Persuasive design
Persuasive design is a UX design method aimed at guiding user choices through an interface or digital product. As the name suggests, the aim is to persuade the user.
This design method is largely rooted in captology practices (an acronym for Computer As Persuasive TechnolOGY), which are themselves based on the idea of persuasion.
When persuasion focuses on the user's attention, we speak of attention design. Finally, when persuasion is considered unfair to the user, we speak of a dark pattern.
Why is this an ethical issue?
Persuasive design is intrinsically a technique for manipulating the user. This in itself is a first ethical pitfall: is it legitimate for design to manipulate a user?
What's more, persuasive design is often invisible to the user, especially when it is embedded in the details of our interfaces (what B.J. Fogg, the researcher behind the term captology, calls microsuasion). It is then the interface that fully chooses whether the persuasion to which the user is subjected is in the interest of the service or of the user. This raises a second ethical stumbling block: is it legitimate to manipulate a user without his consent, and for an interest other than his own?
Our tools
The mission of the Designers Éthiques persuasive program is to equip digital designers at every stage of the project, so that they are in a position to carry out projects with low impact on citizens' freedom.
Four project themes follow:
1. Make dark patterns visible (measure, evaluate)
a. The captology matrix
The Captology Matrix, released in 2021 and created by Karl Pineau and Aurélia Fabre, is available in the form of an Excel grid. This matrix aims to assess the persuasiveness of a digital service (web or mobile interface) using a list of criteria, weighted to calculate an overall score from A to G.
The work on this matrix has led to an academic publication :
Pineau, K. & Fabre, A. (2021). Évaluer la captologie et le design persuasif des services numériques: Approche empirique de mesure de la persuasion et proposition d’une matrice d’évaluation. I2D - Information, données & documents, 2, 151-173. https://doi.org/10.3917/i2d.212.0151
b. Thesis: Modeling deceptive design mechanisms in digital services
Since June 2025, Designers Éthiques has been supporting a thesis on the evaluation of dark patterns. This thesis is being carried out by Flora Brochier with the Costech laboratory of the University of Compiègne. (link to the project on thèse.fr).
This doctoral project has been subsidized by the Fondation de France.
2. Learn how to deal with dark patterns
a. Designing without dark patterns: a guide for designers
The guide “Designing without dark patterns: a guide for designers”, released in 2023, presents the main good design practices for creating digital services that are more respectful of the user's free will. It addresses the issues of : Dark pattern (or deceptive design), Persuasive design, Captology and attention design.
3. Propose alternatives
a. Alternative Patterns
Alternative Patterns offers alternatives to these components, which are freely available for designers to use when creating interfaces. This project is part of the open design movement, which involves documenting and opening up the interface design process. The aim is to open up the design process in order to broaden the scope of possibilities.
The Alternative Patterns project was conceived in response to the following observations:
- Digital designers do not have time to conduct research or create new components.
- They tend to reproduce the components and elements they see in interfaces (usually GAFAM in this case).
This explains why designers are often complicit in the integration of manipulative elements (Nelissen & Funk, 2022).
Notification
This component is very common and one of the most closely associated with persuasive design logic.
Our resources
- Vidéo (Peertube) : Lancement du guide "Concevoir sans dark patterns : guide à l'attention des designers" (10/2023) (in french)
- Vidéo : Comment mesurer et évaluer le design persuasif des interfaces numériques ? (Colloque Consentir sur le web - 04/2023) (in french)
- Article (site web) : Alors, ça ressemblerait à quoi un média social au design éthique ? (AOC - 08/2024) (in french)
- Article : Évaluer la captologie et le design persuasif des services numériques (I2D - 2021) (in french)
- Vidéo (Youtube) : Communicants : vers une écologie de l’attention ? (Colloque La Sorbone - 02/2020) (in french)
- Vidéo (Peertube) : Du design de l’attention à un design responsable : hypothèses et perspectives (Ethics by Design - 10/2018) (in french)
We're working on it
The main aim of the Designers Éthiques association is to raise awareness of the issues involved in persuasive design, and to define and provide tools for analysing persuasive design.
It currently has one projects underway:
- A thesis on the analysis and measurement of dark patterns
Referrers
- Flora Brochier : flora@designersethiques.org
- Karl Pineau : karl@designersethiques.org