Visualizing Dark Patterns Ontology
Research, Design and Development of a web application that helps with exploration and education of a UX Dark Patterns ontology
Role:
UX & UI Design,
UI Development
Team: Sarvani Polisetty, Matthew Clark, Jordan Jaques, Luke Taylor, Renee Zhu, Leo Zheng
Duration
Sep - Dec 2024
(3 months)
Project & Ontology goals
Online dark pattern ontology
Create a comprehensive online resource for dark patterns based on the work of Gray, Santos, Bielova, and Mildner.
This resource will act as an ontology to present the types and connections of different dark patterns and how they are seen and utilized in the real world.
Foundation for future case studies
Our project work will act as a foundation so further developments can be used for collecting case studies of these patterns in practice.
These developments would include a version history for academic citation as well as a community form for submitting cases of patterns being used in real design work.
Colin M. Gray, Cristiana Teixeira Santos, Nataliia Bielova, and Thomas Mildner. 2024. “An Ontology of Dark Patterns Knowledge: Foundations, Definitions, and a Pathway for Shared Knowledge-Building.”
Focus Areas + Target Audience
ACADEMICS
FIND + STUDY
Academics like Harry Brignull and Colin Gray help find and discover Dark Patterns in UX design. They are leaders in their fields that identify patterns.
REGULATORY BODIES
IMPLEMENT REGULATION
Regulatory bodies that implement legislation in the respective jurisdictions that they inhabit. Regulatory bodies include: FTC, EUCOM, etc.
LEGAL SCHOLARS
GUIDE REGULATORS
Legal scholars work with regulatory bodies to help guide legislation that would hold entities accountable for their unethical practices.
MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCHERS
HELP IDENTIFY DP USE
People like journalists, design students, curious professionals play and important role in finding dark patterns that a being implemented or highlighting the use to the general public.
User expectations
Pattern Connections
Showing direct relationship between the patterns and the laws
Show what aspects these dark patterns are impacting
Link evidence of dark patterns to the ontologies
Visualization
Visual examples of the patterns would really help
Use different visualization for the patterns with a “most” on it.
the most prevalent, the most used, most visited...
Which patterns are forced to cause more harm to people could be visualized differently
Definition
Detailed definitions of each pattern helps people to distinguish similar ones
chart types &
visual explorations
Here’s what didn’t work
We used D3.JS to explore different implementations of visual charts, assessing their feasibility to implement technically and ability to prioritize information density and accessibility.
Icicle
Sunburst
Radial
chart types &
visual explorations
Here’s What did work
After exploring different types of hierarchies, we found the best visual for prioritizing information-first data while still being accessible was a tree diagram.
Wireframes + Prototypes
Nodes
High to Low Level
Sources
Examples
Related cases
Creating a dynamic website
an ontology database
The site’s content is drawn from an AirTable Database, where the hierarchy of patterns is broken down into their core components.
This data is read in as a JSON file, which effectively acts as a text version of the database with the same information.
