ASCI Academy (Advertising and Standards Council of India) and Parallel (a product design studio in Bengaluru) came up with some very interesting research on apps and their trade practices in August 2024.
They studied 9 industries, 12000 screens and 53 apps. One of the industries, of our interest here, is also travel. They defined and studied 12 “deceptive patterns” – practices designed to get users to undertake actions or data processing that they did not intend.
Travel apps used 9 out of 12 "deceptive patterns" . This is important to understand , because these apps are actually very useful and have become defacto go-to gateways for travel, tourism, holidays and transport.
Even more crucial to note as ASCI -Parallel do in their research paper - over 751 million
users are online in India, and quite unknowingly, share massive data with
anyone who asks!
What are
these Deceptive Patterns? Very interesting definitions, and in many cases, are
very intuitive too. We have all experienced these at one time or another, on
apps and websites.
Deceptive
patterns defined:
- 1. Privacy deception: getting you to share more info that is needed
or intended. (79% use this)
- 2. Interface interference: highlighting
some interface only, misdirection. (45%)
- 3. Drip pricing: revealing additional fees
slowly thru the process (43%)
- 4. False urgency: creating artificial pressure
of FOMO (32%)
- 5. Nagging: constant pop ups (15%)
- 6. Bait and switch – advertise something,
serve something else. (13%)
- 7. Basket Sneaking – add unwanted costs
(donations etc) (13%)
- 8. Forced action – force users to do an
action (make accounts etc) (11%)
- 9. Confirm sharing – use social
pressure to complete an action ( 8%)
- 10 Subscription trap -make cancellation
difficult of a subscription (2% )
- 11. Trick question – vague language (2%)
- 12 .Disguised ads – blend with editorial
(0%).
They
surveyed 53 apps. This is the summary:
- 1. 52 out of 53 apps exhibited at least one deceptive patterns (“DP”).
- 2. 90% of apps showed between 1-4 DP.
- 3. On an average, there were 2.7 DP per app.
- 4. One app, had as many as 23 DP instances!
- 5. Privacy deception accounted for 24% of total occurrences
- 6. 79% of all apps showed privacy deception. They really want your data!
- 7. The travel apps use 9 out of 12 deceptive patterns – that’s a lot !
- 8. Delivery and logistics used 8- very close behind.
- 9. All 9 ecommerce apps made it very difficult to delete your account.
Travel
apps use many deceptive patterns
One of the
many industries they surveyed was travel and tourism. In this, they checked the
apps of the leading players – EasemyTrip, Agoda, goibibo, yatra, makemytrip,
cleartrip, redbus, and booking.com.
The list of
DP that the travel trade uses, is not surprising, when you sit back and think-
almost every DP is used in some manner or intensity. Eg- just a few that we all
can relate to:
1. Drip pricing (33% of all apps studied)
– add on costs till final cost is something else !
2. Confirm sharing – pressurize to get
advantage of some deal at a point in the booking.
3. Nagging – pop ups keep pressurizing you
to take an action .
Read the
research on : https://www.consciouspatterns.in/research-findings