Design Ethics and Dark Patterns

Every designer eventually gets asked, in one form or another, to make cancellation harder to find, to pre-check a box that opts users into something they didn't ask for, or to make the "decline" button feel like a mistake. This subject exists because "I would never do that" is not an interview answer — it's a refusal to engage with the actual question, which is: can you name what's being asked for, explain precisely why it crosses a line, and propose something that still serves the business goal? Interviewers ask about dark patterns specifically because the answer separates candidates who've thought about design ethics as a checklist from candidates who understand it as a set of concrete, nameable techniques with legal and reputational consequences attached.

This subject covers Harry Brignull's dark pattern taxonomy — the vocabulary the entire field uses, coined in 2010 and still the reference point every interviewer expects you to know by name — the practical test for distinguishing legitimate persuasive design from manipulation, privacy-by-design as the constructive alternative, why this is increasingly a regulatory and business-risk conversation and not just an ethics one, and the realistic scenario of being asked to build a dark pattern and how to respond without either quietly complying or refusing unhelpfully.

Cross-references: ux-writing-and-microcopy covers the copywriting craft that many dark patterns weaponize (confirmshaming and trick questions are fundamentally microcopy problems); design-metrics-and-product-thinking covers how to argue for the ethical alternative in terms of the metrics a stakeholder actually cares about.