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The EU ePrivacy Directive requires consent before using cookies or other tracking technologies, while the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) sets high-level and principle-based requirements for such consent to be valid. However, the translation of such requirements into concrete design interfaces for consent banners is far from straightforward. This situation has given rise to the use of manipulative tactics in user experience (“UX”), commonly known as dark patterns, which influence users’ decision-making and may violate the GDPR requirements for valid consent. To address this problem, EU regulators aim to interpret GDPR requirements and to limit the design space of consent banners within their guidelines. Academic researchers from various disciplines address the same problem by performing user studies to evaluate the impact of design and dark patterns on users’ decision making. Regrettably, the guidelines and user studies rarely impact each other. In this Essay, we collected and analyzed seventeen official guidelines issued by EU regulators and the EU Data Protection Board (“EDPB”), as well as eleven consent-focused empirical user studies which we thoroughly studied from a User Interface (“UI”) design perspective. We identified numerous gaps between consent banner designs recommended by regulators and those evaluated in user studies. By doing so, we contribute to both the regulatory discourse and future user studies. We pinpoint EU regulatory inconsistencies and provide actionable recommendations for regulators. For academic scholars, we synthesize insights on design elements discussed by regulators requiring further user study evaluations. Finally, we recommend that EDPB and EU regulators, alongside usability, Human-Computer Interaction (“HCI”), and design researchers, engage in transdisciplinary dialogue in order to close the gap between EU guidelines and user studies. 

Deceptive and coercive design practices are increasingly used by companies to extract profit, harvest data, and limit consumer choice. Dark patterns represent the most common contemporary amalgamation of these problematic practices, connecting designers, technologists, scholars, regulators, and legal professionals in transdisciplinary dialogue. However, a lack of universally accepted definitions across the academic, legislative, practitioner, and regulatory space has likely limited the impact that scholarship on dark patterns might have in supporting sanctions and evolved design practices. In this paper, we seek to support the development of a shared language of dark patterns, harmonizing ten existing regulatory and academic taxonomies of dark patterns and proposing a three-level ontology with standardized definitions for 64 synthesized dark pattern types across low-, meso-, and high-level patterns. We illustrate how this ontology can support translational research and regulatory action, including transdisciplinary pathways to extend our initial types through new empirical work across application and technology domains. 

Deceptive design practices are increasingly used by companies to extract profit, harvest data, and limit consumer choice. Dark patterns represent the most common contemporary amalgamation of these problematic practices, connecting designers, technologists, scholars, regulators, and legal professionals in transdisciplinary dialogue. However, a lack of universally accepted definitions across the academic, legislative and regulatory space has likely limited the impact that scholarship on dark patterns might have in supporting sanctions and evolved design practices. In this late breaking work, we seek to harmonize regulatory and academic taxonomies of dark patterns, proposing a preliminary three-level ontology to create a shared language that supports translational research and regulatory action. We identify potential directions for scholarship and social impact building upon this ontology. 

Growth hacking, particularly within the spectre of surveillance capitalism, has led to the widespread use of deceptive, manipulative, and coercive design techniques in the last decade. These challenges exist at the intersection of many diferent technology professions that are rapidly evolving and “shapeshifting” their design practices to confront emerging regulation. A wide range of scholars have increasingly addressed these challenges through the label “dark patterns,” describing the content of deceptive and coercive design practices, the ubiquity of these patterns in contemporary digital systems, and the impact of emerging regulatory and legislative action on the presence of dark patterns. Building on this convergent and trans-disciplinary research area, the aims of this SIG are to: 1) Provide an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to address methodologies for detecting, characterizing, and regulating dark patterns; 2) Identify opportunities for additional empirical work to characterize and demonstrate harms related to dark patterns; and 3) Aid in convergence among HCI, design, computational, regulatory, and legal perspectives on dark patterns. These goals will enable an internationally-diverse, engaged, and impactful research community to address the threats of dark patterns on digital systems. 

User engagement with data privacy and security through consent banners has become a ubiquitous part of interacting with internet services. While previous work has addressed consent banners from either interaction design, legal, and ethics-focused perspectives, little research addresses the connections among multiple disciplinary approaches, including tensions and opportunities that transcend disciplinary boundaries. In this paper, we draw together perspectives and commentary from HCI, design, privacy and data protection, and legal research communities, using the language and strategies of “dark patterns” to perform an interaction criticism reading of three different types of consent banners. Our analysis builds upon designer, interface, user, and social context lenses to raise tensions and synergies that arise together in complex, contingent, and conflicting ways in the act of designing consent banners. We conclude with opportunities for transdisciplinary dialogue across legal, ethical, computer science, and interactive systems scholarship to translate matters of ethical concern into public policy.