Deceptive, Disruptive, No Big Deal: Japanese People React to Simulated Dark Commercial Patterns

TL;DR

This study investigates Japanese users' reactions to simulated dark patterns on a mock shopping website, revealing which tactics are most deceptive and how they impact user mood and behavior.

Contribution

It provides the first empirical analysis of Japanese consumer responses to dark patterns and introduces a scalable method for evaluating user perceptions of deceptive UI elements.

Findings

Alphabet Soup and Misleading Reference Pricing are highly deceptive and unnoticed.

Untranslation is less deceptive but hinders account cancellation.

User mood significantly worsens after exposure to dark patterns.

Abstract

Dark patterns and deceptive designs (DPs) are user interface elements that trick people into taking actions that benefit the purveyor. Such designs are widely deployed, with special varieties found in certain nations like Japan that can be traced to global power hierarchies and the local socio-linguistic context of use. In this breaking work, we report on the first user study involving Japanese people (n=30) experiencing a mock shopping website injected with simulated DPs. We found that Alphabet Soup and Misleading Reference Pricing were the most deceptive and least noticeable. Social Proofs, Sneaking in Items, and Untranslation were the least deceptive but Untranslation prevented most from cancelling their account. Mood significantly worsened after experiencing the website. We contribute the first empirical findings on a Japanese consumer base alongside a scalable approach to evaluating user attitudes, perceptions, and behaviours towards DPs in an interactive context. We urge for more human participant research and ideally collaborations with industry to assess real designs in the wild.