Are Indian apps manipulating you? Unveiling the dark patterns of online shopping

Raise your hand if you have encountered a dialog box on an app or a website where “Yes” is brighter and more visible than a “No”, or the site you are buying from has sneakily added a new service or an item while charging you more money.

These traits, called deceptive patterns, are design decisions made by companies to subconsciously coerce users into making a decision, making a purchase, or ticking a box. Essentially, these are sneaky design tactics that online platforms use to nudge you into doing things you didn’t plan on.

Although we may not be aware of the terminology, most of us have experienced this phenomenon. “Recently, the landing page of a dining app showed me discounts at a restaurant I was at, but when I went on to pay the bill, I saw that the discount was only applicable to card holders of certain banks. This whole rigmarole just wasted my time and made me not trust the app,” says Radhika Modi, a Delhi-based gender expert.

This kind of trickery is rampant in India. To highlight this behaviour, Bengaluru-based design agency Parallel partnered with The Advertising Standards Council Of India (ASCI) to study over 12,000 screenshots across more than 50 apps belonging to nine different industries.

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The study found that 52 out of 53 apps have at least one deceptive pattern. It found that health-tech apps were found to have the highest usage of dark patterns, followed by those in the travel booking and fintech sectors. Privacy deception, which is tricking users into sharing more personal data than they should, and Drip Pricing, which is a pattern of slowly revealing the additional fees for a service or a product, were the most prominent patterns found in these apps.

These design choices are akin to someone adding extra charges to your phone bill for services you never subscribed to, says Robin Dhanwani, CEO and founder of Parallel. “Drip pricing is a deceptive tactic our research highlights as a major issue in online travel bookings. Imagine you’re booking a flight, and you see a great deal upfront. But as you move through the process, additional costs like baggage fees and convenience fees get tacked on in small increments,” explains Dhanwani.

The study noted that 56% of users feel frustrated when they find out that the price is higher than the initial offer, but they feel compelled to complete the purchase.Himanshu Khanna, founder of design agency Sparklin and social network Openvy, points out that cab-hailing apps often make it difficult to cancel rides. “One of the most prevalent patterns is to make cancelation or deletion difficult. Try booking through Uber, Ola or Rapido. And then try finding the ‘cancel trip’ button. It’s mostly and carefully hidden under one or two smaller buttons, and thus, modal windows,” says Khanna. “Interestingly, it seems this pattern is now borrowed for apps using drip pricing. You may try looking at the details of the amount you are paying when you order food the next time.”

Companies often also use these tactics to drive up their stats like engagement or revenue. “In India, it is prevalent because it is competition for users’ mind share, and being able to drive revenue is harder than in other markets. Sometimes, in order to succeed, companies end up crossing the line to achieve growth at all costs.” Dhanwani said.

Through the study, Parallel and ASCI found out that younger users are more prone to impulsive decisions online. So, the companies pressurise them into making a decision through tactics like countdown timers. Mobile users are also at 30% higher risk, given they might not be able to read fine print on a smaller screen, the study suggested.

Globally, the UK-based organisation Deceptive.design (formerly darkpatterns.org), started in 2010, has been doing important work in this field — finding and documenting dark patterns and assigning them standard nomenclature. Founder Harry Brignull, an UX designer, started it to address the growing issue of manipulative, deceptive and coercive design patterns in the digital world, and terminology coined by the organisation has been quoted by lawmakers and experts, most recently by the European Commission’s ‘Digital Fairness Fitness Check’, which evaluates whether the current EU consumer protection laws are fit for purpose to ensure a high level of protection in the digital environment.

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Some of the most frequently occurring dark patterns Brignull and his team have found are ‘comparison prevention’, where the user struggles to compare products because features and prices are combined in a complex manner, or because essential information is hard to find; ‘confirmshaming’, where the user is emotionally manipulated into doing something that they would not otherwise have done; ‘disguised ads’, where the user mistakenly believes they are clicking on an interface element or native content, but it’s actually a disguised advertisement; creating fake scarcity or urgency; hard to cancel etc.

Dhanwani suggested that the way to fight back against dark patterns is to stay informed and question buttons or actions where you feel something is off. For instance, if all options lead you to spend more or sign up or you see timers or messages like “Deal ends in 10 minutes,” these are deceptive patterns pressuring you to take action.

There is no law against deceptive patterns in the country. However, in 2023, India’s consumer ministry released draft guidelines to crack down on these tactics. Manisha Kapoor, CEO & Secretary General of ASCI, said that the body is keeping a close watch on deceptive patterns. Users can report patterns like drip pricing and false urgency on tara.ascionline.in. Plus, it has developed a tool with Parallel called an ethical score calculator for developers to evaluate their apps along with a guideline for mindful design.

Pattern recognition

Some common types of ‘dark patterns’ in Indian apps:

Privacy Deception: Manipulates users into unknowingly sharing more personal data than intended

Interface Interference: Highlighting certain information on the interface and hiding others, misdirecting users into taking an action

Nagging: Constant pop-ups and notifications pushing users to take an action, making it difficult to finish their task at hand

Trick Questions: Deliberate use of confusing or vague language, misdirecting users into taking an action

Drip Pricing: Revealing additional fees gradually throughout the purchase process, making the final price higher than that originally quoted

(Source: consciouspatterns.in)