Jon Yablonski

Who they are

The book's author note describes him as a multidisciplinary designer who specialises in simplifying complex technology through user research and interaction design, with over a decade of experience across entertainment, retail, automotive, aerospace and product. It names two digital tools he has made for designers: Laws of UX, at lawsofux.com, and Humane by Design.

Key papers

Yablonski is a practitioner and not a researcher, so there are no papers to list. The relevant work is the book: Yablonski, J. (2024). Laws of UX: Using Psychology to Design Better Products & Services (2nd ed.). O'Reilly Media. The dark patterns section sits in the chapter on responsibility, With Power Comes Responsibility.

Key ideas

The book's method is to name a principle, state the psychology behind it, and show a design consequence.

On dark patterns the book describes techniques that make people perform actions they did not intend, for the sake of engagement or to complete a task not in their interest, and says they can be found all over the internet. It cites the 2019 study of about 11,000 shopping sites and its 1,818 instances, and says the more popular sites in the sample were more likely to feature them. For forced action it uses Instagram's contacts permission screen as the example.

That chapter closes with an ethical argument. Designers using reinforcement, variable rewards, defaults, removed friction and dark patterns should plan for non-ideal scenarios, diversify teams, look beyond quantitative data and embrace friction.

---