Shedding light on assessing Dark Patterns: Introducing the System Darkness Scale (SDS)

Dark Patterns are elements in interfaces designed to misdirect, confuse, and lure users into unintended, involuntary actions. These are not just “sloppy” or “inelegant” designs without ill intent but are rather carefully crafted with an understanding of human psychology. Dark patterns are omnipresent as part of web and game-interfaces and highly effective. Hence, there is agreement that awareness and a better understanding is needed. The current study focuses on dark patterns from a user’s perspective in order to develop the ‘System Darkness Scale’ (SDS). The SDS is a set of questionnaire items which can be used to evaluate the darkness of a system and assign a score to it. Just as the SUS proved to be a quick and reliable tool to measure usability, the SDS aims to act as a validated tool to identify in how far a system or service has incorporated “dark mechanisms”.