The Occurrence of Dark Patterns in the Airline Industry is a thesis in Information Design with a focus on Interaction Design. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how dark patterns in airline ticket bookings affect the user experience of inexperienced users. Dark patterns are design tricks that manipulate users into making decisions that benefit the company behind them. Although the use of dark patterns may seem like a good way to increase sales, they can harm the company's reputation in the long run. Many companies have been fined large sums of money, and more are likely to follow as rules and regulations regarding the use of dark patterns become more common. This thesis examines how users perceive and react to the occurrence of dark patterns in the booking process of airline tickets. It does this by using methods such as interviews and scenarios. The findings serve as the basis for a design proposal to redesign two different booking processes where dark patterns occur less frequently. This proposal investigates the relationship between the occurrence of dark patterns and the user experience.

As consumers increasingly use subscription-based services, there is a rising tendency to discontinue a service to try others, due to a larger variety of options available. This incentive has prompted the widespread use of dark patterns by companies aiming to make the termination of their services more difficult for users by creating overly complicated cancellation processes. An excessive number of steps, confusing options, and unclear wording are among the tactics used to complicate these processes. To gain insight in this phenomena, this study aims to create knowledge about the effectiveness of various dark patterns within the category of Interface interference, with a particular focus on their ability to mislead users in a cancellation process, and their subsequent impacts on usability and user experience. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study engages user testing with a website prototype to provide an understanding of the different categories of dark patterns' effects on usability and user experience. The findings indicate that the dark pattern categories False hierarchy and Trick question resulted in the most pronounced negative reactions and led to most deviations in the prototype interaction data, signifying a severe impact on usability and experience. Additionally, the categories Hidden information and Preselection, while not provoking as many immediate reactions, were frequently overlooked by users. This observation underscores their potential as concealed manipulative agents, misleading users in a subtler manner.

Dark patterns are ubiquitous in user interfaces of today. They are often created by designers to manipulate users to make decisions they didn’t intend, or perhaps even wanted, in an interface that first and foremost benefits the stakeholders – at the expense of the users. Studies have shown that the designers themselves are aware of the concept of dark patterns, but are the users aware of them? This study aims to map website users’ knowledge about Harry Brignulls definition of the concept of dark patterns, the different types of dark patterns that the concept contains, and where users encounter these dark patterns. The data was collected through an online Sunet – Survey & Report-questionnaire and analyzed through an analyzing system called IBM SPSS and Sunets-questionnaire own analyzing tools. The result showed that very few of the respondents knew what the concept of dark patterns was, but many of them recognized that they had encountered the phenomena, after it was explained to them. The result also showed that there was no connection found between knowledge about dark patterns and the different factors of age, gender, occupation, or websites visited per day. The mapping of users’ knowledge about dark patterns opened for further future research.

Background. Learning a new language is essential for global communication and cultural understanding as it enhances communication skills and promotes respect for diverse cultures. In this digital age, e-learning platforms have become popular tools for language learning. Additionally, the integration of gamification and persuasive design techniques has gained widespread popularity in educational settings, primar- ily for their ability to boost user engagement. By infusing these game elements and persuasive design principles into online language learning platforms, We can create immersive experiences that drive the learners to actively learn.  Objectives. This study investigates the impact of gamification and persuasive de- sign principles on user engagement and motivation in e-learning platforms for non- Swedish people learning Swedish. The objectives include conducting a literature review on these principles, designing two e-learning platforms (one with these prin- ciples and one without), inviting a diverse group of non-Swedish people learning Swedish to use both platforms, followed by a survey to assess the satisfaction and motivation of the participants, and finally analyzing data to assess the influence of these elements on user engagement and motivation in language learning. Methods. To achieve the objectives, an extensive literature review was conducted to identify suitable game elements and persuasive design principles. Following this, two distinct e-learning platforms were created—one infused with gamification and persuasive design principles and one without. The final step involved a user study with a diverse group of non-Swedish participants to assess the impact of gamifi- cation and persuasive design principles on user engagement and motivation. This includes the collection of quantitative and qualitative data to measure the impact of gamification and persuasive design principles on user engagement and motivation in e-learning platforms designed for non-Swedish people learning Swedish.  Results. Through an extensive literature review, this thesis identified effective gamification elements for language learning platforms. Subsequently, two e-learning platforms were precisely designed and developed: one adhering to traditional non- gamified methods and the other incorporating the identified gamification elements. A group of non-Swedish participants engaged with both platforms and responded to a survey. The results revealed a significant increase in motivation among participants when completing language learning tasks on the gamified platform, demonstrating the tangible benefits of gamification in promoting engagement and long-term lan- guage acquisition, aligning with findings from the literature review. These outcomes can contribute to improving the design of language learning experiences while also providing insights for future developments in e-learning platforms.  Conclusions. Based on the study results, the conclusion is that using gamifica- tion and persuasive design principles can significantly improve user engagement and motivation in e-learning platforms for language learning.

