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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 26th, 2023

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  • Light switches are a bad example. Up doesn’t mean on and down doesn’t mean off when you have multiple switches for the same thing.

    These switches visibly have 2 states and switching it means you want the other one. In tech it’s less obvious that there are only two states and that toggling the button will do something in particular. Recall the play and pause button on your media app. That button could change the state in any number of ways but in order to convey to the user what will happen BEFORE the button is pressed, the player shows what action will take place.

    You’re already in the current state, that rarely adds info. Toggles should indicate what they will do.


  • It’s a dark pattern. Maybe at one point in time people would be tricked into believing $3.99 was emotionally a lot less than $4 but we’ve grown up with it now for several generations. Everyone knows it costs more anyway because of taxes not being applied until the register. The mistrust is built into the system out of tradition more than anything.