| NSF Org: |
IIS Division of Information & Intelligent Systems |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | March 1, 2017 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | May 4, 2018 |
| Award Number: | 1657310 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
William Bainbridge
IIS Division of Information & Intelligent Systems CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | March 1, 2017 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2019 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $167,290.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $199,290.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2018 = $16,000.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
2550 NORTHWESTERN AVE # 1100 WEST LAFAYETTE IN US 47906-1332 (765)494-1055 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
401 N Grant Street West Lafayette IN US 47907-2021 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): |
CRII CISE Research Initiation, HCC-Human-Centered Computing |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001819DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
This research investigates ethical implications of information technology user experience (UX) practice, and the identification of methods which can be used to effectively surface ethical concerns in education and practice domains. The specific focus is "dark patterns," a term for UX design practices where user experiences are manipulated, using knowledge of human behavior and the desires of end users in order to implement deceptive functionality that is not in the user's best interest. The research will investigate how professional UX designers and students employ or avoid ethical forms of decision making, resulting in intentional or unintentional use of dark patterns in their final designs. The goal is to document how designers make decisions in relation to ethical concerns, and to understand what degree of awareness they have of the immediate and broader impacts of the designs they create. The work will result in identification of a toolkit of methods that increase ethical awareness in professional practice, while also informing the formal education of UX designers.
Studies will include professional UX designers and students working in differing settings on varied problems. A triangulation of artifact analysis, field studies, user surveys and interviews, and cognitive protocols will be used to improve generalization to real world settings. Two phases of research will identify the nature of ethical awareness in relation to dark patterns. In Phase 1, corpora will be created that comprehensively document ethically-centered design methods, tools, and approaches alongside critically-focused and everyday designs that exemplify dark patterns. Phase 2 will build upon this comprehensive understanding of dark patterns, and document how UX practitioners and students perceive ethical issues in their design processes and output. In addition, we will document how end users experience dark patterns. The resulting understandings of ethical awareness will be used to identify areas for practitioner and pedagogical focus. These studies will expand our understanding of the potential impact of using value-centered design methods to increase awareness of the ethical implications of design decisions.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Our goals for this project were to investigate the ethical implications of dark patterns in user experience (UX) practice, documenting how designers make decisions in relation to ethical concerns, and to understand what degree of awareness designers have of the immediate and broader impacts of the designs they create. The work resulted in identification of factors that impact ethical awareness and action in professional practice, providing a rich description of the ethical design complexity that practitioners face. The resulting understandings of ethical awareness identify areas for practitioner and pedagogical focus, informing the formal education of designers and technologists, and serving to expand our understanding of the potential impact of using value-centered design methods to increase awareness of the ethical implications of design decisions.
Using a qualitative approach, we addressed this project with three main goals:
1. Identify the dark patterns that exist in artifacts from UX research and practice.
2. Describe the types design activity in which UX practitioners and students engage with dark patterns.
3. Assess the cognitive awareness of practitioners, students, and end users regarding the inclusion of such patterns.
To attain these project goals, we conducted a range of studies over a two-year period. In Phase 1, we developed a collection of everyday designs that exemplify dark patterns and disseminated this collection through a public website. In Phase 2, we built upon this comprehensive understanding of dark patterns, and documented how design practitioners and students perceived ethical issues in their design processes and output through an observational and interview study of practitioners and a lab protocol study of students. In addition, we documented how end users experience dark patterns through a survey study.
Intellectual Merit:
In this project, we have extended the body of literature on technology ethics, creating a practitioner-focused of ethics and values and the ways in which they impact design decisions and ultimate societal outcomes. We have made three core contributions to HCI scholarship. First, we have created a descriptive and empirical account of "dark patterns," extending the state of the art in relation to ethical awareness and the role of ethics in organizations, and providing a foundation for future research. Second, we have also introduced a new set of research methods for engaging in ethical complexity, including temporal and computational approaches to model and identify ethical decision-making. Third, we have captured pragmatic and everyday interactions with technology artifacts by end users in relation to dark patterns.
Broader Impacts:
We have shown that dark patterns are commonly found in everyday technological interactions, building on insights from lab protocols, practitioner observations, and surveys of end users. This finding underscores the importance of further interrogating the nature of these ethical concerns and the ways in which they are promoted or left uncriticized by designers and related professional societies or technology organizations. Based on survey results, we have found characteristic qualities of users' awareness of deception and deceit in relation to the apps and experiences they regularly have with technology. These findings point towards opportunities to increase public accountability, monitoring, and "shaming" of designers and organizations that rely upon practices such as "dark patterns," potentially informing future public policy on technology ethics.
Last Modified: 11/12/2019
Modified by: Colin M Gray
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