The Interledger Community 🌱: Caroline Sinders

"By Design? The Hidden Harms Within Banking Apps" — ILF Ambassador Final Report

Caroline Sinders — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 17:21:29 +0000

## Project Update
I've officially launched the interactive article for my ambassadorship project for By Design!How Design Harms and Confuses Consumers in Digital, Finance Products I would love any feedback from community members. It's an in-depth report on how harmful design patterns can already acerbate a stressful area of a user's life. To quote from my article:
"Finance is one of a user’s most intimate, important, and often, confusing areas of their lives
This brings us to the question “why focus on finance and financial service platforms and harmful design patterns?” The answer is, how could we not? Finance is one of a user’s most intimate, important, and often, confusing areas of their lives, and that’s even before we get to the software and companies they are. Drawing on what could be described academically as ‘anecdotal data’ but these are real observations and conversations from our friends, communities and colleagues, which is finance is so difficult to understand, and most people we spoke to felt like they didn’t have enough guidance, advice or knowledge in navigating their own finances and financial futures. Finance can feel difficult to understand as there are so many moving components to it, like what are the best banks to bank with to save money, how is the best way to save money, what pension plans are open to me, how can freelancers and artists best save money, what are the best ways to send money internationally with low cost fees, what are normal fees for banking generally, when should I start investing in stocks, how much money do I need to invest in stocks, what should I invest in, is crypto a good way to make and save money, what’s the best app for budgeting when I’m underpaid and clients are delayed in fulfilling invoices, and the list goes on and on. Financial service platforms, including traditional banking, are wrapped up in this ecosystem of worries, concerns, questions, and advice our communities are seeking in regards to finance generally. Similar to navigating any tax, medical, or other bureaucratic systems, the design of any financial service platform is a part of this complex, emotional and very thorny part of a real user’s life, which is their money, and their financial habits...Any design on top of these domains is already going to be complex for users to understand, even with the best design and the most user friendly company." That being said, I did surface a variety of unintentional pain points (so design that is NOT harmful design), and then harmful design patterns, which are especially prevalent in predatory apps. I don't want to give away too much here so please, please read my interactive article to learn more!

## Progress on Objectives, Key Activities
My objectives were to uncover pain points, and then specific harmful design patterns, within the domain of finance, which is an understudied area in the general landscape of harmful design patterns (harmful design patterns are often called 'dark patterns' or 'deceptive design patterns). You can read more about harmful design patterns in previous blog posts of mine from here, here and here. I'm happy to say that I've delivered on these objectives! This work has surfaced types of harmful design patterns, pain points that can be harmful design or turn into harmful design, and general pain points across the financial technology ecosystem. Relatedly, in workshops at the Interledger Foundation Summit, we brainstormed with community members different types of interventions for these pain points that I hope to, in future projects, explore more!

Within the project, I outlined some specific requirements for myself: to conduct an extensive literature; interview policymakers, regulators (current and former), financial experts, designers and technologists; conduct financial experiments if possible such as sending and receiving money from different accounts and apps; and interview and observe four different participants from a specific user group, which are immigrants in the UK. I'm happy to report that I completed all of these tasks! All of this desk research and qualitative research work enhanced the project, grounding it in a multi-pronged reality of academic, policy and design focused research that center real people, our users.

I anticipated some objectives 'evolving', or rather, coalescing over time in response to the research I was conducting, which I explore further in the next section. My objectives where to interview and observe four users, better understand barriers to financial literacy and financial equity, and create foundational knowledge about financial design norms, and financial design patterns to then understand where do harmful design patterns occur, and how do those patterns function? For example, friction can acerbate a harmful design patterns in a domain like shopping; but friction is a necessary safety mechanism in finance. Thus, using 'friction' as a cue to then find a harmful design pattern would not be helpful in the financial sector, even if that can be a helpful clue in surfacing harmful design patterns in other domains like e-commerce, social networks, privacy related apps, etc.

Additionally, finance walks a particularly regulatory space, including language usage, descriptions, ways to send money, etc. These norms have to also be identified and understood, and some of our qualitative research highlighted how these norms are visually designed can confuse users, even if it's not a harmful design pattern- that confusion is a pain point.

Lastly, I wanted to surface the needs, wants and desires of our qualitative users-- what is their financial reality really like? How does technology play into that, and what are the barriers and constraints they face generally? Our article really dives into the emotional reality of the users, so I suggest reading the article to really understand those nuances!

## What impact does the project have on your perception of digital financial inclusion?
I anticipated some objectives 'evolving', or rather, coalescing over time in response to the research I was conducting, which I mentioned in the previous paragraph and I will explain further here. For example, I anticipated that certain design constraints, like friction, would become major themes in the work, even if at the beginning of the project, I didn't know what those themes would be. What I mean is, very often in a project like this, especially related to harmful design, other types of design norms and design pain points become a part of that harmful design conversation and analysis. This is because harmful design patterns subvert pre-existing design patterns, and it can turn a 'neutral' or good pattern into one that harms users. In this case, friction is a big part of financial apps, and its a helpful pattern to protect consumers. Sometimes that friction can confuse users; that doesn't mean friction is a harmful design pattern, but its a part of creating a pain point for users. That pain point needs to be identified, acknowledged, and improved upon in order to increase digital financial literacy and digital financial equity. Pain points can be improved while also combatting harmful design patterns at the same time. Understanding how pain points interact with harmful design patterns is key, because all of the design 'types' or patterns in an app, and in the ecosystem of finance, does impact users because it's a part of their collective experience.

