Year: 2023
Type: conference-paper
Study design: Systematic Review
Abstract: 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.
Institutions: Politecnico di Torino, Santa Clara University
Language: English
Subfield: Human-Computer Interaction
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4366547483