Chapter     9

Temporal Dark Patterns

Temporal dark patterns are patterns that request too much time, provide too little entertainment time, or result in users feeling like they’ve wasted their time. Temporal dark patterns pose particular danger to users as their power is already well known by developers, and they’ve been honed to a high degree of effectiveness. Don’t confuse irresistibility, where the user wants to come back and spend more time in the application, with temporal dark patterns, where the user feels obliged to come back and spend more time in the application. When the user is in the application, irresistible apps make the time feel well spent and that something meaningful has happened, while apps that use temporal dark patterns ...

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