There was an interesting article recently framing the designing in of anxiety as an accessibility issue: https://developer.paciellogroup.com/blog/2018/08/a-web-of-an... . This really made me reevaluate dark patterns as not just tedious but as actively harmful to large sets of the population. The use of AB testing is fine in and of itself, but only when the results are analysed with things like this in mind; it’s all too easy to micro-iterate your way to a solution like this.
My spouse and I were wanting to visit NYC last spring. A hotel + flight package for three nights was listed as $800 per person because of a last minute sale. Okay so $1600 plus maybe another 10% in tax?
Nope. By the time you’re really settled on this is where you’ll stay and this is when you’ll fly out and return and your spouse is excited, the final price is more like $2500, not counting a daily resort fee of another $35 that will go directly to the hotel once you get there.
So from $800 a person to $2600 for two people. Yeah no thanks.
It’d be great if the misleading airline prices were next; it’s becoming increasingly common to price out flights only to see an increase within a few hours.
That’s probably mostly due to different price categories selling out. I have the feeling that people come up with conspiracy theories about airline pricing way too quickly.
Even the “private browser window” trick seems mostly anecdotally or very specific to some airlines. I could never verify it myself.
