A good inter­face is meant to help users achieve their goals as eas­ily as pos­sible. But an “evil” inter­face is meant to trick users into doing things they don’t want to — mis­dir­ec­tion of brows­ing, forced view­ing of advert­ise­ments, mal­ware that mas­quer­ades as anti-virus soft­ware, and pre-checked check­boxes for unwanted “spe­cial offers”. Evil inter­faces are seen vir­tu­ally any­where profit is at stake.

There’s no doubt that bad user-interfaces can come from good inten­tions. Design is dif­fi­cult, and acci­dents do hap­pen. But when an acci­dent coin­cid­ent­ally bol­sters a company’s busi­ness model at the expense of its users’ rights, it begins to look sus­pi­cious. And when sim­ilar acci­dents hap­pen over and over again in the same com­pany, around the same issues, it’s more than just coin­cid­ence. It’s a sign something’s ser­i­ously wrong.

Evil Inter­faces: Viol­at­ing the User by Gregory Conti. From TheLastHOPE/Talks.