The field guide to deceptive design.
A price built for you
Two people open the same page and see different numbers. Not a sale, not a region, not a currency: a price assembled from what is known about each of them, and shown to neither as such.
ReadBait and switch
The price that brought you here belongs to the one item they do not have. What they do have is forty dollars more, available now, and already in front of you.
ReadConfirmshaming
The button that declines is written to make you feel stupid. "No thanks, I like paying full price." The insult is the mechanism.
ReadDisguised advertising
The thing you clicked was an advertisement wearing the clothes of the thing around it. A download button that is not the download button. An article that is a purchase.
ReadEasy in, hard out
Signing up takes one click. Leaving takes a phone call, a retention offer, and a form that only opens on weekdays. The asymmetry is the product.
ReadFake urgency
A deadline that is not real. A timer, a stock count, or a warning that other people are looking, put there to stop you thinking rather than to tell you anything true.
With a live exampleHidden costs
The price you were shown is not the price you pay. Fees arrive one screen at a time, each too small to walk away over, and the total only appears once you are nearly finished.
ReadInvented social proof
A little popup says someone in Lisbon just bought this, four minutes ago. There is no one in Lisbon. The name, the city and the timer are drawn from a list.
With a live exampleMoney that is not money
You do not buy the item. You buy the coins, and the coins buy the item, and the coins are sold in bundles that never quite match what anything costs. Both of those facts are the design.
ReadNagging
You said no. It asks again next week, and the week after. Nothing about the request changed, only the number of times you have had to decline it.
ReadPay to continue
You lose at the exact moment a small payment would undo it. The price is set against the sting of losing, not against the value of what you get.
With a live examplePreselected choices
The box is already ticked. The insurance is already in the basket. Nothing was hidden from you, exactly, and nothing was chosen by you either.
ReadPrivacy zuckering
You are given a settings page with forty switches, most of them already on, and a suggestion that turning them off will make the product worse. Sharing was never a decision you made.
ReadThe account you cannot delete
Settings offers to deactivate, pause, or hide your account. It does not offer to delete it. The word you are looking for is in a help article, and the help article ends with a contact form.
ReadThe trial that bills you
Free for thirty days, and the only way to get the free part is to hand over a card. Nothing happens on day thirty except a charge, and the reminder that would have prevented it is the one email they do not send.
ReadThe unsubscribe that is not one
The link is at the bottom, in grey, four points high, and it leads to a page asking you to log in to an account you never made.
ReadTrick questions
Untick this box if you do not wish to not receive offers. The sentence is grammatical, the meaning is unrecoverable, and whichever way you go it was your choice.
ReadNone of this is behind a signup, and there is no newsletter at the end of it. If the guide was worth something to you, that is entirely between you and your conscience.
Support the idea, $5