Defining and Identifying Attention Capture Deceptive Designs in Digital Interfaces

Many tech companies exploit psychological vulnerabilities to design digital interfaces that maximize the frequency and duration of user visits. Consequently, users often report feeling dissatisfied with time spent on such services. Prior work has developed typologies of damaging design patterns (or dark patterns) that contribute to financial and privacy harms, which has helped designers to resist these patterns and policymakers to regulate them. However, we are missing a collection of similar problematic patterns that lead to attentional harms. To close this gap, we conducted a systematic literature review for what we call 'attention capture damaging patterns' (ACDPs). We analyzed 43 papers to identify their characteristics, the psychological vulnerabilities they exploit, and their impact on digital wellbeing. We propose a definition of ACDPs and identify eleven common types, from Time Fog to Infinite Scroll. Our typology offers technologists and policymakers a common reference to advocate, design, and regulate against attentional harms

“I finally felt i had the tools to control these urges”: empowering students to achieve their device use goals with the reduce digital distraction workshop

Digital self-control tools (DSCTs) help people control their time and attention on digital devices, using interventions like distraction blocking or usage tracking. Most studies of DSCTs’ effectiveness have focused on whether a single intervention reduces time spent on a single device. In reality, people may require combinations of DSCTs to achieve more subjective goals across multiple devices. We studied how DSCTs can address individual needs of university students (n = 280), using a workshop where students reflect on their goals before exploring relevant tools. At 1-3 month follow-ups, 95% of respondents still used at least one type of DSCT, typically applied across multiple devices, and there was substantial variation in the tool combinations chosen. We observed a large increase in self reported digital self-control, suggesting that providing a space to articulate goals and self-select appropriate DSCTs is a powerful way to support people who struggle to self-regulate digital device use

Designing to Support Sense of Agency for Time Spent on Digital Interfaces

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2022App designers often exploit psychological vulnerabilities to maximize clicks, views, and time on site. When people attempt to resist such media use, their failure rate is higher than for any other temptation in everyday life. Consequently, users often report feeling dissatisfied and regretful of the time that they spend in apps. In response, concerned design practitioners and researchers have innovated ‘screen time tools’ that let users track and limit the time they spend on digital devices. Yet users report that reducing screen time is a poor proxy for their actual goals, that they are concerned with not only the quantity but also the quality of the time they spend online, so the problem persists. In this dissertation, I investigate how to respect the user’s time and attention by designing digital interfaces for a greater sense of user agency, i.e., the experience of control over one’s actions and their outcomes. My research on the YouTube mobile app, a common site of problematic use, finds that a majority of user goals are about shifting the quality of the content they consume on smartphones, not the quantity. Through a survey and co-design activities, I identify specific features that lead users to feel more or less control over how they spend their time on YouTube. Based on these features, I design and develop the SwitchTube mobile app, in which users can toggle between two interfaces when watching YouTube videos: Focus Mode (search-first) and Explore Mode (recommendations-first). In a field deployment of the SwitchTube app with 46 U.S. participants, I find that Focus Mode helps them realize a greater sense of agency without reducing their time spent in the app. My work highlights the need to think beyond ‘screen time’ and advances sense of agency as an alternative lens for addressing user frustrations. I highlight how the design community might identify and call out ‘attention capture dark patterns,’ conceptualize and measure sense of agency, and how flexible interfaces might adapt support for sense of agency to suit different use cases. Ultimately, sense of agency is not only associated with positive technology use outcomes, but also matters to users in its own right as a basic psychological need

The Goldilocks level of support:Using user reviews, ratings, and installation numbers to investigate digital self-control tools

Much effort has been invested in designing digital systems that keep people ‘hooked’. By contrast, comparatively little is known about how designers can support people in re-gaining control. Online, however, hundreds of apps and browser extensions promise to help people self-regulate use of digital devices. Reviews and popularity metrics for these digital self-control tools (DSCTs) can indicate which design patterns are useful in the wild. Moreover, they reveal how platforms like Android and iOS differ in the ecosystems they enable for DSCTs, which has important implications for end users. We analysed reviews, installation numbers, and ratings for 334 DSCTs on the Google Play, Chrome Web, and Apple App stores, investigating what user reviews reveal about usage contexts and key design challenges, and how functionality relates to popularity metrics. Our thematic analysis of 1,529 reviews (sampled from a data set of 53,978 distinct reviews scraped in March 2019) found that DSCTs are seen as highly important for focusing on less instantly rewarding tasks when digital distractions are easily available. Users seek DSCTs that adapt to their personal definitions of distraction, and provide support that is sufficient to change behaviour without feeling too coercive. Reviewers suggested combining design patterns to provide a level of support that is ‘just right’. This was mirrored in the ratings, where tools combined different types of design patterns (e.g., website blocking and goal reminders) tended to receive higher ratings than those implementing a single type. We discuss implications for research and design, including how design patterns in DSCTs interact, and how psychological reactance to DSCTs can be reduced

From UX to Engagement: Connecting Theory and Practice, Addressing Ethics and Diversity

In the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), engagement bears critical significance, not just for informing a design and implementation of the interface, but also for creating improved and advanced interfaces that can adapt to users. While the idea of user engagement is passively being researched in a range of domains, it has been used to various related but diverse concepts. For instance, engagement is the vital element of an effective HCI design. The primary goal of this paper is to introduce relevant research questions related to the engagement domain. The paper studies engagement from four different perspectives: (i) Theory: identifying key issues that aid in building a pluralism of engagement frameworks, (ii) Practice: developing novel methodologies for user engagement and reliable assessment tools, (iii) Ethics: discussing the ethical aspects of engagement especially for designers and developers of humane technologies, (iv) Diversity: investigating individual differences to develop personalized engaging designs and understanding user diversities to provide equal opportunities for user engagement. The discussion will lead to opportunities for the potential researchers to acquire relevant knowledge, assess the mechanisms of engagement and evaluate the current design frameworks. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG