It's a gas station in Poland. This attempts to trick you into buying the overpriced 98 octane gasoline instead of the default 95 that everyone buys.
Notice that the 95 is hidden in the middle of the diesel fuel dispensers and even its nozzle is designed to match those. The photo doesn't show it well but the actual labels are placed high enough so that you won't spot them unless you deliberately look up.
But if a startup does something similar like highlighting the most expensive option on a subscription page, it is called growth hacking and we applaud the CEO and designers.
Everything is relative. If you define "evil pattern" as a design that encourages a certain action that you (the makers/owners) want the user to do for your own benefit, then practically every single sign up form or landing page is an evil pattern too. Heck, almost every form of marketing could be considered an evil pattern by that definition as well.
I'd suggest a better definition - "evil pattern" is "a design that encourages a certain action that you (the makers/owners) want the user to do, which provides negative value for said user relative to alternatives".
Your job as an entrepreneur should be to steer your users toward options that are optimal for him/her and charge accordingly. Trying to trick your user into choosing something worse for him so that you can profit more is just dickish, period.
> almost every form of marketing could be considered an evil pattern by that definition as well
Because it often is, and it's bewildering how people are used to it - to the point they turned cheating and abuse into a legitimate occupation.
Good catch. It's a pain to decrypt the branding of gas types, they differ from retailer to retailer plus nasty tricks like this. Once you get it right and go to the cashier - "Perhaps chocolate bar? coke? hot dog?" Just let me pay goddammit! Even buying gas is frustrating in Poland!
Yeah, this is also annoying. But the nozzle thing is another class of dickery - they are messing here with a convention established to prevent people from mistaking fuel type.
It's a gas station in Poland. This attempts to trick you into buying the overpriced 98 octane gasoline instead of the default 95 that everyone buys.
Notice that the 95 is hidden in the middle of the diesel fuel dispensers and even its nozzle is designed to match those. The photo doesn't show it well but the actual labels are placed high enough so that you won't spot them unless you deliberately look up.