List of deceptive web design elements



The following web design elements are considered harmful to the user, such as purposely making the user spend too much time on the site, and beneficial only to the administrator of the page. As such they're seen as something Aava should do without. To contribute to the list or discuss it, click here.


Advertisements
Ads are probably the most capitalistic of all web elements. Their purpose, of course, is to get the user to click on them and buy the product in question.
Some ads are more deceptive than others, and not all of them can be considered harmful or in bad taste. The world needs innovations and they need to be promoted in one way or another. However, ads have become a largely disruptive part of the world wide web, and they provide very little information and actual use to the viewer. As such, Aava aims to have as few ads as possible, if any.

Autoplay
The autoplay feature makes the user waste more time on the site than they intended. Sites benefit from having their content viewed, so these features are purposely implemented to keep the user on the site for as long as possible.

Endless scroll
Endless scroll is a replacement for traditional list views with discrete page numbers. Seemingly endless content piques your natural curiosity and you end up unrevealing new content for a longer time than you normally would.

Marketing cookies
Almost every major service on the world wide web makes its millions by selling data they get from collecting the behavior of their users through cookies. One of the key points of Aava is to create a space where the user doesn't need to be a part of that.

Notifications
Notifications are sometimes useful or even necessary, but they're overused due to their tendency to capture the attention of the user. Even subconsciously we might be waiting for our devices to beep. Being on high alert like this creates stress. In the early days of the web, you checked your email and your favorite sites when you could find the time (or the money!) to go online. You made the call to check for new content. New content didn't make the decision for you, like it does today.

Upvote/downvote buttons
A very popular feature that has slowly appeared on almost every social media or content site - for a reason. You may have noticed that you subconsciously need to check the votes on every comment or piece of media that you encounter. It's a literal reward system. Getting upvotes releases dopamine in your brain, and getting a lot of downvotes can trigger a stress response, making you post content that you think will gain upvotes instead. This dynamic narrows the spectrum of opinions and content people will post in the future. Another nasty side effect of voting is that it effectively replaces actual argumentation. If you disagree with something, you'll give it a downvote without having any need to prove your emotional response.

Recommendations / trending
Another way to make the user consume content he didn't originally intend to watch. The point is actually not to help you find content, but to make you spend 7 hours on the site and generate behavioral data this way.