Rules Of Engagement: Levelling Up To Combat Unethical CUI Design

TL;DR

This paper proposes a simplified, quantitative methodology to assess and score the manipulative and unethical aspects of user interfaces, aiming to aid researchers, regulators, and users in identifying unethical design practices.

Contribution

It introduces a novel scoring approach based on five dimensions from dark patterns research, focusing on manipulation rather than manifestation, to quantify unethical interface design.

Findings

Provides a numeric score for manipulative interfaces

Distinguishes persuasion from manipulation in design assessment

Offers a practical tool for researchers and regulators

Abstract

While a central goal of HCI has always been to create and develop interfaces that are easy to use, a deeper focus has been set more recently on designing interfaces more ethically. However, the exact meaning and measurement of ethical design has yet to be established both within the CUI community and among HCI researchers more broadly. In this provocation paper we propose a simplified methodology to assess interfaces based on five dimensions taken from prior research on so-called dark patterns. As a result, our approach offers a numeric score to its users representing the manipulative nature of evaluated interfaces. It is hoped that the approach - which draws a distinction between persuasion and manipulative design, and focuses on how the latter functions rather than how it manifests - will provide a viable way for quantifying instances of unethical interface design that will prove useful to researchers, regulators and potentially even users.