“Dark patterns are design features used to deceive, steer, or manipulate users into behavior that is profitable for an entity offering a product or service, but they are often harmful to users.”—Rohit Chopra, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
If you’re familiar with behavioral finance, you likely know about the power of a good nudge. Nudges are small changes to a choice environment that lightly prod a consumer toward behaviors that are personally or socially beneficial (such as auto-enrollment in retirement savings plans or organ donation programs). Nudges often reduce friction to make processes simpler and easier. They are the result of behavioral science being put to work in the best interest of the consumer. Cass Sunstein, the man who made “nudge” a household word with his classic behavioral science book recently brought the more nefarious side of behavioral product and service design to light in his latest book, “Sludge.”
Sludge is like an anti-nudge, introducing friction or complexity to discourage actions that may be in the best interest of the customer, but not the vendor. You’ve likely encountered sludge in the form of bureaucratic red tape, pop-up ads that hide a minuscule “close” button in a corner and make the link to the website look like an exit button instead, or subscriptions that are easy to initiate but difficult to cancel.
Sludge is part of a larger class of nefarious product and service design methods known as dark patterns….
