Pixelated Lies
A card game and toolkit that features funny real-world parodies to expose deceptive and unethical design practices...
Focus
Product Design
Completed
Apr 2025
Team
Jeimy Joa, Kimiya Fani & Soyoung Jeong
A Card Game by Designers for Designers
Pixelated Lies is a two-player card game designed for designers and anyone else who lurks on the internet. The goal is to educate people about the unethical practices used to manipulate user behavior, also known as deceptive or dark patterns. Inspired by Cards Against Humanity, players match deceptive pattern cards to scenario cards featuring parodies of real-world business tactics.
As we spend more of our lives online, everyone should know how to spot and avoid these digital traps. As designers, we have an even greater responsibility to keep these deceptive tactics out of our work. By using absurd and humorous situations and illustrations, Pixelated Lies gamifies deceptive patterns into something engaging and genuinely fun to learn about.
The Wiki of Deceptive Patterns
To design an informative card game on deceptive patterns, we started with a deep dive into research. A primary resource for our team was Harry Brignull's Deceptive Patterns, which gave us the core insights we needed to map out our project.
Educator slide deck by Harry Brignull about Deceptive Patterns.
Package Design
5 Deceptive Pattern Cards
While there are many kinds of deceptive patterns, we chose to highlight misdirection, social proof, scarcity, sneaking, and urgency. We recognized that not all deceptive pattern tactics are clear-cut. Many are similar and often used in conjunction with one another. Since our core game mechanic revolved around sparking conversation and debate, we focused on 5 common and distinct deceptive patterns to not overly complicate the gameplay experience.
