At what point does a design choice tip into the realm of dark pattern?

I was listening to the Product Hunt Radio episode with Nir Eyall where he talks about the "Regret Test". It that might help when there is a suspicion of "dark-patterns" seeping into your product, by asks "would the user do what we have designed them to do, knowing everything that we know?"... check it out, around the 25min mark. https://product-hunt-radio.simpl...

Juicy question! Perhaps this is naive, but it seems like a lot of dark patterns have one thing in common: the people who designed them didn't set out with the intention to create a "dark pattern." Sometimes it's the manifestation of extreme tunnel vision. They just know they want people to do "x," so they create a slippery, frictionless path to "x." And I don't say this to excuse dark patterns (and obviously, there are those situations where designs are intentionally manipulative). I guess I just don't think ALL the onus should be on the design choices... those ladder up to business goals and I suppose it's the responsibility of the whole company to ensure that they're achieving those goals in an ethical way that doesn't deprive users of their agency.

Love this question. @nireyal writes about this (the regret test) in his new book, Indistractable and in this blog post. It provides a good framework for evaluating product design decisions.

I would consider any design that prevents the user from doing what they want to do or get them to accidentally do something against their interests, and done in the interests of the company, a dark pattern. Adding unnecessary friction for cancelations is a common source of dark patterns: having to send a request to cancel, or need to get on a support call, or send an email, or the button colors are made intentionally confusing, or making the option hard to reach, etc. Great design overlaps user interests and company interests. When the user wants to part ways they should be able to do so with ease.