Re-Designing Dark Patterns to Improve Privacy

Abstract

Dark patterns are highly unethical tools used in digital design to obtain, inter alia, as much personal data as possible from users; normally, without their consent. However, the methods followed by dark patterns can be re-purposed to actually enhance users’ privacy, thus turning them into ethical tools. This ongoing research aims to show how dark patterns can be re-designed to steer users into choosing the strictest privacy settings. From the point of view of ethical design practices, this implies a substantial transformation of something inherently bad into a public interest enabler.