Pixels of the Week is my weekly-ish curated newsletter for designers, UX folks, devs, and anyone building accessible, inclusive, usable (and let’s be honest, awesome) digital products. This week sadly explores how buying online became a nightmare, from deceptive patterns to AI slop. Also, don’t miss a fun history guessing game, colorful tufting art, a book on feminist approaches to type, and my Golden Honey Suckle color.

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Now: what I’m currently up to

Let’s answer accessibility pushbacks with data and strategic thinking! I’m happy to let you all know that the replay of my A11YTalks “How to Convince People to Care and Invest in Accessibility” is now available. If you could not attend, here is the chance to check it at your own pace!

From deceptive patterns to AI slop: how buying online became a nightmare

21 Dark Patterns I’ve Seen in Online Shopping (8min) an interesting list by Rahul Chowdhury. Sadly shopping online has become a nightmare: we spend so much time and cognitive load trying to avoid a wide range of different traps designed to make us pay more, stick around, or just, scam us. I still wonder why many of those are not illegal. For example, the algorithmic pricing is quite a nasty one: companies use data they have on you, to try to predict how much you would pay and change the prices based on that. The fake social proof also got worse: I’ve seen on multiple marketplaces items with a great rating at first glance, but when you dig, you discover those ratings relate to another item, the product page got swapped recently. For example: only 6 comments are from 2026, the rest are from 2022 and earlier, and clearly describing a totally different product. This is called listing hijacking and it’s supposed to go against the platform’s rules, but, yeah, most don’t enforce their rules properly.

How wrong becomes normal. The quiet normalization of deceptive patterns (11min) Deceptive patterns criticized in 2018 are standard practice in 2026. Yup, sadly true. And they became even more vicious. Now the burden is on the end users to navigate across all the traps and tricks. And honestly, it’s exhausting. (note: original name was dark patterns, but I am using deceptive patterns instead to reflect the official name change to be more inclusive by Harry Brignull himself)

I’ve been ranting on LinkedIn, Masto and Bluesky about the enshittification of Etsy and how I really wish there was a way to block whole stores, because the amount of AI slop for crochet patterns is quite annoying. Tricia (Leach) McKinley nicely pointed out that Etsy is supposed to do something about this soon: Etsy bans AI-generated recipes and patterns from its online marketplace. Let’s see. Vincent shared that there’s an Adblock filter that can be used to hide AI stores.

Curiosity cabinet

Guess the Year, another proof I am very bad at history, but it’s quite fun: try to guess when an historical event happened by putting a pin on a little timeline. I am very disappointed I messed up the year of the PS3 release, gosh, did I mention I am very bad at dates and history? (thank you Peter for the suggestion!)

Inspiration

Paths, Points, & Handles The Venn diagram of “I love a good Riso print, typography, and mini-zines” exists and it’s adorable!

David Nott is a precision fine artist who works with fiber to create beautiful tufting art. It looks so fluffy. Also, I love the bright colors.

Interesting websites

The Designer’s Constitution is an attempt by Pablo Zárate at rethinking what makes someone a designer in the age of AI, based on Bauhaus principles. I like this quote “Every task can be delegated, except thinking, thinking is not a task it’s a privilege”. I get a feeling way too many people are happy delegating thinking too, and honestly, it’s scary. You might also want to check out the 10 Principles for Ethical, Human Design.

I adopted the Golden Honey Suckle color. Because, why not? Because, it’s the one I use for my brand, but, also, honestly mostly, because the description made me laugh.

Books

Alphabettes Soup: Feminist Approaches to Type a collaborative book that celebrates a decade of feminist approaches to type, research and design, from essays to interviews, and of course, typefaces designed by women and non-binary individuals. Also, I really need an “if you want to gift me something, here is a list”, but I fear it will be a list with 90% of books hehe.