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Vi lever i ett datadrivet samhälle där individer och tjänster ständigt loggar, spårar och behandlar information om sina egna eller andras beteenden. Informationsteknologi för datadriven beteendeförändring är centralt inom områdena Personal Informatics, en klass verktyg som hjälper individer att samla och undersöka personligt relevant information i självreflekterande syfte, samt Persuasive Design, som handlar om att känna till de bakomliggande orsakerna om vad som motiverar användare att agera och designa för att uppnå detta. Trots denna gemensamma huvudfokus bedrivs forskning kring områdena delvis separat. På grund av det stora överlappet mellan de två områdena behövs en översikt över vad som anses särskilt viktigt inom både Personal Informatics och Persuasive Design. Därför har vi genomfört en litteraturstudie för att på ett samlat sätt presentera den forskning som finns samt vilka generella lärdomar som belyses av forskare inom området. Resultatet visar mönster och skillnader i den gemensamma basen av litteratur, vilket möjliggör för djupare insikt i området. Vi diskuterar dessa mönster och möjligheter för vidare forskning av de resultat vi fått in samt vilka aspekter som anses särskilt viktiga. / We live in a world where products and services constantly try to affect our behavior. Data driven information technology for achieving behavior change is a central concept in Personal Informatics, a class of tools for assisting individuals in collecting and reviewing personally relevant information in self-reflective purposes, as well as Persuasive Design, which concerns the underlying factors behind motivating users into action and designing to achieve this. Despite these similarities in focus, these areas are partly researched as different fields. Because of the common grounds between the research areas, we believe an overview of the research literature concerning both Personal Informatics and Persuasive Design is important. For this reason we have performed a literature study so that we, in an organized manner, can present the aspects which are studied as well as insights highlighted by scientists in the area. We discuss patterns and possibilities for future research by the results we have collected as well as which aspects are considered especially important.

Social networking sites and their functions are in constant change and with every new innovation different user behaviors are encouraged or prevented. Persuasive design is one way of designing a system to encourage a certain behavior. In this study we conducted four surveys of Sweden’s four most popular Social networking sites and how they are used. We followed up with ten interviews to gain understanding of why the users use these sites in a certain way. We identified four different target behaviors on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn with help from the results we gathered from our surveys and our interviews. We then used a behavior model for persuasive design (FBM) to identify the different factors of the model in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn’s design. The three factors of the behavior model are: motivation, ability and triggers. To gain further understanding of how Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn motivates, allows and triggers users to perform target behaviors we analyzed our findings using theories from research already done on persuasive design. We found that persuasive design was a powerful tool when it comes to making users perform a certain target behavior. Where the target behavior was not being performed we identified where the design did not correspond with the behavior model. Our goal was to expand on the behavior model by providing it with real world examples. By doing so we hope to help designers gain further understanding about how persuasive design works and how to put it into practice.

