Speak up

Harry popped ’round to the Clearleft studio yesterday. It’s always nice when a Clearleft alum comes to visit.

It wasn’t just a social call though. Harry wanted to run through the ideas he’s got for his UX London talk.

Wait. I buried the lede. Let me start again.

Harry Brignull is speaking at this year’s UX London!

Yes, the person who literally wrote the book on deceptive design patterns will be on the line-up. And judging from what I heard yesterday, it’s going to be a brilliant talk.

It was fascinating listening to Harry talk about the times he’s been brought in to investigate companies accused of deliberately employing deceptive design tactics. It involves a lot of research and detective work, trawling through internal communications hoping to find a smoking gun like a memo from the boss or an objection from a beleaguered designer.

I thought about this again today reading Nic Chan’s post, Have we forgotten how to build ethical things for the web?. It resonates with what Harry will be talking about at UX London. What can an individual ethical designer do when they’re embedded in a company that doesn’t prioritise user safety?

It’s like a walking into a jets pray of bullshit, so much so that even those with good intentions get easily overwhelmed.

Though I try, my efforts rarely bear fruit, even with the most well-meaning of clients. And look, I get it, no on wants to be the tall poppy. It’s hard enough to squeeze money from the internet-stone these days. Why take a stance on a tiny issue when your users don’t even care? Your competitors certainly don’t. I usually end up quietly acquiescing to whatever bad are made, praying no future discerning user will notice and think badly of me.

It’s pretty clear to me that we can’t rely on individual people to make a difference here.

Still, I take some encouragement from Harry’s detective work. If the very least that an ethical designer (or developer) does is to speak up, on the record, then that can end up counting for a lot when the enshittification hits the fan.

If you see something, say something. Actually, don’t just say it. Write it down. In official communication channels, like email.

I remember when Clearleft crossed an ethical line (for me) by working on a cryptobollocks project, I didn’t just voice my objections, I wrote them down in a memo. It wasn’t fun being the tall poppy, the squeeky wheel, the wet blanket. But I think it would’ve been worse (for me) if I did nothing.

There are plenty of non-men in tech to speak at your conference - Stephanie Stimac’s Blog

I’m going to share this with the organisers of that conference I pulled out of recently.

Dark Patterns Detective

Deceptive design meets gamification in this explanatory puzzle game (though I wish it weren’t using the problematic label “dark patterns”).

I created this interactive experience to explore the intersection of design ethics and human psychology, helping us all make more informed choices while browsing the web.

Bringing Dark Patterns to Light. Transcript of the speech I gave at the… | by Harry Brignull | Jun, 2021 | Medium

Harry gave a speech at the Federal Trade Commission’s Dark Patterns workshop in April. Here’s the transcript, posted to Ev’s blog.

When I first worked on Dark Patterns in 2010, I was quite naive. I thought that they could be eradicated by shaming the companies that used them, and by encouraging designers to use a code of ethics.

The fact that we’re here today means that approach didn’t work.

Speaking at the Leading Design Conference, New York ‘22

The presentations themselves afforded a level of candor in personal narrative unlike any event I’ve been a part of thus far. We laughed, we cried (both quite literally), we were inspired — all, together. I can’t say enough about the vulnerability and courage of my fellow speakers, sharing their stories to move all of us — forward.

This is a lovely write-up of Leading Design New York from Justin.

The level of thought given to every nuance of this conference—from inclusiveness and safety, to privacy of discussed material and questions asked, to thoughtfulness of conference gear, to quality of the coffee via the on-premises baristas, to the well-conceived accompanying online program—were simply top-notch. Macro and micro. The event organizers and team: equally thoughtful and tremendous to work with.

Why your design system should include content | Clearleft

Rachel makes the case for integrating content design patterns into component libraries:

Instead of content design systems and visual design systems existing in isolation, the ideal is one design system that accommodates everything, marrying the content and design together in the way it will actually be used and experienced.