publications

2023

1. A US-UK Usability Evaluation of Consent Management Platform Cookie Consent Interface Design on Desktop and Mobile

   Elijah Robert Bouma-Sims, Megan Li, Yanzi Lin, and 6 more authors

   In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Hamburg, Germany, 2023

   Abs

   Websites implement cookie consent interfaces to obtain users’ permission to use non-essential cookies, as required by privacy regulations. We extend prior research evaluating the impact of interface design on cookie consent through an online behavioral experiment (n = 1359) in which we prompted mobile and desktop users from the UK and US to make cookie consent decisions using one of 14 interfaces implemented with the OneTrust consent management platform (CMP). We found significant effects on user behavior and sentiment for multiple explanatory variables, including more negative sentiment towards the consent process among UK participants and lower comprehension of interface information among mobile users. The design factor that had the largest effect on user behavior was the initial set of options displayed in the cookie banner. In addition to providing more evidence of the inadequacy of current cookie consent processes, our results have implications for website operators and CMPs.

2. Consumer-Driven Design and Evaluation of Broadband Labels

   Christopher Choy, Ellie Young, Megan Li, and 2 more authors

   In Proceedings of the 2023 Research Conference on Communications, Information and Internet Policy, Washington, DC, 2023

   Poster

2022

1. “Okay, Whatever”: An Evaluation of Cookie Consent Interfaces

   Hana Habib, Megan Li, Ellie Young, and 1 more author

   In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, New Orleans, LA, USA, 2022

   Abs Poster

   Many websites have added cookie consent interfaces to meet regulatory consent requirements. While prior work has demonstrated that they often use dark patterns — design techniques that lead users to less privacy-protective options — other usability aspects of these interfaces have been less explored. This study contributes a comprehensive, two-stage usability assessment of cookie consent interfaces. We first inspected 191 consent interfaces against five dark pattern heuristics and identified design choices that may impact usability. We then conducted a 1,109-participant online between-subjects experiment exploring the usability impact of seven design parameters. Participants were exposed to one of 12 consent interface variants during a shopping task on a prototype e-commerce website and answered a survey about their experience. Our findings suggest that a fully-blocking consent interface with in-line cookie options accompanied by a persistent button enabling users to later change their consent decision best meets several design objectives.