A website’s foundation should be its usability and its user engagement. Designers can go further and persuade users. The design practice of persuasive design revolves around affecting people indirectly by changing attitudes or behaviors through product features or service characteristics. This has been utilized in various fields with great success. The field of sustainability has become a new theme of study with the goal of influencing user behavior toward more sustainable actions. Researchers have claimed that persuasive design is an effective way to change behaviors and could be utilized to reach different sustainability goals with websites being a viable medium for this. Frameworks for the entirety of the design process have been suggested but there seems to be a lack of literature on guidelines for existing sustainability website designs. This thesis aims to provide guidelines for websites of sustainability-related projects by researching the involvement of similar projects through people’s experiences, motivations, and intentions along with identifying persuasive design characteristics that can increase engagement. The resulting guidelines will be useful for existing designs of websites for sustainability-related projects to increase its persuasive power. A literature review was conducted along with empirical methods of data collection such as a survey, semi-structured interviews, and competition analysis. Theory of planned behavior (TPB), Fogg Behavior Model (FBM), and the Persuasive Systems Design model (PSD) were utilized as theoretical frameworks for collecting data. The empirical methods results were analyzed through a table connecting the theoretical frameworks to understand the results. The findings suggested that people have strong motivations and positive attitudes toward sustainability-related projects but the involvement in such projects is affected by limited ability caused by different barriers. By optimizing the interactive system and applying the persuasive design characteristics, the barriers can be reduced, and the websites’ persuasive power can be increased. Five guidelines were suggested based on the empirical results. An evaluation of the guidelines was not conducted which is proposed as the next step for further research. / Grunden av en webbplats bör vara dess användbarhet och användarengagemang. Utifrån denna grund kan designers gå längre och övertala användare via webbplatsen. Persuasive design är ett tillvägagångssätt inom design vilket kretsar kring att indirekt påverka människors attityder eller beteenden genom produkt- eller tjänsteegenskaper. Detta tillvägagångssätt har använts framgångsrikt inom varierande områden. Hållbarhet har blivit ett nytt studietema med målet att påverka användarnas beteende mot mer hållbara åtgärder. Forskare har hävdat att persuasive design är ett effektivt sätt att förändra beteenden och skulle kunna användas för att nå olika hållbarhetsmål med webbplatser som ett möjligt medium för detta. Ramverk för hela designprocessen har föreslagits men det förefaller vara brist på litteratur om riktlinjer för befintlig design av hållbarhetsrelaterade webbplatser. Denna studie syftar till att ge riktlinjer åt webbplatser för hållbarhetsrelaterade projekt genom att undersöka involveringen av liknande projekt genom människors erfarenheter, motivationer och avsikter samt att identifiera övertalande egenskaper hos persuasive design som kan öka engagemang. De resulterande riktlinjerna kommer att vara användbara för befintliga designer av webbplatser för hållbarhetsrelaterade projekt för att öka dess övertalande kraft. En litteraturgenomgång utfördes tillsammans med empiriska metoder för datainsamling som semistrukturerade intervjuer, en enkät, samt en konkurrentanalys. Teorin om planerat beteende (TPB), Foggs beteendemodell (FBM), samt modellen för Persuasive Systems Design (PSD) användes som teoretiska ramverk för att samla in data. De empiriska metodernas resultat analyserades genom en tabell som kopplade samman de teoretiska ramarna för att förstå resultaten. Studiens slutresultat tyder på att människor har starka motivationer och positiva attityder till hållbarhetsrelaterade projekt men engagemanget i sådana projekt påverkas av begränsad förmåga orsakad av olika hinder. Genom att optimera det interaktiva systemet och tillämpa de övertalande designegenskaperna från persuasive design kan hindren minskas och webbplatsernas övertalande kraft kan ökas. Fem riktlinjer föreslogs baserat på de empiriska resultaten. En utvärdering av riktlinjerna har inte genomförts vilket föreslås som nästa steg för vidare forskning.

På grund av Covid-19 pandemin har sättet vi arbetar på förändrats och allt fler människor arbetar idag på distans. Detta har medfört att medarbetare kan känna sig ensamma utan en tillhörighet till den arbetsplats de jobbar på, vilket kan ha negativa effekter på deras engagemang och prestationer. Den sociala kulturen på arbetsplatsen är en viktig del i att få medarbetare att känna tillhörighet och det behöver, på grund av det ökade distansarbetet, finnas ett sätt för dessa medarbetare att socialisera sig online. Det är framför allt företagets ansvar att möjliggöra denna socialisering för att stärka banden mellan sina anställda och detta kan göras genom användning av enterprise social media. Enterprise social media är en typ av social plattform där användarna kan dela kunskap, kommunicera med medarbetare samt få information från företaget. Det finns utmaningar med engagemanget på denna typ av plattformar och denna studie syftar till att ta reda på vad medarbetarnas inre motivation till användning är samt hur denna motivation kan användas för att forma design genom gamification och persuasive design. För att undersöka detta har studien genomförts tillsammans med företaget Amirra där semistrukturerade intervjuer genomförts med användare av plattformen. Resultatet av intervjuerna visade att den inre motivationen för medarbetarna är att lära känna och socialisera sig med sina kollegor samt att känna en tillhörighet på arbetsplatsen. Utifrån detta gjordes en analys av empirin och tidigare forskning för att ta fram designförslag i form av en prototyp med element från gamification och persuasive design. Prototypen validerades sedan med deltagarna för att bekräfta eller dementera dessa förslag och om de hade kunnat påverka engagemanget på plattformen. Resultatet av studien visar att det sannolikt går att påverka användarnas engagemang och aktivitet i enterprise social media genom att basera design på medarbetarnas inre motivation. Detta innefattar enkla tävlingar, badges och att göra möjligheten att utföra uppgifter enklare, vilket också bekräftades av deltagarna. / The way we work has changed due to the Covid-19 pandemic as more people now work remotely. This has resulted in employees feeling lonely as they lack a sense of belonging to their workplace, which can have negative effects on their commitment and performance. The social culture in the workplace is an important part of making employees feel connected, and a s a result of the increase in remote work there needs to be a way for these employees to socialize online. It is primarily the company's responsibility to enable this socialization, to strengthen the ties between its employees and this can be done through the use of enterprise social media. Enterprise social media is a type of social platform where users/employees can share knowledge, communicate, and receive information from the company. There are often challenges with engagement on these types of platforms, and in this study we aim to find out what employees' internal motivation for usage is, and how this motivation can be used to shape design through gamification and persuasive design. To investigate this, the study was carried out together with the company Amirra, where semi-structured interviews were conducted with users of the platform. The results of the interviews showed that the inner motivation for the employees is to get to know and socialize with their colleagues and to feel a sense of belonging in the workplace. Based on this, an analysis of the empirical evidence and previous research was made to produce design proposals in the form of a prototype with elements from gamification and persuasive design. The prototype was then validated with the participants to confirm or deny these propositions, and whether they had been able to influence engagement on the platform. The results of the study shows that it is likely to influence user engagement and activity in Enterprise social media by basing the design on employees' inner motivation. This includes simple competitions, badges and making the ability to perform tasks easier, which was also confirmed by the participants.

Technology has become ubiquitous in people’s everyday life. The number of websites and mobile applications available is growing, but so are various persuasive approaches to influence human behavior and decision-making in online environments. While designing for persuasion has many potential benefits, recent years have revealed different deceptive design techniques that utilize the understanding of psychological principles to nudge people in a desired direction. This thesis outlines and explores this phenomenon known as dark patterns, which favors business goals over user values. Practitioners have laid out many deceiving design strategies in the past, but it remains unclear how the end user perceives and experiences them. Therefore, a qualitative method approach was chosen to study the end users’ perspectives on the subject. The analysis of the data shows that even though there was some awareness, many manipulative techniques were unknown. Participants blame the businesses, remark however to be partly responsible for their own fate. In addition, the acceptability of such techniques shifts depending on the respective dark pattern.