I will say I went in expecting finance to be a very emotional space and that is very much reflected in the qualitative research, so this research really reinforced my own reflections and perceptions of digital financial literacy. This work has only caused me to care more about digital financial equity, and digital financial literacy, and my belief that digital financial inclusion must be a human right. There's so many things to learn and know about finance, and often people are left on their own to figure this out, with very little support. For example, in this work, 'hidden fees' or unexpected fees came up a lot. Hidden fees have real, disastrous impacts on users, but especially the users I interviewed. One interviewee mentions this in my interactive report, but that for her visa to the UK, she needed to transfer what was effectively her life savings (an amount an around 10,000£ and needed to be at 10,000£ for her visa requirements), so any unknown fees could have be catastrophic for this user and her visa. This is a very real world concern, and it was also a very emotional and intense experience for the user, just waiting to see if her lifesavings would come through and come through at the right amount. A person shouldn't have to worry about this; they should have enough visual cues, explanations, and consistency to understand how the app works, and when something happens, why it is happening.

## Project Impact & Target Audience(s)
I observed four users who are creatives and freelancer immigrants in the UK and who send money back home to South America, and who were very new to financial literacy. Some lived pay check to pay check but all lived very much within a financial budget, so things like unforeseen fees had major impacts on their daily lives. Some of my users are LGBTQIA+ and are BIPOC. While, this project focused on the immigrant experience for creatives, and those from South America, I think it can speak to a variety of different types of people immigrating. It can be hard, regardless of background, to navigate the bureaucracies of immigrating, especially to a country on a different continent and with a different language. That being said, I think their experience of understanding and navigating all different types of financial apps will resonate with audiences who are also 'new' to understanding finance, or don't have generational knowledge or support to navigate the financial sector as a whole. A lot of my findings I believe will resonate with audiences who still find finance generally an opaque space and process.

## Communications and Marketing
I did a workshop at the Interledger Foundation Summit on my findings, and I am in the process of pitching multiple articles to general press outlets to summarize my findings. I am also looking at different conferences to submit talks and workshops to on this subject.

## What’s Next?
Now that the ambassadorship is over, I am looking for new funding opportunities and collaborations to continue this work, especially to explore actionable ways to mitigate confusion in financial apps, and encourage legibility and safety for users! This will build on key points and next steps mentioned in my interactive article.

## Community Support
If you'd like to collaborate on next steps, please let me know!

The Multiple Sides of Friction: The Good, the Bad and the How to Use it

Caroline Sinders — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 14:14:31 +0000

In a previous post, I touched briefly on the role of friction in design, which I will expand upon here. Friction is an incredibly important design element; it’s often the ying to ‘flow’s yang. Flow is key to engaging a user in an app or product, where the user has deep focus and enjoyment while interacting with the app, product, or technology. In a flow state, nothing is impeding a user in what they are doing, but the design is encouraging the user's flow state. Friction is its literal opposite, where design is slowing the user down or allowing the user to pause; friction often breaks the flow state. This video with Norman Nielsen Group (the godfathers of modern user experience design) does a great job of explaining the relationship between friction and flow. Friction, in particular, has a bad reputation in design because of how it is often weaponised to harm, trick, and confuse users. Friction, like design, contains multitudes. Design, much like technology, contains multitudes. Design and technology are not neutral; they can be forces for good and forces for harm. Design is an integral part of technology because it can help ensure a user has a clear understanding of what technology is doing, or not doing. Friction is a part of design that helps users build mental models.

Friction as a Design Tool
At first glance, it can seem like a strange thing to label friction as a positive use and force of design. Isn’t slowing down a user while they are engaging with a product a type of action we would want to avoid in technology and product design? The answer is: it depends! It depends on the context of what the product is doing, what the user is doing, and what types of feedback the product/app/technology needs and what types of feedback the user needs. Friction is a key part of this feedback loop. Users need to be able to build mental models of how an app/product/technology is functioning, and the users deserve to have clarity, consent, and understanding in a product; this is where friction is key.

When deployed correctly, friction is a key tool in any design and product toolkit because it can help slow down users, and give users intentional time and space to think, assess, confirm, re-confirm, and more deeply engage with a product, decision making and to avoid errors. Friction is a key design ingredient when designing for consent, and ensuring that the consent is actually meaningful. Practically, friction is necessary as a design pattern for any ‘KYC’ design flow; it’s also something users now expect in a financial app or any app related to medical usage, government usage, etc, especially when identity needs to be confirmed, and that confirmation needs any kind of external verification, including sharing legal documents or private and sensitive information. In this way, ‘friction’ becomes thoughtfully and intentionally designed as multiple steps in this verification and confirmation space.

Friction is also deployed in security contexts, such as entering special codes (like two factor authentication or codes sent via text message or email) to confirm the right user is logging in. This type of verification is a necessary friction focused design pattern, one that can also signal that care and security are being centered in an app, product or service. But these examples of friction in verification and confirmation are also clever and standard ways to deter bad actors who might be trying to compromise a user’s account. These extra safety steps are where friction really shines as this necessary design tool for safety.

