Definition

Bright patterns are benevolent design solutions prioritizing user goals and well-being over their desires and business objectives.

How did we come up with this definition?
Bright Patterns are described as the antonym to dark patterns. While dark patterns exploit users' weakness of will in favor of business interest, bright patterns do the opposite. They are tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you meant to do.

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Bright Pattern

Discoveries in the Wild

While bright patterns are a rare sight, they can be found in various design landscapes. Explore instances of these unconventional interfaces and contribute your discoveries to the collection!

Submit Yours

Have you encountered any bright patterns not covered by our examples or worthy of promotion? Don't hesitate to submit your findings and help expand the ever-growing library!

Submit a Bright Pattern

Explore Examples

Hall of Fame

Examples of Bright Pattern types used by platforms, apps and websites were originally collected in our workshop paper Promoting Bright Patterns to conceptualize the term. This collection will evolve through user and self nominations.

Examples of Bright Pattern types used by platforms, apps and websites were originally collected in our workshop paper Promoting Bright Patterns to conceptualize the concept. This collection will evolve through nominations into a collection of noteworthy usage of Bright Patterns.

Contrarian’s companion

Outside my bubble

Cost transparency

Data traces

Dumb it down

Transparent recommender

Usage limits

Healthy alternative/5-a-day

Persona profiling

Escape hatch

Honest defaults

Nutrition Label

Simple consent

Slow down

Cite our work

@ONLINE{brightpatterns2023,
  author = {Hauke Sandhaus},
  title = {Brightpatterns.org: A Front Page to Define the Term and Collect Examples},
  year = {2023},
  month = {February},
  url = {https://www.brightpatterns.org},
  note = {Archived at \url{https://perma.cc/K8MB-47TR} on February 7, 2024},
  address = {LIC, New York City}
}

@misc{sandhaus2023promoting,
  title = {Promoting Bright Patterns},
  author = {Sandhaus, Hauke},
  year = {2023},
  eprint = {2304.01157},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  primaryclass = {cs.HC},
  howpublished = {CHI '23 Workshop: Designing Technology and Policy Simultaneously},
}

@ONLINE{brightpatterns2023,
  author = {Hauke Sandhaus},
  title = {Brightpatterns.org: A Front Page to Define the Term and Collect Examples},
  year = {2023},
  month = {February},
  url = {https://www.brightpatterns.org},
  note = {Archived at \url{https://perma.cc/K8MB-47TR} on February 7, 2024},
  address = {LIC, New York City}
}

@misc{sandhaus2023promoting,
  title = {Promoting Bright Patterns},
  author = {Sandhaus, Hauke},
  year = {2023},
  eprint = {2304.01157},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  primaryclass = {cs.HC},
  howpublished = {CHI '23 Workshop: Designing Technology and Policy Simultaneously},
}

Generated on: August 16, 2023