The organizers have researched dark patterns across a range of different domains (e.g., online shopping, social media, and children’s apps) and have responded to the problem from different angles (e.g., re-envisioning design education, designing and building improved systems, presenting to policymakers). They hold experience in both industry and research and have a track record of running successful workshops (e.g., EduCHI at CHI 2020, Digital Wellbeing at CHI 2019).
Kai Lukoff (corresponding organizer) is a PhD candidate in Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington. He studies how individuals and families can align their ‘screen time’ with their values. He has investigated how social media apps use dark patterns to capture attention and created prototypes that are redesigned for more intentional use. He also has an industry perspective on this topic from his 6 years of experience as a product manager at mobile internet startups in China.
Alexis Hiniker is an Assistant Professor of HCI for Social Good at the University of Washington Information School. She studies the ways in which consumer-facing technologies exploit and manipulate their users and the design of more respectful alternatives, particularly for children. She has conducted a number of studies to understand compulsive device use, and she has designed, built, and evaluated several systems to promote digital self-regulation.
Colin M. Gray is an Assistant Professor at Purdue University, where he is the program lead for an undergraduate major and graduate concentration in UX Design. His research focuses on the ways in which the pedagogy and practice of designers informs the development of design ability, particularly in relation to dark patterns, ethical responsibility, and design complexity.
Arunesh Mathur is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University where he is supported by a Consumer Reports fellowship. Mathur’s research examines the societal impacts of technical systems through an empirical lens. His dissertation research showed how commercial, political, and other powerful actors employ dark patterns to exploit individuals and society. His research has received two best paper awards (ACM CSCW and USENIX SOUPS) and the Privacy Papers for Policy Makers Award.
Shruthi Chivukula is a PhD Candidate at Purdue University. Her research focuses on describing everyday ethics in technology and design practice to uncover organizational factors leading to creation of unethical or manipulative designs, individual practitioner’s sense of responsibility within and across disciplinary borders, and ethics-focused methods to provide support for ethical decision making.
Ryan Calo (keynote speaker) is the Lane Powell and D. Wayne Gittinger Professor at the University of Washington School of Law. His scholarship addresses how digital market manipulation can uncover and trigger consumer frailty at an individual level and its implications for consumer protection law and policy. Professor Calo has committed to giving a keynote talk at the workshop.
This work was funded in part by National Science Foundation awards #1849955 and #1909714 and Facebook support to Alexis Hiniker.