Designing for Understanding: How Interface-Level Consent Designs Shape Attention and Understanding in Privacy Disclosures

TL;DR

This study investigates how different privacy policy interface designs influence user attention, reading behavior, and perceived understanding, revealing that layout affects engagement but not necessarily comprehension, which depends on sustained attention.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence on how interface structures shape attention and engagement in privacy disclosures, emphasizing attention dynamics over layout improvements for understanding.

Findings

Interface structure influences attention allocation and navigation.

Guided layouts promote more coherent reading patterns.

Comprehension correlates with sustained attention, not interface type.

Abstract

Privacy policies are intended to support informed consent, yet users rarely read them fully. This study examines how common privacy policy interface structures influence attention allocation, reading behavior, and perceived experience. Using eye-tracking and post-task surveys, we compared three interface designs: continuous scrolling text, collapsible sections, and collapsible sections with brief previews. Results show that interface structure systematically shaped how users allocated attention and navigated policy content, but did not uniformly improve comprehension. Guided layouts supported more efficient and coherent reading patterns, whereas more interactive designs elicited higher perceived engagement and satisfaction. Importantly, comprehension was closely linked to sustained attention rather than interface type alone. These findings highlight the limits of interface-centered consent approaches and suggest that effective consent design must account for attention dynamics and selective engagement, rather than assuming that improved layout alone ensures understanding.