Have you ever tried to cancel an online subscription? Or felt pressured into buying something

from a website because it's allegedly the last one? Or quick, for people who bought this

today? I've been investigating the tricks and techniques used by websites to make us

click by or subscribe, whether we want to or not. In this program we'll meet designers,

psychologists, regulators and we'll find out what impact certain types of web design

are having on users to understand what's really going on behind the computer screen.

You're listening to Dark Patterns with me, Darryl Morris on the BBC World Service.

In 2010, something caught the attention of user design expert Harry Brignal.

I started quite frequently seeing people being tripped up by things in websites and apps

that look like they've been put there on purpose, like trip hazards that weren't a sort

of design mistake but were purposeful. You coined the phrase Dark Patterns, right?

Yes, so there's the idea of normal design patterns. For example, a login box is a useful

pattern and a really good way for us to communicate. A Dark Pattern is meant to be a deceptive

and kind of shady technique. So that's where the name came from. Having named them,

I started doing lots more research. I found them everywhere. It was like mushrooms popping

up in the forest, like you can see one, you can see another. I realised that there was

this whole phenomenon that people weren't really talking about, so I made a website,

I tried to popularise it and it's now the kind of industry accepted term.

What was that first example of a Dark Pattern with the strategy?

The subscription kind of, the Roach Motel.

The Urban Dictionary defines a Roach Motel as anything that upon entering it can't be

easily left. On some websites, that's exactly what it's like to cancel your subscription.

...