Research

Detecting Privacy Violations and/or Dark Patterns in Web/mobile/IoT Applications

In this role, I primarily work in online privacy, analysing privacy interfaces from the lens of usability and dark patterns. Below are some of the projects that I have been a part of, while others are in progress.

1. Interpreting legal requirements prohibiting dark patterns in the European Union: The Digital Services Act (DSA) prohibits the use of dark patterns in online platforms within the European Union. As part of this project, my colleagues and I interpret the legal requirements of Article 25 and Recital 67 of the DSA, and provide an analysis of the types of dark patterns that may be prohibited by these legal provisions. This research and its findings are reported here and here.

2. Assessing cookie banners from the dual perspectives of usability and law: The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the ePrivacy Directive (ePD) within the European Union require all websites to obtain valid consent before processing users' personal data. This consent is commonly collected via consent banners. We inspect these consent banners from a usability perspective, using Nielsen's usability heuristic analysis approach. We identify usability violations which preclude valid consent and generative design opportunities which may satisfy the legal requirements for consent. This research and its findings are reported here.

3. Evaluating usability of cookie consent withdrawal on the web: Consent withdrawal interfaces are designed to allow users to withdraw their consent on any website for the processing of their personal data, after it has been given; as this is a legal right in the EU. We are analysing 200 websites to identify usability violations in these interfaces, which make it difficult for users to exercise this right. The main goals of this research are to measure the prevalence of these usability violations, and to show how these design practices violate the legal requirements of the GDPR.

Thesis: Assessment and Sensitization of Ethics in Persuasive HCI Design

My PhD research was focused on the interplay between persuasive designs, dark patterns and autonomy. This research attempts to unpack the different aspects of autonomy that can be impacted by dark patterns and to understand what makes persuasive designs dark from an autonomy lens. Further, this research also visualises the relationship between interaction design elements and dark patterns. It proposes a framework which identifies elements of interaction design that are potential dark patterns, and describes their autonomy impact. Lastly, this research also focuses on design education. It attempts to understand if and how educating design students about dark patterns (both at university level and at K-12 level) can shape their design thinking processes and their design outcomes. 

During my B.Tech, I undertook several projects primarily in mechanical engineering and product design. I describe two of them here:

1. B.Tech Thesis (Duration: 2 semesters)
Vibrational diagnosis of defects in bearings and gears used in a gearbox:
▪ Designed a gearbox to simulate a special case of gear defect frequency being an integral multiple of bearing defect frequency
▪ Modelled and manufactured the gearbox; acquired data in healthy and cracked state
▪ Established through experiment that gear crack can be identified by an increase in vibration amplitude, sidebands, Hilbert transform, and an analysis of the residual signal
▪ Showed that bearing crack is undetectable using above techniques; requires usage of Kurtosis & HFRT

2. Mini Project (Duration: 1 semester)
Redesign of a downdraft gasifier cookstove for ergonomic and efficiency purposes:
▪ Modified gasifier geometry to include air pre-heating from hot surface to improve efficiency
▪ Designed the gasifier with ceramic tiles inside the nozzle to reduce surface temperatures
▪ Achieved wall thickness and weight reduction by approximately 50%