customers.
As designers, we often encounter persuasive techniques to nudge customers towards a certain behaviour. Nudging is a tool: sometimes it is used for a good purpose; sometimes it is used instead to harm or manipulate people. When designers are employed by organisations that desire to achieve growth at all costs (at their customers' expense) they are faced with a moral dilemma: abide by the business objectives or contest the decisions by explaining these tactics can lead to significant economic or reputational damage. For example, have you ever booked a flight on the Ryanair website? There is an infamous section in the booking process, where the user is asked to purchase an 'optional' flight insurance. I have put 'optional' in brackets because the website hid the 'I do not need travel insurance' under the 'countries' dropdown before 2017. That was (obviously) a malicious tactic. While reading the book, I was extremely pleased to find out that Ryanair was fined by the Italian Competition Authority for €850,000 for misleading their customers. Despite that, while the experience on Ryanair.com has improved since then, the website still uses deceptive patterns on their website to mislead their customers and maximise their profit.
Another example. If you are a parent, I am sure you are also concerned with the gaming experience young children are exposed to. Game developers on the App/Play Store, Roblox, Fortnite and many other platforms extensively use deceptive patterns to cajole their young users into buying skins, add-ons, power-ups and many other virtual goods. In 2023, Epic Games (the makers of Fortnite) settled for $245M for using deceptive patterns in Fortnite. How can we make these people accountable for their actions?
Broadly speaking, the book is broken down into three main parts: exploitative strategies, deceptive patterns and legislation.
The first part is a review of well-known psychology and sociology mechanics that allow companies to tap into the pitfalls of our brain or perceptual system. These pitfalls can map to Boyd's Cycle (Observe, Orient, Decide and Act) e.g. by exploiting perceptual vulnerabilities, comprehension and decision-making to exploiting emotions and compulsory behaviours.
The second part provides a classification of deceptive patterns (which might tap into one or more vulnerabilities). Some of these classes include Sneaking, Urgency, Misdirection, Social Proof and Scarcity.
The third part focuses on the current and future legislation aimed at stopping deceptive patterns harming customers, especially those with cognitive impairment, lower education or income. The good news is that there is a lot of good legislation coming in the EU and the US to further protect us from companies exploiting those strategies to harm us and our children.
I found the book to be well-researched and written. It is concise and provides just enough examples to fully understand each class of patterns. The final section on the legislation in the US and EU is very useful for designers or product managers in an organisation with a low level of maturity towards deceptive patterns. People can easily reference one or more laws that the pattern is breaking, and give a few examples of companies that have suffered reputational or economic damage from failing to comply with the law.
While the book is overall impressive, I feel it could still use some further improvements. For example, I would have loved to see more examples of how a digital experience was redesigned to remove or avoid deceptive patterns. Chapter 12 in the book talks about the difference between persuasion and manipulation it is a bit short (3 pages). It could have been more detailed or provided more actionable guidance on how to avoid falling into the deceptive pattern trap. An idea would be to have a printable cheat sheet for designers and product managers summarising the main types of deceptive patterns, with a brief description underneath.
Last but not least, Harry and his team of collaborators are managing the deceptive patterns website, and they have been doing so for more than a decade. It includes a crowd-sourced inventory of dark patterns ‘sightings’ from Twitter. I only wish it was more tightly connected to the types of patterns, so designers can filter the 'sightings' by type – currently, you can only do so by company.
Deceptive design patterns are all around us. As customers, we daily encounter them in the physical and digital world. They are put in place by organisations to deprive us of our attention, time, energy and (of course) money.
Deceptive Patterns by Harry Brignull is an exhaustive review of the psychological principles and strategies used by companies to manipulate their customers.
As designers, we often encounter persuasive techniques to nudge customers towards a certain behaviour. Nudging is a tool: sometimes it is used for a good purpose; sometimes it is used instead to harm or manipulate people. When designers are employed by organisations that desire to achieve growth at all costs (at their customers' expense) they are faced with a moral dilemma: abide by the business objectives or contest the decisions by explaining these tactics can lead to significant economic or reputational damage. For example, have you ever booked a flight on the Ryanair website? There is an infamous section in the booking process, where the user is asked to purchase an 'optional' flight insurance. I have put 'optional' in brackets because the website hid the 'I do not need travel insurance' under the 'countries' dropdown before 2017. That was (obviously) a malicious tactic. While reading the book, I was extremely pleased to find out that Ryanair was fined by the Italian Competition Authority for €850,000 for misleading their customers. Despite that, while the experience on Ryanair.com has improved since then, the website still uses deceptive patterns on their website to mislead their customers and maximise their profit.
Another example. If you are a parent, I am sure you are also concerned with the gaming experience young children are exposed to. Game developers on the App/Play Store, Roblox, Fortnite and many other platforms extensively use deceptive patterns to cajole their young users into buying skins, add-ons, power-ups and many other virtual goods. In 2023, Epic Games (the makers of Fortnite) settled for $245M for using deceptive patterns in Fortnite. How can we make these people accountable for their actions?
Broadly speaking, the book is broken down into three main parts: exploitative strategies, deceptive patterns and legislation.
The first part is a review of well-known psychology and sociology mechanics that allow companies to tap into the pitfalls of our brain or perceptual system. These pitfalls can map to Boyd's Cycle (Observe, Orient, Decide and Act) e.g. by exploiting perceptual vulnerabilities, comprehension and decision-making to exploiting emotions and compulsory behaviours.
The second part provides a classification of deceptive patterns (which might tap into one or more vulnerabilities). Some of these classes include Sneaking, Urgency, Misdirection, Social Proof and Scarcity.
