The dark side of haptics: Exploring deceptive haptic design in Interfaces

Deceptive design patterns (also known as 'dark patterns') are design elements that trick users into unintended behaviors that harm them and benefit the party implementing the design. Prior work has taxonomized, investigated, and speculated the presence of dark patterns across environments (applications, websites, games, VR, AR, IoT) and modalities (visual, audio). However, more attention is needed to investigate how haptic technologies might be used to enable deceptive patterns since it is gradually becoming prevalent in digital experiences. This project contributes to the characterization and demonstration of deceptive patterns enabled / augmented by haptic stimulation. First, we identify the key characteristics of haptic modality that may enable new dark patterns or argument existing ones, and we surface examples of such patterns. Second, we conducted a between-group study ,in which we investigated the efficacy of one chosen haptic dark pattern. In addition, we presented mitigative recommendations to the stakeholders.