Friction also exists outside of heavily regulated fields. Friction, when deployed thoughtfully, becomes a necessary component for slowing down users to encourage reflection, mindfulness or even dissuade harmful behavior. Friction can be key in mitigating harassment such as prompts or nudges that read “are you sure you want to post this” are deployed on social media platforms which cause users to reflect on the content they are about to post. Other examples of friction to encourage mindfulness are examples can be seen on Netflix, where a pause in streaming content occurs after hours of continuous streaming and a prompt asks a user if they would like to turn off the show, or if they are still watching. Sometimes the product really wants to confirm and get consent- such as closing a Microsoft word document. A pop up will appear asking for confirmation before allowing the document to close, ensuring this is the action the user wants to do.

In some of my own design work, I have implemented friction as a safety mechanism for researchers. When collaborating with Amnesty International in 2018 on the Troll Patrol and Twitter Toxicity reports, we worked with over 6,500 volunteers to hand-label nearly 300,000 pieces of content from Twitter sent to female journalists and politicians. We needed human volunteers to help appropriately label this content, but because a lot of this content was harmful and violent in nature, I designed in the labeling schema that a notification would appear every five tweets that prompted the volunteer to take a break. This friction was designed to pull the labeler out of their ‘flow’ and slow them down. I’ve worked in human rights and technology-facilitated violence for over 4 years at that point, and I had witnessed how colleagues would develop second-hand trauma from the amount of harmful content they were seeing in their research. This friction was a safety mechanism to ensure that our volunteers could not get into a ‘flow’ or ‘groove’ of working and lose track of time. Even if it meant our work took longer, and individual volunteers did less work on labeling, it was an important safety mechanism to implement, and it was one I saw working in real time!

A classic example that I know the Interledger Community is well aware of is the necessary friction associated with sending money. When sending money, there are often a series of steps of confirmation. When I use my debit card (which is set up through a UK neo-bank) to send money to a saved (and known recipient), I have two screens of confirmation I have to move through. The first screen is where I write out the amount, and I am prompted to write a “reference” to label the payment. I then click “Review Payment” in my app, which sends me to the second screen. The second screen shows me a summary of what I’m about to send, including the recipients name, the amount, the reference, the category (which is payments), some brief text outlining that UK payments are normally instant but can take up to two hours, and then a green bottom at the bottom that says “Make payment.” The app then “thinks” as it’s processing the payment, in which I receive a notification that says I’ve made a payment and I’m sent to a final page that is a summary of the payment information again, now marked as paid. If I were registering a new recipient, I would go through a much longer process with multiple screens first with entering a name, then account numbers, then sending money similar to the above process. Even a product like Venmo has friction. You enter in a screen name or contact information, select the recipient and then you are sent to one screen where you can enter the amount, write a reference and hit pay which sends you to another screen. Similar to my neo-bank debit card example, I see a summary of what I am sending and then confirmation again to hit a button that says “pay.” This might not seem like a lot of friction but it is still friction. The multiple steps of reshowing the same information encourages the user to reflect on and confirm what they are sending and to who.

When Friction Goes Wrong
If friction is so great, how can it go wrong? Well, it goes wrong all the time, either on purpose or by accident. Generally, if friction slows a user down or dissuades them from what they want to do, that will frustrate a user. However, as frustrating as it can be to send money less quickly, most users know that the friction in that design flow exists as a seat belt or safety mechanism. Perhaps a truth soon to be universally acknowledged is that design isn’t always fun when it's there to help. But friction when it unnecessarily slows a user down and adds in arbitrary slowness or decisions that clearly prioritize the company over the user. This differentiation is key – the friction in KYC, security logins or sending money are beneficial to the user because the friction allows for slowness and it’s user centered for the user’s wellbeing, even if it can be annoying. Weaponised friction can be seen in this investigative and interactive article I wrote on harmful design patterns (often called dark patterns). In my article, I explored how different products use harmful design patterns and friction to slow down, confuse and even deter users from unsubscribing. These elements were often specifically inserted in the unsubscribe flow; users wanted to unsubscribe, and often the design was working directly against them like elongating the unsubscribe flow, moving button placements, emphasizing one button over the other, or even hiding unsubscribe buttons. Weaponised friction can be a key in amplifying harmful design patterns, where it can hurt users and lead to confusion, or making it more difficult for the user to navigate a design flow and exercise their own choices and agency.

This example from the Dark Patterns Hall of Shame illustrates how Ryanair deploys friction alongside harmful design patterns to confuse users. What Ryanair is doing here is deploying multiple, unnecessary pages that are attempting to upsell a user additional options but it’s often unclear when deployed in upselling unnecessary extras during an elongated process of buying a ticket. Upselling extras isn’t the issue here, it’s that in the design flow to purchase a seat, Ryanair has utilized ‘misdirection’ and insert multiple instances of upselling even when the user has declined the upsells– its this insertion of extra instances of upselling, like speedy boarding, or confusing design around purchasing baggage (making it unclear what is included with a ticket) or other ticket extras, elongates the entire buying process. In this example, the user is both annoyed and confused, as it's unclear what is necessary to purchase for the ticket and what is simply a trick to get more money out of the user.

