Designing for Understanding: How Interface-Level Consent Designs Shape Attention and Understanding in Privacy Disclosures
This research addresses the challenge of designing effective privacy disclosures for users, but it is incremental as it builds on existing work on interface design without introducing a new paradigm.
The study tackled the problem of users not reading privacy policies by examining how different interface designs affect attention and comprehension, finding that guided layouts improved reading efficiency but did not uniformly enhance understanding, with comprehension linked to sustained attention rather than interface type.
Privacy policies are intended to support informed consent, yet users rarely read them fully. This study examines how common privacy policy interface structures influence attention allocation, reading behavior, and perceived experience. Using eye-tracking and post-task surveys, we compared three interface designs: continuous scrolling text, collapsible sections, and collapsible sections with brief previews. Results show that interface structure systematically shaped how users allocated attention and navigated policy content, but did not uniformly improve comprehension. Guided layouts supported more efficient and coherent reading patterns, whereas more interactive designs elicited higher perceived engagement and satisfaction. Importantly, comprehension was closely linked to sustained attention rather than interface type alone. These findings highlight the limits of interface-centered consent approaches and suggest that effective consent design must account for attention dynamics and selective engagement, rather than assuming that improved layout alone ensures understanding.