How did I feel about Windows 10 forced update?
Dark Design Patterns is a phenomena in which values of users are undermined in favor of shareholder values. Designers and developers use this phenomena to exploit human psychology in order to increase/decrease/manipulate certain behaviors that are not in fact in favor of the end-users. Remember the Dark Design Patterns are not a simple error in design or an unintentional mistake. But they are accurately prepared with a deep understanding of human psychology with zero user’s interest in mind.
It is imperative to discuss these practices in the HCI community to avoid the danger of manipulative/illicit design practices and to increase the awareness of ethical and moral issues associated with these practices. We will discuss this Dark Design Patterns and will elaborate more into that in order to re-design or avoid such end-user manipulation.
Forced Action
- Windows 10: Forced Update
When there is an update in the Windows 10 Operating System (OS), the user can not shut down or restart his/her machine with performing the required update. The below picture shows the Forced Action by the Windows 10.
Figure: Example of forced action on Windows 10.
This dark design pushes its users to perform an action to complete a very basic functionality. Shutting down or re-starting the OS is considered to be an important step when using a machine. But the designers of the Windows 10 OS, systematically exploited these features in order to forcefully update the system without a desire/request of the end-users.
In the general context, forcing someone to do a task is illegal, unless that violates another person’s fundamental rights. We can find many examples in which governments apply certain law and orders and if a person violates it, a cop may force the person to perform the required task. A good example is wearing a mask in the time of COVID19. If a person does not wear it, a cop may say/force to wear it because it will harm other people’s health and well-being. But in the case of Windows 10, it is illegal to force the end-users to get the update against their will.
So how can we redesign this illicit design practice?
Well from the perspective of Microsoft, it may have an obligation to protect its end-users from the malwares and virus. We can see an increased amount of cyber attack against the Window machines worldwide. For example, attacks like “WannaCry ransomware attacks” were specifically targeted for Windows users. Hence, we need to find a neutral ground to tackle this issue. Instead of forcing the end-users, we can redesign the OS in such a way to show an option next to the restart or shut down button and the level of importance of the update. The Importance of the update can be assigned with colors to the text/icon. For example,
RED: Indicates a security update (immediate update required)
ORANGE: Indicates a feature/performance enhanced update. But at the end the user SHOULD have the rights to UPDATE or NOT.
