Instances and implications of deceptive design patterns in mental health apps

Deceptive design patterns are user interface and user experience design strategies within digital systems that, regardless of the designer’s intention, subvert, impair, or distort the user’s ability to make informed and autonomous choices. Deceptive design patterns are manipulative in nature and are widely used in apps, websites, and games to influence user behavior. In this study, we observe that commercially available mental health apps use deceptive design patterns on screens designed to (1) ask users to subscribe to paid plans, and (2) prevent users from canceling subscriptions. In addition, we observe that for-profit mental health apps use a high number of deceptive design patterns. We contend that profit-driven motives may lead for-profit mental health apps to adopt design strategies that might be detrimental to the users they aim to serve. We recommend establishing guidelines for best practices to avoid the usage of deceptive design patterns in mental health apps.