Using Friction As Innovation
Friction is a key tool, particularly when just the right amount of friction is deployed. It’s figuring out the right amount of friction to balance a user’s needs and desires, alongside safety and consent. It is doable, and when deployed correctly, it’s a wonderful pro-user tool to have. As technologists and a community interested in digital financial inclusion, the projects and products we build often establish new design patterns, but we are at a nexus point as a community of practitioners. We have the ability to enhance technology, improve usability, and reach new customers and communities who deserve to be banked, to be in control of their finances, and to have financial service products and platforms work for them, not against them. Friction is a key tool we can use to ensure our users understand what we are building, how it serves them, and how to allow for their agency and safety simultaneously. Agency shouldn’t come at the cost of security or understanding. Small design tweaks that center on user needs and slow users down (but not too much), especially when sending money, are key to financial inclusion.

Caroline Sinders is an Interledger Foundation Ambassador and an award winning critical designer, researcher, and artist. They’re the co-founder and executive director human rights research and technology lab, Convocation Research + Design. They’ve worked with the United Nations, Tate Exchange at the Tate Modern, the United Nations, Ars Electronica’s AI Lab, The Information Commissioner's Office, the Harvard Kennedy School and others.

"By Design?" The Hidden Harms Within Banking Apps — ILF Ambassador Progress Report

Caroline Sinders — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 17:11:05 +0000

Project Update

The goal of my project, “Surfacing Harmful Design Problems”, which you can read more about here, is focused on surfacing a particular type of design that harms, deceives, manipulates, tricks or damages users, but specifically in financial services, banking, money lending and money transmitting apps. These types of design patterns are often called dark patterns, or deceptive design patterns, but I will be referring to them as harmful design patterns. In a much longer paper and article that I will be producing at the end of my ambassadorship, I will get into the nuances of harmful design patterns but I will do my best to summarize them in the next few paragraphs.

At present, I have been analyzing a series of different types of products and apps in the financial services ecosystem, including different types of money lending, money transmitting, traditional banking apps, and different types of wallets (cryptocurrencies, phone wallets, and finetech platforms like MoCaFi who can function as a ‘wallet’ to distribute benefits like SNAP and EBT in the US). I will dive into this in more detail below, but I have also interviewed experts including policymakers, researchers and technologists, conducted stakeholder interviews, crafted a list of individuals to interview and observe their banking habits (the list is already put together and the interview questions are already written), and I have conducted an extensive literature review.

What Are Harmful Design Patterns?
For background and context, I (Caroline Sinders) am a human rights defender and researcher, as well as a critical designer. I make art, design interventions, and data visualization alongside conducting mixed methods research focusing on technology, policy, and human rights. Design is an integral part of a technology stack; design is the ‘thing’ that often is explaining or visualizing to users how a product or a piece of technology “works.” Design is the medium where user research, product strategy and business strategy all convene; design is powerful. Design can be a truthful narrator, as often as it can be a misleading one. Only recently has design’s role in technology become understood in policy spaces, with the rise of academic, journalistic, and advocacy research on harmful design patterns (e.g. dark patterns), and how they harm consumers, users, culture, and society. The majority of harmful design patterns research focuses on e-commerce related harms, often documenting subscription traps where it’s difficult or impossible for a user to end a subscription, sneaking items a user did not select into their shopping basket, false urgency or scarcity claims to nudge a user to buy a product NOW, and many others. However, harmful design partners can be broken into typologies and taxonomies that can be applied to other domains outside of e-commerce. For example, in a paper I co-wrote as a post-doctoral fellow with the UK’s data protection and privacy regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office, we illustrated how harmful nudges and sludges impact privacy choices consumers can make and are present in a variety of product flows, including cookie banners, and interstitials where users are setting up their accounts for the first time. For example, as we argued in our paper that “..harmful nudges” (also called “dark nudges”) are when a firm makes it easy – or “nudges” – users to make inadvertent or ill-considered decisions… When harmful nudge or sludge techniques are used, consumers may make choices they wouldn’t otherwise have made and that do not align with their best interests or preferences. For example, it could lead consumers to select less privacy-enhancing choices when personalising their privacy settings or make it hard to change their privacy settings.” But harmful nudges can be found in all kinds of apps and products, including financial services products and this is what I’m currently documenting.

Some of the harms I’ve started to surface have been well documented in the financial services space, but not necessarily documented as ‘harmful design problems’ of which they can be, and these are problems that are not well known to consumers, particular consumers newer to finance and financial services, which is who my project focuses on. Specifically, there’s a suite of money lending or holding apps that services that report to be free, but have hidden costs, and those hidden costs when not articulated to users, can be a harmful design pattern. In other cases, money transmitter services or ‘financial technology platforms’ can look and feel like a traditional bank to a consumer, because they can issue a debit card to the consumer, but are not a traditional bank. In essence, the lack of a disclosure or clarification, is a harmful design pattern.

This project also addresses the role of friction in design and in banking and financial services; friction can be a nuisance to users but an important protective element for companies. Context matters here, because friction can amplify a harmful design pattern, while friction in a different type of product can be a key user experience decision.

Progress on Objectives, Key Activities

I have conducted an extensive literature review, along with using open source investigative techniques to source and scrap the internet (App/Play stores reviews, review forums Twitter, Reddit,, and other forums and blogs) for customer complaints with the different apps I’m focusing on. I have also interviewed a series of experts, from former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau researchers, Better Business Bureau researchers, to policy experts, harmful design patterns experts, and conducted a series of stakeholder interviews. I have also put together a comprehensive list of vetted individuals (15 in total) to interview and observe how they use different banking and financial products, and a series of questions on their thoughts about banking and digital financial inclusion. All of these individuals are immigrants in the US, UK or EU, and 13 of the 15 individuals are from India, Colombia, Chile or Iran. All of the individuals are sending and receiving money from different countries; usually, they are receiving money into their bank account in the country they currently reside, and are then sending/receiving money back home, and then are often sending/receiving money from another country because all of these individuals are freelancers or run very small businesses. None of these individuals have a background in finance, and most don’t have parents, family members or mentors to guide them on topics related to digital financial inclusion, such as how to invest their money or create savings plans.

As I stated above, some of the harms I’ve started to surface have been well documented in the financial services space, but not necessarily documented as ‘harmful design problems’. But by contextualizing these harms as ‘harmful design patterns’, it can be possible to use new forms of regulation, such as the Digital Services Act, where harmful design patterns are explicitly mentioned, to better combat these harms. But additionally, by naming these harms as ‘harmful design patterns,’ we can better understand the role that product design plays in these harms, and provide solutions and suggestions so other financial services companies can avoid these harms.

Harmful Design Versus “Friction” or Annoying Design
This project is looking at all different types of digital products related to financial services, like cryptowallets, traditional banks, money lending apps, and money sending apps. But it’s important to clarify that some of the design issues I’m surfacing are issues that are not harmful design patterns, but issues related to poor user experience design, where a user encounters more friction than they are used to or design choices that annoy them. While I have surfaced harmful design pattern examples, those are described in more detail below. But in my stakeholder interviews, and in my own personal experience, which has become a part of this project as I have just moved from the UK to the US, I have noticed frustrating design patterns in the different banking and financial service platform apps that I am personally using, and that the stakeholders are using. While the core of these frustrating patterns might be related to fraud prevention, payment sender/recipient verification, and a variety of other consumer protections, the way that these patterns are presented to users continues to be frustrating.

Understanding Friction: How it Can Be Good and Bad Design
Friction happens, in all different types of ways and across all different parts of an app. Take, for example, my partner trying to pay our rent when using a traditional bank, Chase Bank, that he just signed up for in the US. “I just want to know why Chase bank is slower at sending money than HSBC UK” my partner exasperatedly exclaimed. Our rent payment was delayed; apparently, the recurring payment he had set up in Zelle had failed yet again. I tentatively asked, “Why don’t you use Chase’s bank transfer?” My partner deeply sighed and said, “I tried using it, it required all of these steps to verify myself and the landlord, and it still failed. I had to physically go into Chase Bank, speak to a person, and then they showed me somewhere hidden in the app some feature to turn on or off.” I asked what happened after that and apparently the payment failed again, so my partner decided to use Zelle. But even Zelle is frustrating, as there are daily limits and it takes two days (or two Zelle payments) to fully send our rent money to the landlord. In this context, my partner was missing the ease of use of our UK banks, HSBC UK and Starling UK, to send money and send recurring, verified payments.

In that moment, I realized what my partner was describing could be friction, and ‘poor design’ of the app, but maybe not a harmful design pattern (a harmful design pattern generally is nudging the user to do something that benefits the company and not the user, and that doesn’t seem to be the case with my partner). I am currently in the process of trying to find the setting my partner mentioned in the Chase Bank app, and I will blog about this in the future once I learn more. But, regardless, this raised the issue of friction. Friction is a part of design, it can be both good and bad, but it depends upon the context. This nuance of friction was echoed by Harry Brignull, the discoverer of harmful design patterns. In an expert interview for this project, Brignull described helpful versions of frictions in our conversation. He elucidated, “Fire alarms in public buildings sometimes have flip-up covers, so they don’t get pressed accidentally. Medicine bottles often have child-proof caps, to ensure they are opened responsibly. This is constructive use of friction, where you’ve got harmony between the business provider and the end user. Everyone’s happy. Designers can do the same thing online too. For example, creating a repository of code on the Github platform might involve weeks or months of work. So when you try to delete it, Github makes sure that you’re certain of your choice by requiring you to enter the full name of your repository in a text field before they’ll let you proceed. If you’re in a hurry this can be a bit frustrating, but they’re doing you a favour for that one time when you realise that you’re making a mistake and you back out before it’s too late.”

Friction can be a warning signal, a way to get users to reverify and double check information, and also consent. This type of ‘pro user’ or consent focused friction can be applied to environments where consent deeply matters, and in highly regulated industries, like banking, where the company wants to double and triple check that a user is sending the right information to the right recipient. Design is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, by introducing friction to ensure consent and give the user space to double check information, while also having to explain how a system works, as seen in money sending design flows.

However, friction can also be weaponized. Brignull explained, “Cognitive friction isn’t inherently good or bad. It’s a characteristic of the medium that designers learn to work with. A lazy designer might add friction by mistake; a helpful designer might remove friction to assist users—so they can get the job done faster; or add it in some cases —to get them to stop and think about critical decisions so they don’t act rashly; and finally a manipulative designer might add friction to discourage unprofitable actions, like increasing privacy settings or cancelling subscriptions.” Understanding the differences of friction is deeply important, and recognizing that kind of friction is deeply important, slowing down a user to really make sure and verify the information they’ve submitted, and ensure they are aware of the risks of clicking confirm.

However, this type of friction that slows a user down to protect the user and the company is different from other types of friction I’ve noticed in traditional banking apps in which it’s difficult to surface certain settings, or not understanding why it takes longer for a payment to be sent via bank transfer versus Zelle. I would not label any friction that is around confirmation of sending money a harmful design pattern but I am also not sure that I would label the other examples I’ve given as harmful design patterns, either. There are differences between ‘poor’ design or ‘bad design’ versus harmful design patterns; harmful design often nudges, confuses or manipulates the user into making a decision they normally wouldn’t make. An app that hides fees, or tricks a user into paying more for something than they should would be examples of harmful design patterns. Having UI, logos, or color choices that feel out of date might be ‘bad’ design’ but that doesn’t make it a harmful design pattern. Burying a necessary setting, depending upon what that setting is, could be a harmful design pattern. Like friction, it all depends upon the context.

Good friction is asking for confirmation on sending money to a particular recipient, and verifying customers- we need that friction. But there is bad friction, and it can be found in how an app layouts its accounts, where it buries the functionality to send money, and when it doesn’t include easily surfaceable explanations. For example, in some of my screenings of user interviews, one potential interviewee mentioned how difficult it was to transfer money over from her traditional bank in Chile to a UK bank account. Her Chilean bank account didn’t tell her how much the transfer or conversion would be, and how long it would take; she needed a very precise amount of money to land in her UK account and had just enough to meet that threshold. But not knowing what conversion rate her Chilean bank was using or what fees she’d incur with the transfer, alongside not knowing when the transfer would be complete, caused incredible stress for her. She mentioned how other banks (that are more money transmitters) would tell her the conversion rate and costs upfront, and how those apps made it easier to access explanations through carrot tops and pop ups that she could easily swipe out of, and not be taken out of the entire money sending process. This is a story similar to what I’ve heard with other immigrant workers I’ve been speaking to in the US, UK and EU. There’s unnecessary friction in a lot of traditional banking apps especially in sending money internationally– but by better laying out those apps, and making it easier to send, and receive money such as including helpful information (like what the total amount of money the recipient is sending), and how long it will take to transfer– would improve the overall user experience. Other stakeholders stressed just how difficult it can be to talk to a human customer service representative, or access updated FAQs with traditional banks to troubleshoot solving a problem especially when out of the country; while that’s not design related per se, it is a user experience issue financial service companies should solve. There’s a myriad of improvements that traditional banks but all financial services companies could undertake– but I’ll leave that for my final report! ;)

Harmful Design Patterns in Money Lending Apps
However, there are examples of harmful design patterns in financial services apps. In my project, I have been analyzing a suite of money lending or holding apps generally, including Nerd Wallet, SoLo, SoFi, MoCaFi, Albert, Dave, Bridgit, and a variety of others. In order to really understand the ecosystem of financial services, it meant that the design analysis I conducted should take into account a variety of types of money sending, money lending and financial technology platforms to truly understand the ecosystem. Relatedly, I was interested in apps that had multiple functions (allow for money deposits and loans, for example), and also apps that purportedly marketed helping the user at free or no cost. These two additional metrics lead me to money lending/short term loan apps, and money planning apps (focusing on how to save, budgets, etc). Within that, I noticed that some money lending apps also are expanding to allow users to deposit and receive money, including paychecks, and these types of products were one that a former CFPB employee highlighted as a suite of products they were also concerned about, as well.

Please note:my research is still ongoing and I don’t want to misspeak on active research, some of these apps (BUT NOT ALL) have some services that are problematic including misrepresenting fees (often portraying themselves as free services but there are hidden costs on the user), and misleading consumers to give or donate money to individuals on the app, and a variety of other harms. For example, in 2024 the CFPB has brought about a complaint against SoLo Funds for misleading consumers on ‘free’ no interest loans when in fact there are hidden fees and that SoLo Funds has a pre-selected tip jar with no options for zero tipping, which is an explicit harmful design pattern in my professional opinion. While the new acting director of the CFPB, appointed under President Trump, has dismissed its enforcement action against SoLo Funds, I believe this still serves as an example of the type of harm and confusion a harmful design pattern can enact on users. How fees are presented, or not, deeply matters, especially for consumers who live paycheck to paycheck. An additional $10 or $20 dollars as a fee will directly harm that consumer.

While SoLo is just one of the apps I’m focusing on, other apps like Nerd Wallet received multiple complaints on trustpilot.com with users saying they had been marketed a specific credit card rate only to have been awarded another one or being promised a service, like comparing companies, only to be funneled to company partners of Nerd Wallet. Depending upon how these services were presented to Nerd Wallet’s users, these examples could very well be harmful design patterns. Other apps I’m analyzing like MoCaFi have numerous complaints from consumers to the Better Business Bureau and on trustpilot.com citing delays in receiving MoCaFi debit cards, fraudulent charges, inability to contact customer service and a myriad of other charges. Given MoCaFi's stated mission to serve underbanked communities, this makes the design flaws in their products and services all the more damaging. It is senior citizens, disabled individuals, and low-income users receiving government assistance funds who are often the ones mentioned in or writing the MoCaFi complaints.

What impact does the project have on your perception of digital financial inclusion?

Design is what all consumers engage with– and for a lot of products, it's often what explains what a product is doing, how the product works, and what the product’s policies are. The users I am in the process of interviewing are all new to financial inclusion and understanding financial products.

My interviewees and stakeholders are younger and more marginalized consumers, who might not be a traditional bank’s key audience or an audience a traditional bank cares about, but these users have user needs and expectations. They have to use banking because they live in modern society, but they also live lives stretching across oceans and continents, and they have to send money across different countries and jurisdictions. Any issues or confusions they have with international money transfers have large implications, especially when a lot of the interviewees live paycheck to paycheck. A delayed paycheck means the rent is delayed, and means that there is not enough money for groceries, electricity, the internet, and all of the things they need to survive. An unforeseen or unexpected charge impacts their day to day and monthly finances. These users want more clarity around international money sending, and they also expect more ‘dynamic design’ (animations, logos, explanations) and also products that are designed mobile first.

Even if financial services and traditional banking apps don’t have harmful design patterns, their current designs can still alienate consumers with a lack of easily surfaceable explanations, difficult to use mobile apps, poor customer service that can be accessed abroad and many other issues, on top of established practices that make it harder for individuals to access banking, or change elements of their bank accounts (as explained further below).

Additionally in this work, I noticed an emergent harmful design pattern. In stakeholder interviews, I’ve noticed there’s a confusion over what constitutes a new ‘bank’. Meaning, stakeholders are using traditional banks, money transmitter services and/or ‘financial technology platforms’; the money transmitter services and financial technology platforms can look and feel like a traditional bank to a consumer, because they can issue a debit card to the consumer, but they are not technically traditional banks. This confusion has real world implications for users. In essence, I believe this explicit lack of a disclosure or clarification, especially in the product’s app and in its website, is an emergent harmful design pattern and must be treated as such particularly in financial services. While I am still conducting research, an initial suggestion I have is that: the products and companies should articulate what the limitations of the product is, how it can and cannot protect users particularly in comparison to traditional banks, and this information should not be hidden away in difficult to find FAQs or in the terms of service. This type of information should be clear, concise, and presented to users repeatedly throughout the product’s app, and websites. I’d love to brainstorm more with the Interledger Community on thinking about how to design this recommendation I’ve suggested above.

Project Impact & Target Audience(s)

To analyze design, it’s not just focusing on the graphical user interface, but it’s also focusing on the knowledge an app assumes a user does and does not have, and the greater systems both the product and user exist in. Take, for example, one of my stakeholders who was going through a separation and tried to remove their partner from their bank account. Anyone who has gone through a separation knows how difficult it is to untangle combined accounts. Other stakeholders I’ve spoken to have talked about the difficulty when removing legal spouses from accounts. One of my stakeholders spoke about the frustration of this whole ordeal and that the only quick solution at the time would have been to create a brand new account. But this difficulty and legal document filled design pattern has wider implications, especially for victims of domestic violence. In these scenarios, it makes it easier for one partner to engage in financial abuse against the other partner, like emptying the account, or closely surveilling payments. I know there’s good, specific legal reasons for why the structure is the way it is, but I offer these examples to say that when customers of these banks are experiencing some of the most harrowing and traumatic events in their lives, navigating opaque and complicated systems increases that trauma. This is much of a design ‘flaw’ as it is a policy one, because how the systems are designed for customers to navigate within are designed, and that design is constrained by policy. I can’t offer a better legal or design suggestion here, but what I can do is highlight how some of these systems make it very difficult for people in unimaginable situations to move forward.

Design includes all of these systems and contexts, and users deserve to be protected, while using banking apps. There needs to be a shift towards aiming for good, explanatory design (and that still includes the right kind of friction). Good design isn’t just a “nice to have”, it is a requirement for digital financial inclusion. Good design doesn’t just refer to the absence of harmful design patterns but it’s thinking through what positive nudges are beneficial to users, especially users who are newer to finance and financial services. Having “good design”, like better explaining processes using plain language and laying out web apps to increase usability for all audiences, are also design suggestions that improve an app's accessibility for disabled users, too. Design is political, and design is a tool to better improve digital financial inclusion.

Communications and Marketing

I’ve been discussing this project within the research phase, which I’m nearly finished with, and I’ve been discussing with policymakers, designers, technologists, and journalists. But I am in the process of pitching two public facing journalism articles about this work, and in the process of being interviewed for a podcast on my harmful design patterns work, which I’m excited about!
But, I'd love any help sharing the findings at the end of the project, as well as any help on amplifying a few of the related outputs that are in the pipeline. I am currently working on a Salon episode for my project, as well as pitching one or two short articles about the project to different publications and working on my longer, interactive article.
In tandem, I am creating a workshop to share the findings with policymakers, civil society organizations, designers and technologists which will help disseminate the findings and support wider conversations on harmful design patterns.
I’ve also had numerous one on one conversations throughout my ambassadorship with lawyers, consumer protection advocates, current and previous staff of regulators, and established scholars. The participants of these conversations have vocalized interest in the project and its findings. I will continue these conversations and initiatives to further disseminate findings from the project, and ensure its impact. This could include speaking engagements at conferences, social media posts, articles, and conversations with relevant stakeholders.

What's Next?

My next steps are to run a series of experiments with some of the money lending apps I’ve been analyzing, interview and observe individuals for research (this will be finished in the next two weeks), craft a workshop on my findings, and write an interactive article. Additionally, I am coordinating with different members of the Interledger Foundation’s staff on potential related events.

Community Support

I’d still love to speak with members of the community, and share findings that I have. For example, I have some thoughts on what is a harmful design pattern in some of the traditional banking apps I’ve analyzed- and I’d love to get feedback ASAP on that from any community members. If anyone is interested in having a conversation, please let me know! If folks are interested, I can also make a public workshop for community members to attend :)

Additional Comments

I’ll be at the Global Gathering in September with some of the Interledger Foundation Staff, and I will be at the Interledger Summit in November. If you're there, I’d love to say hi!

As for other work, I recently co-authored a complaint on harmful design patterns to the European Commission; this was collaborative work done with EDRi and Bits of Freedom.

Surfacing harmful design patterns

Caroline Sinders — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 14:56:31 +0000

Hi! I’m Caroline Sinders (Caro for short); I’m a human rights researcher, and artist, originally from New Orleans, Louisiana and now based in the midwest, with long stints in London and Berlin in between. I’ve worked with organizations like the UN, the Information Commissioner’s Office (the UK’s data protection and privacy regulator), Amnesty International, the Mozilla Foundation, the Wikimedia Foundation, the Harvard Kennedy School and others. As an artist, I’ve worked with or had my work shown with the Tate Exchange in the Tate Modern, the Photographer's Gallery, MoMA PS1, the Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans, Honor Fraser Gallery, Ars Electronica, Drugo More, the European Media Art Platform, the European Commission's Sci Art residency, Eyebeam and others.

Focusing on Harm in Design

I’m so excited to be an Interledger Ambassador with the 2025 cohort, and to be exploring a topic really close to my heart: harmful design patterns. Harmful design patterns, sometimes called ‘dark patterns’, ‘manipulative design’, ‘deceptive design’, ‘anti-patterns’, or ‘online choice architecture’, are all the same phenomena which are design patterns that unintentionally or intentionally trick, confuse, or nudge users into making decisions they normally wouldn’t make. If you are reading this and thinking, “I don’t think I’ve come across a harmful design pattern before,” the sad truth is that you have :/

Have you ever unsubscribed from a newsletter and found you’re still subscribed? Have you ever booked a seat on a budget airline and realized you were ‘nudged’ or ‘directed’ to purchase add ons you didn’t really need, or have you ever clicked on a cookie banner? You have encountered a harmful design pattern, but there are hundreds of different types.

I’ve written about harmful design patterns before, as a post-doctoral fellow with the UK’s data protection and privacy regulator, the ICO, in a collaboration with the UK’s competitions and markets authority, which you can read here in this collaborative paper of which I am one of the co-authors. I’ve also investigated harmful design patterns in subscriptions, and tracked how much money and time I lost, which you can also read about here. I’ve also presented at CHI on the emerging threats about harmful design patterns, worked with German’s Interface think tank on contextualizing harmful design patterns for German regulators, diving deep into design as a medium and how that impacts harmful design for the German Marshall Fund, and many other articles on this topic.

What can be done to tackle harmful design patterns? I’m so glad you asked, because there are so many things that can be done. Regulators are taking action against harmful design patterns across the globe, with India having passed regulation against harmful design patterns, the European Commission prohibiting dark patterns in the Digital Services Act, and regulators in the US and UK using pre-existing laws to combat dark patterns. But, supporting new research and investigations along with educating consumers, technologists and designers are incredibly helpful in identifying new harmful design patterns, and combating them from the ground up.

My Interledger Ambassador Project

Which brings us back to my project :) I’m creating new research and focusing on harmful design patterns that exist within banking, finance, and money lending apps. A lot of current harmful design patterns work has focused on money-spending and e-commerce; my theory is that its a bit easier for consumers to track how they spend money, especially if they are charged for something they didn’t intend to buy (via a harmful design pattern). But, I’m curious about the unforeseen fees, and predatory lending within harmful money apps, and juxtaposing that by focusing on best practices within money transferring and money lending apps. In other harmful design patterns contexts, I often argue friction can exacerbate a harmful design pattern. But we need friction in banking and money lending apps to ensure a consumer doesn’t make a financial ‘accident’ of sending money to the wrong person, for example. By studying best practices, I hope to establish the necessary design patterns needed for banking, finance and money lending apps, and then also identify the harmful design patterns.

This project aims to provide those building new digital financial services with an awareness of how to ensure they are being inclusive by design and how to avoid even unintentional harm when working in a particular context or with a specific demographic of users. By surfacing, documenting, and naming these examples of harmful design, I believe we can strengthen digital financial inclusion by ensuring that software and design are as equitable and easier to use for everyone as possible.

If you have any thoughts, feedback or would like to be involved, or just chat, please reach out :)