| LESSON OVERVIEW
The main objectives of this lesson are to:
- talk about user interface and user experience;
- practise phrasal verbs and adjectives to talk about apps and websites;
- watch a video about dark patterns in website and app design.
With this lesson plan students learn some useful language for describing their experience with websites and apps, including synonyms for common adjectives, and watch a video about dark UX design.
LEAD‐IN & VOCABULARY
In the first part of the lesson students are familiarised with the term UX (short for ‘user experience’). They read a definition and brainstorm examples of good and bad UX. Then, they focus on synonyms for common adjectives which can be used for describing experiences with websites and apps. First, students match adjectives with their synonyms from another column (e.g. overwhelming – frustrating) and then they put these adjectives into practice while describing good and bad experiences with different aspects of a website or an app (such as navigation, ads or pop-ups). After having exchanged their opinions, they move on to another language task in which they look at pairs of sentences with gaps and try to complete each pair with the same preposition. The aim of this part of the lesson is not only to revise some phrasal verbs and dependent prepositions (e.g. trick into, drive up, discourage from), but also to pre-teach students the language from a video which they will watch in the second part.
VIDEO & DISCUSSION
The second part of the lesson starts with the video about dark UX design. First, students listen for gist and explain in their own words what dark patterns are. Afterwards, they watch the video again, this time trying to find more detailed information about three specific tactics: confirmshaming, Roach Motel and hotel poachers. After having clarified them, students look at four more names of dark patterns not mentioned in the video and work in pairs trying to guess their meaning. As a follow-on activity, they get an opportunity to relate the content of the video to their personal experience and discuss a few questions about being victims of dark patterns in their own lives.
HOMEWORK/REVISION
This lesson also includes an additional task that you can use as homework or revision. In the task, students complete the gaps in questions with the verbs in the correct forms. They then respond to the questions using the adjectives from the lesson. The task is available in the teacher’s version of the worksheet. You can print it and hand it out to your students. It’s also included in the e-lesson plan.
WORKSHEETS
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I have two students who are UX designers, this should be fun!
Perfect! We’re looking forward to your feedback 🙂
This is a great lesson. It’s a coincidence, I found this game this week that works well with this class:
https://termsandconditions.game/
It’s good for higher level students and can be a lot of fun.
Awesome game! Thanks for sharing!
Great lesson! I really enjoy using the ppt courseware, saved me a lot of preparation time. Just wondering if there is a typo on the e-lesson plan (page 18, “You are tricked into sharing more personal information THAT you intend to.” )
Thanks for spotting that! We’ve just fixed that 🙂
Amazing! Thanks
I’m glad you like it 🙂
I’ve just done this lesson completely by accident with one of my learners who work in IT (I thought I’d picked the other one about web design trends). We both really enjoyed it, especially the slide about guessing the meaning of other dark design trends. Thanks for this one! 😀
Hello, the video is currently unavailable. thanks
Hi! The video is back now. But make sure to also check out the e-lesson or download the updated PDFs – we’ve changed the formatting and added homework too 🙂