#darkpatterns: UX Practitioner Conversations About Ethical Design

Summary

There is increasing interest in the role that ethics plays in UX practice, however current guidance is largely driven by formalized frameworks and does not adequately describe “on the ground” practitioner conversations regarding ethics. In this late-breaking work, we identified and described conversations about a specific ethical phenomenon on Twitter using the hashtag #darkpatterns. We then determined the authors of these tweets and analyzed the types of artifacts or links they shared. We found that UX practitioners were most likely to share tweets with this hashtag, and that a majority of tweets either mentioned an artifact or “shames” an organization that engages in manipulative UX practices. We identify implications for building an enhanced understanding of pragmatist ethics from a practitioner perspective.