The third part focuses on the current and future legislation aimed at stopping deceptive patterns harming customers, especially those with cognitive impairment, lower education or income. The good news is that there is a lot of good legislation coming in the EU and the US to further protect us from companies exploiting those strategies to harm us and our children.
I found the book to be well-researched and written. It is concise and provides just enough examples to fully understand each class of patterns. The final section on the legislation in the US and EU is very useful for designers or product managers in an organisation with a low level of maturity towards deceptive patterns. People can easily reference one or more laws that the pattern is breaking, and give a few examples of companies that have suffered reputational or economic damage from failing to comply with the law.
While the book is overall impressive, I feel it could still use some further improvements. For example, I would have loved to see more examples of how a digital experience was redesigned to remove or avoid deceptive patterns. Chapter 12 in the book talks about the difference between persuasion and manipulation it is a bit short (3 pages). It could have been more detailed or provided more actionable guidance on how to avoid falling into the deceptive pattern trap. An idea would be to have a printable cheat sheet for designers and product managers summarising the main types of deceptive patterns, with a brief description underneath.
Last but not least, Harry and his team of collaborators are managing the deceptive patterns website, and they have been doing so for more than a decade. It includes a crowd-sourced inventory of dark patterns ‘sightings’ from Twitter. I only wish it was more tightly connected to the types of patterns, so designers can filter the 'sightings' by type – currently, you can only do so by company.
April 13, 2024
I really enjoyed this book, it is super informative about everything related to deceptive patterns.
It’s a book of two parts. The first half presents deceptive patterns and all their permutations, while the second half is a deep dive on the different regulations to keep companies in check. The first half is a great resource for UX designers, product owners and developers to learn about bad practices with really great examples.
I was surprised the legal section was also very detailed and included examples of companies caught out, which rules they broke, and how much they had to pay back. As I'm not very interested in legal intricacies, I did find this section quite boring to read for fun. But the information in this section will be invaluable for people working in the industry trying to fight deceptive patterns from the inside.
If your boss is trying to encourage you to design for the dark side, just wave this book under their nose and tell them exactly which laws they are in breach of.
It’s a book of two parts. The first half presents deceptive patterns and all their permutations, while the second half is a deep dive on the different regulations to keep companies in check. The first half is a great resource for UX designers, product owners and developers to learn about bad practices with really great examples.
I was surprised the legal section was also very detailed and included examples of companies caught out, which rules they broke, and how much they had to pay back. As I'm not very interested in legal intricacies, I did find this section quite boring to read for fun. But the information in this section will be invaluable for people working in the industry trying to fight deceptive patterns from the inside.
If your boss is trying to encourage you to design for the dark side, just wave this book under their nose and tell them exactly which laws they are in breach of.
December 4, 2024
I'm so frustrated with this book. It contains very valuable information that any surfer on the www-waves should know, but it's written in a style that's a mix of blog posts and academic writing (with turns if phrases like "As we saw in the previous chapter... Now we've established that..."). Sometimes, pictures of moths are used to demonstrate to the reader what camouflage is and how likewise websites can hide important information by changing font colour, and then you get 100 pages of laws. It's just very uneven, with short and long chapters following eachother in a way that breaks the flow of the book. I hope they can find a writer to cooperate with who can use their 'storytelling skills' (to use the lingo of today) to get this information to the people who need it, eg everyone.
Maybe the author banks on his website being more accessible (deceptive.design), as the 'hall of shame' type examples are the strongest part of the book. So, look at the site and if you get interested, get the book and read the chapters that grab your attention.
Maybe the author banks on his website being more accessible (deceptive.design), as the 'hall of shame' type examples are the strongest part of the book. So, look at the site and if you get interested, get the book and read the chapters that grab your attention.
November 10, 2023
An important work into this scary topic. The author uses very clear language throughout and takes the reader logically through the shadier practices of the online industry. The pace is good, with a well pitched level of technical depth that’s designed to keep the attention of those of us who are less tech-savvy containing lots of real-life visual examples that bring this to life.
Highly recommended for anyone wanting to understand how tech companies manipulate consumers, most of the time without us even realising it’s happening.
Highly recommended for anyone wanting to understand how tech companies manipulate consumers, most of the time without us even realising it’s happening.
May 30, 2024
THis book is one of the most important publications in the world of deceptive (dark) patterns. As the pioneer of this field, Harry Brignull steps the reader through the different categories of deceptive patterns with easy-to-understand language and excellent visual examples. With a logical structure and easy flow, It's a must-read for anyone wanting to understand deceptive website designs and their impact. If you're responsible for a website, no matter where you are in the world, this is the book you need to read.
May 29, 2024
This book is excellent, well-researched and easy to read. It's informative and useful for anyone, but especially those working in marketing, design or UX. As a copywriter, I found it added an entirely new dimension to my understanding of persuasion vs deception and the fine line inbetween the two. Anyone who is tasked with creating digital content of any kind should be required to read this book.
March 16, 2025
Decent bit of deceptive pattern breakdown and some real world cases. Not a huge amount of new knowledge for those working in the field, adjacent to it, or alert to the preying patterns. Dragged down a bit by the dry analysis of the legal/org world - feels dated already.
June 21, 2024
4
I need to throw away my phone
I need to throw away my phone
July 28, 2025
Eye opening. I would recommend it to anyone who’s interested in learning tactics for behavioral bias (especially in the online marketplace).
September 7, 2024
This book won't reveal much new if you've been online for the past several years. The regulation part is a bit dull, I'll admit. But overall, it's clear and easy to follow. For newcomers to the topic, it's a solid starting point.
June 20, 2024
I reviewed this book for work!
Take a look here:
https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/tec...
Take a look here:
https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/tec...
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews