Dark Side of UX
Literature Review: Dark Patterns in Travel Industry
Project: Dark Patterns in Domestic Airline Company Websites in Norway
Research Project, 2023
Supervisor: Yavuz Inal
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Dark Patterns (Deceptive Patterns)
Deceptive patterns, also known as dark patterns, are various strategies employed to user interfaces to manipulate users into unintended actions, which are an advantage of the businesses.
Deceptive patterns are neither mistakes nor accidental poor designs. They are purposefully crafted with knowledge and a deep understanding of human psychology and lack consideration for the users’ interests.
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Deceptive patterns are crucial for the design field because they are basically user experience (UX) tricks, and UX must prioritize users over businesses.
Airline Companies are widely used in Norway, and deceptive pattern is a common situation in travel industry. Regarding to previous studies in travel domain there is no comprehensive practice neither on airlines nor for Norway area.
Goals
This study aimed to explore and analyse deceptive patterns in Norwegian airline companies to see whether the results of previous studies in travel domain are true for airline companies in Norway.
Methods
Manual evaluation of screens only related to flights was performed.

Repetitive process for English and Norwegian versions of the websites was followed.
Chosen Taxonomy
Luguri and
Strahilevitz’s (2021), since it has all found deceptive patterns in the literature.
Focus platform:
Website, because it
is the most common platform to purchase flight tickets.
Focus websites: Norwegian, Widerøe,
and SAS, as the largest domestic airline companies in Norway.
Results
Discussion
Overall, current airline websites contain deceptive patterns that manipulate users. Most of them crafted on purpose, some of them were due to lack of knowledge and awareness. Thus, for those who were incharge of the websites, training is needed.
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In addition, there are several gray zones which do not fit to any deceptive pattern type. It means, existing deceptive pattern taxonomies are not enough to cover all domains. Therefore, restructuring and new terms for the taxonomy are needed.
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Consistent with the previous studies, interface interference was the most, urgency was the least used deceptive tactics in the current project results.
Different from previous studies, forced action and nagging were the most common types; and sneaking was not observed in the project results.
My research project on dark patterns, combined with my interest in AI-based conversational tools, inspired my current thesis on LLMs (Large Language Models), specifically ChatGPT. It examines whether LLMs improve concept understanding and user experience in an educational context compared to traditional online methods.